Céline Regnard

 

     It was the journalist Albert Londres who, in 1927, gave Marseille a metaphor blessed with a long life: the Gateway to the South. Although the image of the gateway had been used before by various administrators and authors to describe the town, it would be as a second identity, particularly during the Colonial Exhibitions of 1906 and 1922, like Gateway to the East. The reference to a gateway in fact is particularly apt because it describes the two essential functions of the town: trade and immigration, which come together in the port, on the quayside, seen as the symbol of an open and welcoming city. Although trading, backed up by industry and business, had been part of Marseille for centuries, it was only from the 19th century that they really took off, thanks to colonial conquests, the development of consumer markets, progress in industry all combined with the arrival of steam ships which meant a huge acceleration in trading. Marseille, for a long time the most important port in France, received goods from across the world, and had special relations with Africa which provided cereals, fruit but also the oilseeds necessary for fat-based industries which were Marseille's speciality. The history of the port, like that of the local industry, is full of ups and downs. In the second half of the 20th century, it adapted badly to competition and change after decolonisation. With the modernised structures and a mainly private management, the port of Marseille had to start all over again.

 Right at the interface of trade and immigration, dockers are the men who run the port. Among them, as in every section of the local working population, immigrants have always been numerous, accepting rough, dangerous and badly paid jobs, sometimes doing so well they make the indigenous dockers jealous as they do less hazardous tasks. Italians then Algerians, Corsicans, Armenians, Spaniards were numerous, still are today, in a profession which is declining. The golden age of Marseille's dockers seems to have ended. Although the creation of the Union syndicale des ouvriers de ports et docks in 1902 enabled them to fight for a proper status, obtaining after 1945 progressively better working conditions, mechanisation and the port's loss of competivity has meant the end of full employment: around 7,000 after 1945, they are today no more than 500.

For local industry immigration from the south has also been the source of an inexhaustible labour force. From the 1840's until the 1970's waves of immiugrants have followed one another, from France or from abroad, coming to look for a wage their country could not provide: Italians, Corsicans, Spaniards, Greeks, Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians and many others particularly from sub-Saharan Africa or Asia, Marseille offered not only a job but a refuge for exiles fleeing persecution, wars and dictators: Armenians, Russians, Spaniards, Italians or again Asians. Even if not all of them arrived by sea, it was the port of La Joliette and its ships which symbolised these arrivals, to which we should add also the departures: Marseille has always been a place of transit for those who, from the end of the 19th century, attempted the American or African adventure.

However, even though this metaphor of the Gateway to the South is amply justified, and the population of the town is made up of many layers of migrants, we should not idealise this mix of peoples. Marseille has not always welcomed the foreigner with open arms. The Marseille Vespers of 1881, the racist killings of 1973 and more recently the success of the National Front are all examples of the tensions caused by migrants. Even in the 19th century the metaphor of the gateway was ambivalent: were we not going to let in all the "foreign vermin"? Today, as yesterday, the cosmopolitanism and openess of Marseille are part of a reality, but also an idea whose political dimension we should define.     

 

Bibliography

Albert Londres, Marseille, Porte du Sud, Arléa [réed.] 2008.

Emile Témime, Migrance. Histoire des migrations à Marseille, Marseille, Jeanne Laffitte [réed.] 2007

Philippe Joutard, « Marseille cosmopolite : mythe et réalité », Hommes et Migrations, n°1092, 1986, p. 20-24

Yvan Gastaut, « Marseille cosmopolite après les décolonisations : un enjeu identitaire », Cahiers de la Méditerranée, n° 67, 2003

Pascal Blanchard, Gilles Boëtch (dir.) Marseille porte sud: Un siècle d'histoire coloniale et d'immigration, Paris/Marseille, La Découverte/Jeanne Laffitte, 2005.