MIME

Summary

France is an old country of immigrants. The nation is presented as a community of equal citizens whose origins, trajectories and memories are diverse, even conflicting (Vichy, Algerian War). Since the model of citizenship is at once individualistic, universalist and secular, it recognizes only universally equal individuals, not particularized groups; and the state guarantees freedom of conscience and worship, with religion being a private matter. So, unlike immigrant societies such as Canada or the United States, which value the melting-pot and encourage the development of drawer identities through recognition policies, France is both a nation-state (with a historically dominant group) and an immigrant society in which migrant populations can claim a place in the national narrative.

So, under what conditions can a model of citizenship that recognizes only individuals articulate the heterogeneity of origins and memories with a political project rooted in the principles of the nation-state and the universalist republic, built in the 19th century and constantly reaffirmed since? The question remains urgent at a time when some elites are diagnosing a "crisis" in the "republican model of citizenship" on the one hand, and the explosion of "cultural diversity" and demands for recognition on the other. We would like to approach this issue from two angles, likely to serve the objectives of creating a museum of the history of France and Algeria in Montpellier: firstly, on the basis of ethnographic surveys of targeted populations in Montpellier (young people of North African origin), and secondly, through research seminars including Algerian colleagues from the CRASC (Oran), in order to associate their point of view with the relationship to the cross-cultural history of the two countries.

Presentation

France is a country of immigration, conquest and asylum (Temime, 1999). These ambiguities mark its history: as early as the French Revolution, citizenship was granted to Jews, but slavery was not abolished in its colonies until 1848 (Weil, 2008). Since the 19th century, France has welcomed immigrants from Belgium, Italy, Portugal, Spain, the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa... as well as Germans, Armenians and Spanish Republicans exiled as a result of political crimes perpetrated by authoritarian regimes, and/or fleeing regions of war and famine. While the transformation from labor immigration to settlement immigration did not proceed at the same pace for all populations - for Algerian immigration, the process spanned a century (Sayad, 1999) - these migrations gave rise to diverse trajectories and plural memories within the populations concerned. At the same time, politico-administrative struggles over the naming of these publics culminated in the 1990s, leading to amalgamation and confusion. Parallels were drawn between foreigners, immigrants and the polarity between us and them, established and outsiders (Elias & Scotson, 2003). Relational poles (Weber, 1995) are now very much alive and normatively organized around the universal and the particular, the virtuous and the dangerous, etc. Thus the association between "immigrant" and "North African" and its normative dimension can be spotted by analyses of discourse in the media (Bonnafous, 1991). Yet, observed over time, "migration policies" - immigration and asylum (Fischer, Hamidi, 2016), which are built around two tools (naturalization and flow management through border control), have regularly been used to regulate the labor market on the one hand, and demographic crises on the other (Weil, 1995). And at a time when freedom of movement has become a principle that tends towards universality, with the dual constraint of nation-state categories and economic and demographic needs (Noiriel, 1988), the question of "migratory crises" seems to be permanently on the political agenda. Finally, with the end of what was known as "la plus grande France", French citizens from Algeria and other protectorates and colonies were "repatriated"; various groups, whose existence was linked to decolonization ("pieds -noirs", harkis), had to continue their existence in the former metropolis, generating memorial conflicts and political mobilizations that helped reconfigure French political life (Savarese, 2014).

Thus, France is often presented as a community of citizens (Schnapper, 94) whose origins, trajectories and memories are diverse, even conflicting, as in the case of Vichy (Rousso, 1987) or the Algerian War (Stora, 1991; Stora, Harbi, 2004); citizens defined as equal individuals, whatever their histories, trajectories, memories, or personal and religious affiliations. Indeed, the republican model of citizenship, established under the Third Republic (Nicolet, 1982), is at once individualist (it recognizes only individuals as holders of rights), universalist (said individuals are universally equal in rights), and secular (religion is a private matter, and the state must guarantee freedom of conscience and worship). But while some immigrant societies (Canada, Australia, the United States) encourage the development of sliding-scale identities (recognition of the contribution of Italian-Americans to the United States in exchange for their allegiance to the Star-Spangled Banner) via recognition policies (Taylor, 1994; Kymlicka, 2001), France is both a nation-state with a historically dominant "Catholic" group, and an immigrant society where minority migrant populations are likely to "integrate" and claim a place in the national narrative (Walzer, 1998): the erection in 2007 of the Musée national de l'histoire de l'immigration in the Palais de la Porte - Dorée (Paris) can be seen as an attempt to respond to this tension.

Hence the question, central to all models of citizenship (republican, multicultural, consociational), of the articulation between the universal and the particular (Martiniello, 1991), here approached in France from the angle of the plurality of collective memories (Halbwachs, 1994): how can individuals with diverse histories and memories form a society (Donzelot, 2003) and participate in a collective project of living together, within the framework of the republican model of citizenship? Under what conditions can a model of citizenship that recognizes only individuals and not particularized groups of individuals (minorities have no legal existence) articulate the heterogeneity of origins and memories with a political project enshrined in the principles, constructed in the 19th century and constantly reaffirmed since, of the Nation-State and the universalist Republic?

The issue is urgent: in recent years, the diagnosis of a crisis in the "integration model" has resurfaced, with, on the one hand, the "natives of the Republic" (les indigènes de la République), and on the other, the explosion of "cultural diversity" (identitarian or regionalist movements). There are several responses to this situation, which has given rise to a number of conflicts of memory - around slavery, the baptism of Clovis, the link between the Catholic religion and "national identity", the definition of mass crimes, Vichy or the Algerian War...:
- the first, sometimes associated with rhetorical artifice, aims to make the Republic the unsurpassable foundation for a solution to the "identity malaise" asserted as part of the demands for recognition made;
- the second consists in making citizenship a status that is "earned": in most European Union countries, measures aimed at restricting access to citizenship through naturalization illustrate that, without being truly ethnicized, citizenship has become both harder to obtain and easier to lose (Joppke, 2010), despite certain liberalization dynamics such as the introduction of droit du sol in Germany (Weil, 2005);
- the third consists in drafting memorial laws (the Gayssot law, the Taubira law, the law recognizing the expression of the Algerian war, the law recognizing the Armenian genocide, the law of February 23, 2005 on the "positive role of French overseas activities", the law establishing March 19 as the day of commemoration for civilian and military victims of the Algerian war...) designed to satisfy particularist demands without abandoning the republican model of citizenship (Savarese, 2020). Even the effectiveness of the politics of memory, (Michel, 2010), may be questioned (Gensburger, Lefranc, 2017), this profusion of texts underlines that never before has the legislator taken such an interest in the question of memory;
- the last, favored here, aims to question the diversity of the French population through the manifestation of memories formulated, to apprehend the extent to which individuals bearing plural memories can make society ; Beyond the nation anchored in the past through a "rich batch of memories" (as Renan put it), how can individuals whose memories differ and vary according to more or less imaginary constructs (Boucheron, 2016), recognize themselves as members of the same society? By examining the diversity of memories in France and showing how they are transformed, we can show that the creation of social bonds can take different trajectories: diversity in memory, culture and religion is perhaps less an obstacle to republican citizenship than the foundation of a possible way of living together.

The city of Montpellier provides a fertile ground for investigation of these questions, in the light of national considerations and specific features: in 60 years, its population has multiplied by 2. This result cannot be attributed to natural growth alone: it has been achieved through both internal and external immigration. In addition, 16% of the population is officially foreign, i.e. almost 2 times the national average, but the area also has a large number of young people (over 70,000 students, 1 in 4 inhabitants) and a very high unemployment and poverty rate compared to the national average. Hence the possibility of taking this great diversity of origins into account as part of a project aimed at questioning the history of migration and the sharing of memories between citizens. Based on qualitative surveys (observation, interviews), this research calls on a multi-disciplinary dimension in addition to its core social sciences (history, sociology, anthropology, political science): law, urban geography, language sciences, etc. The aim is to reconstruct trajectories based on the conditions in which the new inhabitants of Montpellier found themselves when they arrived, and how they were able to articulate a singular history, a construction of memories and a participation in the affairs of the city. In addition to discussions in research seminars with French and Algerian colleagues, this work will culminate in a scientific publication (book, journal issue) and an exhibition featuring biographical sheets and photographs of the survey material. It may also prefigure a survey of the reception, by citizens of North African origin, of a possible museum on the history of Algeria and France in Montpellier.