MIME

Summary

France is a country with a long history of immigration. 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 individualistic, universalist, and secular, it recognizes only individuals who are universally equal in rights, not specific groups; and the state guarantees freedom of conscience and worship, with religion falling within the private sphere. Thus, unlike immigrant societies such as Canada or the United States, which value the melting pot and encourage the development of multiple 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 only recognizes individuals articulate the heterogeneity of origins and memories with a political project based on the principles established in the 19th century and constantly reaffirmed since then, of the nation-state and the universalist republic? 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 question from two angles, which could serve the objectives of creating a museum of the history of France and Algeria in Montpellier: firstly, based on ethnographic surveys of targeted populations in Montpellier (young people of North African origin), and secondly, through research seminars involving Algerian colleagues from the CRASC (Oran), in order to incorporate their perspective on the intertwined history of the two countries.

Presentation

France is a country of immigration, conquest, and asylum (Temime, 1999). These ambiguities mark its history: since the French Revolution, citizenship has been granted to Jews, but slavery was not abolished in its colonies until 1848 (Weil, 2008). Since the 19th century, immigrants have been welcomed from Belgium, Italy, Portugal, Spain, the Maghreb, and sub-Saharan Africa... but also from Germany, Armenia, and Spain, where Republicans were exiled following 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 occur 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, political and administrative struggles culminated in the 1990s over the naming of these groups, leading to amalgamations and confusion. Thus, parallels were drawn between foreigners, immigrants, etc., coupled with the polarity between us and them, established and outsiders (Elias & Scotson, 2003). Relational poles (Weber, 1995) are formed, which 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 "Maghrebi" and its normative dimension can be identified through discourse analysis within the media (Bonnafous, 1991). However, when observed over time, "migration policies" – immigration and asylum (Fischer, Hamidi, 2016), which are developed using 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 constraints of nation-state categories and economic and demographic needs (Noiriel, 1988), the issue of "migration crises" seems to be firmly on the political agenda. Finally, with the end of what was known as "Greater France," the French were "repatriated" from Algeria and other protectorates and colonies; Various groups, whose existence was linked to decolonization ("pieds-noirs," harkis), had to continue their existence in the former metropolis, which led to conflicts of memory and political mobilization that contributed to the reconfiguration of French political life (Savarese, 2014).

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, regardless of 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 individualistic (it recognizes only individuals as rights holders), universalistic (these 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 immigrant societies (Canada, Australia, United States) encourage the development of multiple identities (recognition of the contribution of Italian-Americans to the United States in exchange for their allegiance to the Stars and Stripes) through 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 establishment in 2007 of the National Museum of the History of Immigration in the Palais de la Porte Dorée (Paris) can be understood as an attempt to respond to this tension.

Hence the question, central to all models of citizenship (republican, multicultural, consociational), of the relationship between the universal and the particular (Martiniello, 1991), addressed here in France from the perspective 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 based on the principles, established in the 19th century and constantly reaffirmed since then, of the nation-state and the universalist republic?

The issue is urgent: in recent years, concerns about a crisis in the "integration model" have resurfaced, with challenges from some quarters (the indigenous peoples of the Republic) and the explosion of "cultural diversity" (identity-based or regionalist movements) from others. In response to this situation, which has led to a number of conflicts over memory—around slavery, the baptism of Clovis, the link between Catholicism and "national identity," the definition of mass crimes, Vichy, or the Algerian War— several responses can be offered:
– the first, sometimes associated with rhetorical artifice, aims to make the Republic the unassailable foundation for a solution to the "identity malaise" asserted in the context of demands for recognition;
– the second consists of making citizenship a status that must be "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 more difficult to obtain and easier to lose (Joppke, 2010), despite certain liberalization dynamics such as the introduction of jus soli in Germany (Weil, 2005);
– the third consists of drafting memorial laws (the Gayssot Law, the Taubira Law, the law recognizing the expression "Algerian War," the law recognizing the Armenian genocide, the law of February 23, 2005, on the "positive role of French overseas work," law making March 19 a day of remembrance for civilian and military victims of the Algerian War, etc.) designed to satisfy particularist demands without abandoning the republican model of citizenship (Savarese, 2020). Even the effectiveness of memory policies (Michel, 2010) can be called into question (Gensburger, Lefranc, 2017), but this profusion of texts highlights the fact that never before has the legislature taken such a firm grasp of the issue of memory (
– the latter, which is the focus here, aims to examine the diversity of the French population through the manifestation of formulated memories, in order to understand the extent to which individuals with multiple memories can form a society; beyond the nation rooted in the past through a "rich store of memories" (according to Renan's formula), 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 changing, we can demonstrate that social bonds can be forged in different ways: diversity in terms of memory, culture, and religion is perhaps less an obstacle to republican citizenship than the foundation of a possible coexistence.

To address these issues, the city of Montpellier provides fertile ground for investigation, given national considerations and specific characteristics: in 60 years, its population has doubled. This result cannot be attributed solely to natural growth: it has been achieved through internal and external immigration. Furthermore, 16% of the population is officially recorded as foreign, which is nearly twice the national average, but there are also a large number of young people (more than 70,000 students, 1 in 4 inhabitants) and very high unemployment and poverty rates compared to the national average. Hence the possibility of taking this great diversity of origins into account in a project aimed at examining the history of migration and the sharing of memories among citizens. Based on qualitative surveys (observation, interviews), this research draws on a multidisciplinary approach, in addition to its core social sciences (history, sociology, anthropology, political science), including law, urban geography, and language sciences. The aim is to reconstruct the 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 unique history, a construction of memory, and participation in the affairs of the city. In addition to discussions in research seminars with French and Algerian colleagues, this work will result in a scientific publication (book, journal issue) and an exhibition presenting the research materials in the form of biographical files and photographs. It may also foreshadow a survey of the reception by citizens of Maghreb origin of a possible museum on the history of Algeria and France in Montpellier.