HUM 447 : Global Migration II

From French to Foreign, a hidden story of fragmented memories

From 1954 to 1962, some two million Frenchmen waged war on the Algerians. Sixty years later, this
"war without a name" remains a blank page in national history. The repression of its memory continues to eat
away at the very foundations of French society.
In order to understand the effects of this occultation, this paper attempts to shed light on its mechanisms
focusing on the policies implemented by the French state to control migration from Algeria. From the denial of
the very existence of the war, the occultation of the state wrongs to the numerous and conflicting policies
established, France has closed the door on a part of its history and most importantly, on a part of its population
who went from French to irregular migrants within a decade after the war. The lies of the 1950-1970 period will
in turn be buried in the memory in the following decades by amnesties or the unspoken words of a fragmented
history.
From colonisation time to this day, the official versus informal legal and cultural status of Algerians has
been blurred, sometimes deliberatly, leading to their denigration. This hierarchy first appeared between settlers
and indigeneous populations which fueled the war of independence. The Evian Accords which ended the war
provided the first outline to Algerians legal status. As a wave of migration washed over french coasts, France
built up a facade of fraternity, hiding the contradiction of their numerous policies as well as the lack of rights
provided to the French Algerians. From their creation to their failure, this paper explores the conflicting policies
implemented by the French state to simultaneously encourage and curb migration, studying their direct and long
term impact on the Algerian legal status. A final part will be dedicated to exploring how France could have
possibly handled better decolonization to mitigate the considerable effects it had on Algerians.

The status of native Algerians was made controversial by the French Government from the beginning of
their interaction in 1830. During colonial times, distinct social classes were set between native Algerians
(Indigenous), French settlers and Europeans living in Algeria, who would later be known as the Pieds-Noirs.1 The
senatus-consulte i from 1865 enabled Europeans settled in Algeria to gain French nationality after three years to
ensure a sufficient French presence in the newly conquered land. They were also given the more fertile lands of
the colony. In this senatus-consulte, the Code de l’Indigénat ii governed the Indigenous, who were given the
French nationality which was, at the time, independent from citizenship. This Muslim population was thus neither
fully French nor Algerian as Algeria did not exist as a country yet.1 Their difference in status meant they had no
right to vote and could be sent to jail for no reason or be collectively punished. This strong distinction between
populations is also depicted by the acquisition of citizenship by native Jew Algerians in 1870 following the Décret
Crémieux iii whereas native Muslim Algerians remained Indigenous with French nationality only. Following
WW2, during which native Algerians fought alongside France, the Indigenous status was modified. Now called
Français Musulmans d’Algérie - FMA, (associating a strong link between religion and nationality) they were
officially given the right to vote.

i
A senatus-consulte is an act having the force of a law. It must be voted by the Sénat. It had thus the same role as a law,
under the First and Second Napoleonic Empire
ii
The Code de l’Indigénat was a set of laws and regulations that governed the legal status and the penal rules related to
natives in the French colonies (from 1865 to 1944 in Algeria)
iii
The Décret Crémieux was a law that granted French citizenship specifically to Jewish Algerians

1
Maïlys Kydjian, “Mémoires Croisées. Retour Sur l’expérience Coloniale de La Guerre d’indépendance à Travers Trois
Générations d’ Algériens, Harkis, et Pieds-Noirs" Université de Toulouse - Jean Jaurès, 2016.

1
 HUM 447 : Global Migration II

Their vote had however the same weight as the Pieds-Noirs' vote despite the Muslims being eight times as
many.2 Furthermore, even though non-Muslim women could vote in France since 1944, Muslim women did not
have that right.3 The Pieds-Noirs had also an economic advantage through better access to education and higher
income jobs.
During decolonization, the policies implemented by France to support the transition were also denigrating the
Algerian population by attempting to modernize them, what A. Lyons4 described as France’ civilizing mission.
Immigrated FMA & families staying in France were put under significant pressure leading to revolts thus fueling
the war of Independence (1954-1962). This pressure focused mostly on housing restrictions, education and the
role of women.4 It was a brutal war with torture and terrorism performed by both sides.

After negotiations, the Evian Accords were signed on March 18th 1962 by the French Government and the
Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic, with an agreement on a cease-fire on March 19th. The Accords
provided the first outline of the legal status of both the French in Algeria and Algerians in France.5 Most articles
were dedicated to the rights of settlers living in Algeria in a futile attempt to convince them not to leave their
homes and businesses behind, thereby leading Algeria into an economic abyss. The Pieds-Noirs still left because
of terrorist actions.6 Two articles of the Accords addressed Algerian rights, stating the intent to grant them with
the same rights as French citizens except political suffrage. Their possession of French identification guaranteed
them free circulation between France and Algeria. As Amelia Lyons states, “The full nature of their rights,
however, remained open to interpretation”.7 The Evian Accords also stated that the Harkis, the Muslims who
fought on the French side of the independence war would not face retaliation. This was not respected by the
Algerian government.8 Thus, the Harkis tried to flee to France but many of them were not allowed to settle there
by the French government. They needed to be accepted as refugee, contrarily to the Pieds-Noirs.

Given the former tie between countries, the Evian Accords which ended the war guaranteed freedom of
movement for Algerians on French soil as they owned French papers. Migration of former soldiers and settlers,
workers and their families went on during and after the war. This substantial migration wave came from different
motives from all parties involved. Combined to terrorism was the raging civil war, which initially originated from
a lack of jobs and poor living conditions, leading to a desire from locals to flee the country4. The Algerian
unemployment which followed from WW2 combined to France need for cheap labor force strengthened the
departures for France. 9 The French desire to act as a puppeteer on Algerian immigration dates back to before

2
Emmanuel Blanchard, “L’imbroglio Algérien,” Les Populations Qui Ont Fait La France, 2020.
3
“L’Algérie En 1954,” Sans Mythes Ni Tabou La Guerre d’Algérie, 2002.
4
Amelia H Lyons, “The Civilizing Mission in the Metropole: Algerian Immigrants in France and the Politics of Adaptation
during Decolonization,” Geschichte Und Gesellschaft, 2006, 489–516.
5
C.-R. Ageron, Les Accords d’Evian En Conjoncture et En Longue Durée : “La Signifiance Politique Des Accords d’Evian,” ed.
R. Gallissot (Paris, 1997).
6
Alain-Gérard Slama, “Oran, 5 Juillet 1962: Le Massacre Oublié,” Les Derniers Jours de l’Algérie Française, 1999.
7
Amelia H. Lyons, “French or Foreign? The Algerian Migrants’ Status at the End of Empire (1962-1968),” Journal of
Modern European History 12, no. 1 (2014): 126–45, https://doi.org/10.17104/1611-8944_2014_1_126.
8
Guy Pervillé, “La Tragédie Des Harkis : Qui Est Responsable?,” Les Derniers Jours de l’Algérie Française, 1999.
9
Lyons, “French or Foreign? The Algerian Migrants’ Status at the End of Empire (1962-1968).”

2
 HUM 447 : Global Migration II

decolonization where they aimed to find a balance between the metropole population and the colonial land.
However, this new migration wave which was initially desired and encouraged by France rapidly became out of
hands. Curbing this flow became an interest for both receiving and sending country. On one side, Algeria’s labor
force was emptying its lands. On the other side of the Mediterranean Sea, the French, alarmed by this flow of said
“foreigners” and in an effort to distinguish between temporary workers and permanent migrants, started
implementing several regulations and policies.7 Amongst those policies were the implementation of quotas for
yearly labor migration, medical examinations for workers, residency permits, prerequisite to claim loyalty to
France to maintain French nationality, propaganda campaigns to dissuade settlement, monitoring of housing
practice, etc.
Those policies, however, did not succeed in restraining migration. This failure is explained by France’s conflicting
interests between its need for cheap labor and a desire to both maintain influence in Algeria and erase the memory
of colonialism.10 This last point is highlighted by the fiasco behind the many census ordered for the migrating
Algerian population.7 The census were carried out incorrectly as collective denial regarding decolonization did
not account for Algerians to be foreigners. This blur surrounding migration policies brought confusion to
organizations & service providers. Some considered Algerians still to be eligible while other refused.
France playing both sides by maintaining openly inclusive but unofficially exclusive policies toward Algerians
ended up sabotaging their goal to curb migration. The growing gap between individual and institutional
interpretations of the FMA’s rights gave rise to a slow and uneven switch from French to foreign.7 Scholarly
resources seem to have, yet, largely overlooked the particular link which binds Algerians to France, being that
most went from French citizens to irregular migrants within a decade after the war. This shift could find different
explanations. The Evian Accords’ primary purpose was to protect individual property of French citizens and the
financial interest of French businesses. 7 The Accords articles dedicated to the extension of Algerian rights had
for main purpose to protect the colonists from riots. The text divergent approach toward French settlers and FMAs
constituted the first brick toward letting slip the latter into foreign status despite their French papers while the rest
remained unquestionably French. Algerians had the choice at independence between French or Algerian
nationality though most chose Algeria even when moving to France.1 Algerians' legal status was closely linked to
their freedom of movement which strongly evolved between 1920 – 1970.4 ,9 The conflicting policies that followed
decolonization greatly complicated the integration of Algerians. Alexis Spire demonstrates how France never
stopped choosing the “good foreigners”, the ones most assimilable to French people who would ensure
demographic renewal.11 Strict border controls were laid out to judge social and sanitary acceptance of incoming
Algerians. A certain level of surveillance was then assigned to them to discipline any deviation from their
commitments. Combined to the housing restrictions set in place, these policies officially portrayed as inclusive
slowly pushed migrants into slums participating thus to their marginalization.7 Moreover, the numerous policies
of propaganda and control laid out to curb migration were fruitful in feeding a growing anxiety and xenophobia
of French locals. Rumors about Algerians criminal behavior and contagious diseases spread. 7 Even though
Algerians were not yet labelled “illegal”, their population grew more marginalized thus becoming increasingly
invisible.

10
Benjamin Stora, La Gangrène et l’oubli, La Gangrène et l’oubli, La Découve (La Découverte, 2005),
https://doi.org/10.3917/dec.stora.2005.01.
11
Alexis Spire, Étrangers à La Carte ; l’administration de l’immigration En France, 1945-1975, Grasset, 2005.

3
 HUM 447 : Global Migration II

The long-term effects of the policies implemented by the French government had numerous consequences
notably on the changing legal status of Algerians and growing xenophobia in France. Franco-Algerian relations
were forged in violence through the imposition of the colonial system and a seven-year war that led to Algeria's
independence. For Algeria, this war caused the death of hundreds of thousands of Algerians and the displacement
of millions of peasants, restructured the economy and shaped the political regime that would govern for the next
decades.12 From 1962 onwards, the Mediterranean Sea became a fault line in the violent divorce that never ceased
to feed tensions and obsessions from one shore to the other. Between the closure of archives, the absence of
justice for the horrors that went on during the war and the shutdown of an entire population, Algerians still bear
the wounds of France’s doing in the fragmentation of their history. 10
For so long, France has been refusing stubbornly to recognize the very existence of the war and the reality of
torture and summary executions. The scattered memories of the minorities of the war (Pieds Noirs & Harkis) do
not meet a French national memory built around what happened. 1This closed door combined to the growing
xenophobia and resulting isolation of Algerian populations into slums weakened the desire to pass on to future
generations the importance of Algerian history. It also contributed to a mounting fear of Algerians, not only by
French citizens but mostly by authorities which lead to the rise of nationalists partis. The Right did not accept
what it saw as the amputation of a French territory at the time. The refusal to accept this imposed separation
provoked what Benjamin Stora describes as “the gangrene”, expressed through the crisis of French nationalism.10
Thirty years later, the extreme right is directing its discourse towards the eviction of the “enemy within”, the
immigrant. The public opinion on the responsibility for the wrongs of the French government are slowly shifted
toward the foreigner, the Algerian.

France’s handling of Algerian decolonization and the resulting change in status of Algerians was very
controversial. The Pieds-Noirs were not the only Europeans who travelled from a colony to Europe during
decolonization. For instance, England was dealing in the same period with migration from their colony in India,
as was Belgium with Congo and Portugal with Angola or Mozambique. Most people travelled to their respective
metropoles either during the independence war like in Algeria or following their properties’ nationalization by
the new government. Taking in those incoming populations seems however to have been better handled in some
countries then others. Bernard Droz describes England as being a good example.13 The country often negotiated
with the former colony’s new government for its citizens to be able to stay. Additionally, the migration of those
who wanted to do so was organized: newcomers were helped to find similar jobs and owners were compensated
for their lost goods. This was also helped by the fact that people could resettle in British dominionsiv like Canada.
Therefore, they could go to a place where workers were needed. In Algeria, the Pieds-Noirs all fled at the end of
the war due to terrorist groups. This created a huge wave of migrants who mostly went back to France, which was
a more difficult situation to handle. They were also not compensated for their lost goods directly after their
arrival.13

iv
A nation of the Commonwealth that acknowledges the British monarch as chief of state

12
Irwin M. Wall, “The French Communists and the Algerian War,” Journal of Contemporary History 12, no. 3 (1977): 521–
43, https://doi.org/10.1177/002200947701200306.
13
Bernard Droz, “Pieds-Noirs, Belges, Anglais, Portugais... Le Grand Rapatriement,” Les Derniers Jours de l’Algérie
Française, 1999.

4
 HUM 447 : Global Migration II

If France had realized sooner that Algeria would become independent, they could have better prepared the return
of the descendants of European settlers as the British Empire did. It seems a posteriori obvious that Algeria could
not have stayed French. Its society was profoundly inegalitarian and the Muslim population had been protesting
for a long time before the war as evidenced by a putsch in 1945. Furthermore, Algeria was not the only colony
wanting independence during this period. France granted it to Morocco and Tunisia in 1956.14 Though in the case
of Algeria, France was not so receptive.15 They insisted in dealing with the Algerian status alone, notably refusing
UN intervention, thus losing an opportunity to make decolonization smoother.
Another reason they were ill-prepared to independence was that neither France nor the Pieds-Noirs thought that
the latter would mass-travel to France. The thought was that even if Algeria became independent, those could
remain.16Had they acknowledged sooner that the end of the colonies was inevitable, the war and the subsequent
massacres of the Pieds-Noirs and the Harkis could have been avoided.17 The French public opinion was, in
addition, in disapproval of the government actions. A census carried out in 1979 on French citizens indicates that
58% judged that France should not have done this war, 35 % thought that the government had not understood that
the colonial system was doomed, 23 % that France protected its interests in petrol preservation and colonial
goods. Finally, 62% judged the independence was inevitable.10 From those numbers comes out a desire from
French public to state out loud the wrongs of their government in this war. This need of integrity coming from
both French and Algerian populations is, yet, not met by the French government. Instead, the archives of the war
are closed for 60 years, leaving frustrated historians and economists seeking to explore this defining turn in French
history. The law of 1982 enacts the keystone of the sarcophagus intended to definitively stifle the memory of the
Algerian War. It provides the official pardon of all guilty parties of the war pretending a time for forgiveness. 18
These policies testify of the French trauma of a war won militarily but lost politically which has engraved the
exclusion of Algerians and more generally immigrants alongside the rise of nationalist parties advocating the
expulsion of foreigners which we can still see today.

To conclude, Algerians’ legal status has been controversial since the beginning of colonization. Despite
Algeria being part of France, Muslim Algerians were not treated as French citizens. France’s disregard of Algerian
claims for more rights and independence fueled the war of 1954-1962. The confusing policies implemented by
France following the war to curb migration led to an inconsistency in Algerians legal status which slowly
marginalized them into irregularity.

14
Michel Winock, “La France En Algérie: Cent Trente Ans d’aveuglement,” Les Derniers Jours de l’Algérie Française, 1999.
15
Christophe Guussen, “Ireland, France and the Question of Algeria at the United Nations, 1955-62,” n.d.,
https://about.jstor.org/terms.
16
Alain-Gérard Slama, “L’exode Des Pieds-Noirs,” Sans Mythes Ni Tabou La Guerre d’Algérie, 2002.
17
Algerian War and Christopher Harrison, “French Attitudes to Empire and the Algerian War,” Source: African Affairs, vol.
82, 1983, https://www.jstor.org/stable/721479.
18
Bernard Sigg, Le Silence et La Honte : Névroses de La Guerre d’Algérie - Livres, Messidor (Paris, 1989)

5
 HUM 447 : Global Migration II

References
[1] Maïlys Kydjian, “Mémoires Croisées. Retour Sur l’expérience Coloniale de La Guerre d’indépendance à
Travers Trois Générations d’ Algériens, Harkis, et Pieds-Noirs" Université de Toulouse - Jean Jaurès, 2016.
[2] Blanchard, Emmanuel. “L’imbroglio Algérien.” Les Populations Qui Ont Fait La France, 2020.
[3] “L’Algérie En 1954.” Sans Mythes Ni Tabou La Guerre d’Algérie, 2002.
[4] Lyons, Amelia H. “The Civilizing Mission in the Metropole: Algerian Immigrants in France and the Politics
of Adaptation during Decolonization.” Geschichte Und Gesellschaft, 2006, 489–516.
[5] C.-R. Ageron. Les Accords d’Evian En Conjoncture et En Longue Durée : “La Signifiance Politique Des
Accords d’Evian.” Edited by R. Gallissot. Paris, 1997.
[6] Alain-Gérard Slama. “Oran, 5 Juillet 1962: Le Massacre Oublié.” Les Derniers Jours de l’Algérie
Française, 1999.
[7] Lyons, Amelia H. “French or Foreign? The Algerian Migrants’ Status at the End of Empire (1962-1968).”
Journal of Modern European History 12, no. 1 (2014): 126–45. https://doi.org/10.17104/1611-
8944_2014_1_126.
[8] Pervillé, Guy. “La Tragédie Des Harkis : Qui Est Responsable?” Les Derniers Jours de l’Algérie Française,
1999.
[9] Cohen, Muriel. “Les Circulations Entre France et Algérie: Un Nouveau Regard Sur Les Migrants
(Post)Coloniaux (1945-1985).” French Politics, Culture and Society 34, no. 2 (2016): 78–100.
https://doi.org/10.3167/fpcs.2016.340205.
[10] Benjamin Stora, La Gangrène et l’oubli, La Gangrène et l’oubli, La Découverte, 2005.
https://doi.org/10.3917/dec.stora.2005.01.
[11] Alexis Spire, Étrangers à La Carte ; l’administration de l’immigration En France, 1945-1975, Grasset,
2005.
[12] Wall, Irwin M. “The French Communists and the Algerian War.” Journal of Contemporary History 12, no.
3 (1977): 521–43. https://doi.org/10.1177/002200947701200306.
[13] Droz, Bernard. “Pieds-Noirs, Belges, Anglais, Portugais... Le Grand Rapatriement.” Les Derniers Jours de
l’Algérie Française, 1999.
[14] Winock, Michel. “La France En Algérie: Cent Trente Ans d’aveuglement.” Les Derniers Jours de l’Algérie
Française, 1999.
[15] Guussen, Christophe. “Ireland, France and the Question of Algeria at the United Nations, 1955-62,” n.d.
https://about.jstor.org/terms.
[16] Slama, Alain-Gérard. “L’exode Des Pieds-Noirs.” Sans Mythes Ni Tabou La Guerre d’Algérie, 2002.
[17] War, Algerian, and Christopher Harrison. “French Attitudes to Empire and the Algerian War.” Source:
African Affairs. Vol. 82, 1983. https://www.jstor.org/stable/721479.
[18] Sigg, Bernard. Le Silence et La Honte : Névroses de La Guerre d’Algérie - Livres. Messidor. Paris, 1989.