Decades pass, but nothing has happened. This mixed, tormented memory continues to consume thoughts, generation after generation, since the end of the Algerian war in 1962. Seventy years ago, the 1is November 1954 – a date known as “Red All Saints' Day” – this armed conflict began between France, a colonial power, and the National Liberation Front (FLN), an Algerian movement which led the fight for the independence of its territory, then divided in three departments (Oran, Algiers, Constantine).
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Since his victory, the relationship between these two nations has been volatile. Algeria is a regular object of diplomatic discord and, for several years – even more so in recent months – it has been presented in France as “a scarecrow of identity”proclaims historian Naïma Huber-Yahi, specialist in Algerian immigration.
This North African country is a recurring theme in political and media debates mainly driven by the French right, where news items, migratory crisis, Islamism, obligations to leave French territory, nostalgia for French Algeria, conspiracy theory combine. of the “great replacement”, electoralism, colonial past and even spread. “Algeria is constantly brought back to this type of subject and is seen as a perpetual enemy”protests Badis Khenissa, president of the international cooperation commission of the National Community Abroad – body attached to the Head of State, Abdelmadjid Tebboune –, who denounces a “Algeria bashing”.
“A ghost member of France”
No other country, undoubtedly, holds such a special place in the public and intimate sphere of so many people. Is it so surprising? “Historically and demographically very present, the Algerians have become our first immigration, supplanting the Italians or the Portuguese”indicates Didier Leschi, director general of the French Office of Immigration and Integration (OFII).
In 2023, according to data published at the end of June by the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee), 892,000 immigrants living in France – out of 7.3 million, or 12% of the total – were born in Algeria. And, as historian Benjamin Stora has repeatedly reminded, “Today, in France, more than seven million residents are still affected by (…) the memory of Algeria »which affects soldiers, repatriates (pieds-noirs and Jews), conscripts, harkis, immigrants or dual nationals.
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