Abstract
The conclusion of the Algerian War of Independence was accompanied by one of the largest post-1945 population movements as almost all of Algeria’s one million European residents left their homes and crossed the Mediterranean to metropolitan France.1 Aside from its scale, one of the most notable features of the pied-noir migration was the speed with which a highly diverse group of individuals came to be constructed as a cohesive and broadly homogeneous community possessed of a shared set of attributes and goals. Key to this transformation were associations that served as the creators of and vehicles for this collective identity which, in turn, became the basis for the articulation of a range of grievances and demands addressed to the French state. Operating as ‘instrument(s) of identity’, associations therefore enabled Pieds-Noirs to ‘recognize [themselves] and to be recognized’ as a community.2 In all of this, unity, or at least the external appearance of unity, was paramount. The more the Pieds-Noirs were seen as a coherent bloc, the more likely it was that those in power would take their demands seriously.
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Notes
Yann Scioldo-Zürcher, Devenir métropolitain: politique d’intégration et parcours de rapatriés d’Algérie en métropole (1954–2005) (Paris, 2010), 15;
Jean-Jacques Jordi, ‘L’été 62 à Marseille: tensions et incompréhensions’, in Jean-Jacques Jordi and Emile Temime, eds, Marseille et le choc des décolonisations (Aix-en-Provence, 1996), 66–74, here 66.
Joëlle Hureau, ‘Associations et souvenir chez les français rapatriés d’Algérie’, in Jean-Pierre Rioux, ed., La guerre d’Algérie et les Français (Paris, 1990), 517–25, here 517.
Valérie Esclangon-Morin, Les rapatriés d’Afrique du Nord de 1956 à nos jours (Paris, 2007), 155.
Clarisse Buono, Pieds-Noirs de père en fils (Paris, 2004), 75.
‘Le Cercle Algérianiste’, 1978, quoted in Joëlle Hureau, La mémoire des Pieds-Noirs de 1830 à nos jours (Paris, 2001), 254.
Jean-Jacques Jordi, ‘Les Pieds-Noirs: constructions identitaires et réinvention des origines’, Hommes et Migrations, 1236 (2002): 14–25, here 21.
Victoria Phaneuf, ‘Negotiating Culture, Performing Identities: North African and Pied-Noir Associations in France’, The Journal of North African Studies, 17(4) (2012): 671–86, 673–4;
Andrea L. Smith, Colonial Memory and Postcolonial Europe: Maltese Settlers in Algeria and France (Bloomington, 2006), 188.
Émile Chabal, ‘Managing the Postcolony: Minority Politics in Montpellier, c.1960–c.2010’, Contemporary European History, 23(2) (2014): 237–58, here 240–9.
Jim House and Neil MacMaster, Paris 1961: Algerians, State Terror and Memory (Oxford, 2006), 309. Although they are referring specifically to memories of 17 October 1961, their points are applicable to other memories of the War of Independence.
Jean-Marie Avelin, ‘Mot du Président: Ultime arrimage’, La lettre de Véritas, 153 (2010): 2–3.
A key text of the anti-repentance movement in which Pieds-Noirs have figured prominently is Daniel Lefeuvre, Pour en finir avec la repentance coloniale (Paris, 2006).
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© 2016 Claire Eldridge
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Eldridge, C. (2016). Unity above all? Relationships and Rivalries within the Pied-Noir Community. In: Borutta, M., Jansen, J.C. (eds) Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar Germany and France. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137508416_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137508416_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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