Algerian migration to France began at the end of the 19th century, but in recent years France's Algerian community has been the focus of a shifting public debate encompassing issues of unemployment, multiculturalism, Islam, and terrorism. In this finely crafted historical and anthropological study, Paul A. Silverstein examines a wide range of social and cultural forms-from immigration policy, colonial governance, and urban planning to corporate advertising, sports, literary narratives, and songs-for what they reveal about postcolonial Algerian subjectivities. Investigating the connection between anti-immigrant racism and the rise of Islamist and Berberist ideologies among the "second generation" ("Beurs"), he argues that the appropriation of these cultural-political projects by Algerians in France represents a critique of notions of European or Mediterranean unity and elucidates the mechanisms by which the Algerian civil war has been transferred onto French soil.

An ethnography of the Algerian presence in France and the transnational Berber movement

About the Author

Paul A. Silverstein is Professor of Anthropology at Reed College.

Reviews

"An insightful chronicle...." -John Bowen

".. admirably broad study...." -Times Literary Supplement

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"... a remarkable work about the dislocating effects of modernity... sure to be influential in the fields of postcolonial theory, French politics, and migration studies." -David A. McMurray

"[A] richly nuanced and informative [analysis] of France at the beginning of the twenty-first century." -Tyler Stovall, University of California, Berkeley, H-France

"... this is an important call that diaspora should become as important a theme in North African history as it has been in that of sub-Saharan Africa." -H-Africa

"This is work of impressive erudition which is richly documented, theoretically sophisticated, and epistemologically provocative in that it situates itself firmly on a transnational axis linking France and Algeria across the Mediterranean." -Susan Terrio

"[Silverstein] has elaborated an incisive inquiry into the complex configurations of state power and minority agency that marks a central contribution to the academic study of transnationalism and globalization." -Ruth Mas, University of Colorado at Boulder, Journal Middle East Women's Stds JMEWS, Vol. 6, No. 2 Spring 2010

"This informative and sophisticated work... examines Algerian immigration to France... [Silverstein] deftly summarizes the history of Franco-Algerian relations." -Foreign Affairs, March/April 2005

"[Silverstein] approaches his subjects through the medium of everyday life, following the random individuals encountered during his field work in the 1990s, applying an ethnographical methodology with a highly critical and self-reflexive awareness of the environment he shared with them.... [This] is a critical work in opening up a broader consideration of the complex set of identifications running between France, Algeria, and the wider Arab and Muslim world." -H-Levant, April, 2011

Book Information
ISBN 9780253217127
Author Paul A. Silverstein
Format Paperback
Page Count 304
Imprint Indiana University Press
Publisher Indiana University Press