Two works, one of history and the other of sociology, invite to rethink the fate of the returnees of Algeria, the “ black feet ” In France. The works of Emmanuelle Comtat and Yann Sciledo-Zürcher take different looks on this reality with very lively memorial issues and allow us to return to the perception of the action of the State by these populations.
From 1830 to 1962, Algeria was a French colony. Its specificity was a colony of settlement. In 1954, a war broke out marked by violent clashes between communities. It ended in 1962 with the independence of Algeria. It follows the massive departure of the French who were installed there. These individuals, repatriated from Algeria, were designated as the black feet. Emmanuelle Comtat, researcher in political science associated with theUmr Pact, and Yann Scioldo-Zürcher, historian in charge of research at Cnrsboth interested in this population.
Almost fifty years after repatriation this subject may seem anecdotal. It is not. Still recently the black feet have invested the political and media sphere. The controversy over the film by Rachid Bouchareb, selected to represent Algeria this year at the Cannes Film Festival, illustrates the news of the memorial issues around the returnees. In this context, scientific work must make it possible to free itself from Manichean debates. From different issues, this is what Emmanuelle Comtat and Yann Sciled-Zürcher strive to do. Comtat studies the relationship of black feet to politics and analyzes the impact of war and repatriation on their votes. Scioldo-Zürcher looks at the role of the State and the Administration in the integration of the repatriases of Algeria. Our purpose is not to make an exhaustive report of these works, but to present their main contributions and the points of convergence and ruptures between the authors.
Political behavior of black feet
Comtat starts from the observation that public opinion often associates voting on the far right with that of black feet, without this correlation having been sociologically studied. The political scientist seeks to analyze it. In this sense, his work is already an advance. But the major interest of the work lies in the way it mobilizes the paradigms elaborated in political science to explain electoral behavior and in the way it appreciates its effectiveness in the case of black feet. It re -examines the work of Paul Bois on the genesis and the political effects of a historical trauma. She wonders if – more than social determinants, family socialization and rational choice – the trauma of the experience of decolonization explains the electoral behavior of repatriated and their children.
The first chapters mainly have the vocation of contextualizing the author’s words and posing the principle of historical trauma. It returns to the political behavior of the French in Algeria, their integration into mainland France and the elements that make up the trauma. According to her, the war, the abandonment by France, the painful conditions of departure, the absence of reception are events which have marked the memory of the returnees and, to a lesser extent, that of their children. The demonstration then begins, with the analysis of participation and politicization since 1962 and the study of the political orientation of black feet. This is where the strong results of the work appear. It finds in the participation and politicization of repatriated, higher today than they were in Algeria and more important among the black feet than in the rest of the population, traces of the past. The factors that generally determine political orientation are competed by indicators of historical trauma. Rapatrians do not go to a particular party, but they are mainly on the right. They are thus distinguished from other French people. On the other hand, the variables which evaluate the trauma of repatriation are less predictive of the vote of children, which is close to that of the metropolitan.
The model of historical trauma appears as one of the important determinants of the behavior of the black feet. If we move away from the problematic specific to repatriated, it means that beyond the classic socio-demographic variables, traumatic experiences, whatever they are, can participate in shaping social behavior including electoral.
The integration policy for Algerian returnees
The question posed by Scioldo-Zürcher is quite different. He notes that the trauma of repatriation has masked the extent of the history of Algerian repatriases, including that of the integration policy intended for them. The starting hypothesis is that returnees are migrants who, as nationals, have benefited from the protection of the state of which they were members. To verify this, he studies the policy and administrative practices implemented to integrate and pacify this population. He tries to assess their effectiveness by analyzing the routes of returnees.
He first returns to the process that forced the French to leave Algeria, but especially shows that a repatriation policy started before the great departure of 1962. After the founding law of December 26, 1961, this policy , more than imperfect, gave rise to permanent legislative and administrative readjustments which he then scrupulously describes. Successive governments first devoted themselves to reception and housing before investing in the recovery of socio -professional situations. In the 1970s, a major turning point took place. The question of compensation, hitherto left pending, becomes the concern of parliamentarians who today are interested in the recognition of the memory of the black feet.
The historian presents the limits of these devices and the difficulties of this population, but above all notes the prevail and the longevity of the interest of the State for the returnees. Beyond this problem, the author intends to participate in a political, economic and social history of migration and the national fact, by enlightening what is the first integrative policy initiated by the State. According to him, this policy, sometimes authoritarian sometimes benevolent, managed to emancipate the repatriases of their migrant condition.
Original methods
These works are intended to shed light on broader questions than those specific to returnees. They meet on this point and on other dimensions. They both implement a longitudinal methodology which articulates quantitative and qualitative. Comtat has exploited interviews and an unprecedented investigation, the quantitative investigation “ Blackfoot 2002 ». This retrospective investigation is the first on the political behavior of the Blackfoot. It compares the results from these materials, to those obtained in the PEF 2002 and theEVS 1999. The comparison of the behaviors of returnees to those of other French is one of the wealth of the work. We can deplore, however, that there is no more information on how it was done. If the author has not corrected the biases, the confrontation of surveys, carried out on separate dates with various sampling procedures, leaves doubt about certain results.
Correspondence from the French of Algeria, to the departmental, ministerial and military archives, including audiovisual sources, Sciled-Zürcher has provided a colossal counting work. He analyzes texts, figures and himself produces innovative statistical series. From the first repatriations to today, it shows all the diversity of the action of the state towards the repatriases. We can only regret that his archives, however considerable, do not allow him to go even further in the study of their courses, in particular for employees of the private sector. Thus, if the author proves that there were many state gestures to emancipate the black feet of their migrant condition, he cannot fully assess their effectiveness. However, he gives a remarkable overview.
Beyond the methodology, Scioldo-Zürcher shares some conclusions with Comtat, but it is not the most decisive of his work. They agree on the diversity of the black feet vote that both are led to describe.
History or memory ?
If on these dimensions the authors agree, it is above all the cleavage between these works which is striking. One is part of a historical perspective, the other contributes to a sociology of the black feet, but the split does not necessarily have the origin of the disciplinary borders.
When Scioldo-Zürcher criticizes studies that develop victim speeches on returnees (p.20), Comtat speaks of “ Collective Drama of Blackfoot “Who” deeply bruised (P. 138-139). When she explains that the black feet wanted it to the French state for the lack of reception, the historian insists on his investment in the matter. There are many examples of the differences between the authors. The political scientist writes that “ There was no national solidarity momentum »With regard to the Blackfoot (p.95), while Sciledo-Zürcher notes that they have benefited from the privileges linked to the latter (p.24).
The discordant remarks of one and the other are not wrong, this gap depends on the prospects respectively adopted by the authors. Scioldo-Zürcher takes distance from the “ suffering memory Because it tends to hide the integration policy for repatriated. Comtat is precisely interested in this memory. She studies the way in which black feet subjectively experienced decolonization and the elements she describes are those which emerge from their speeches. However, in his work, the border between memory and history is not always readable. The reader will tend to happily confuse them.
Consequently, on reading this work, we will not be completely freed from the memorial issues mentioned in the introduction. This is why, moreover, Scioldo-Zürcher returns to the latter in conclusion. Without denying the sufferings of repatriation, the historian is aware of annoying the memory of the black feet. Comtat’s work, on the contrary, the basis. The notion of historical trauma, like that of national migrants, is nonetheless relevant to shed light on the future of returnees in mainland France and other issues that go beyond history and sociology of this population.