Places of memory of immigration

Sociological research over the last twenty years is teeming with reflections on collective memory and heritage. Without doubt the publication in the 1980s to 1990s of Places of memory (coordinated by Pierre Nora) she echoed the concern of a society transformed by globalization. But if this new history has shown the power of stories and common places, even if they are mythological, has it not, in its concern to seek quasi-temporal benchmarks, left its most recent migrant component in the shadows? , based on other memory regimes, ordering spaces, actors and events differently ? Is it fair and true, therefore, that simple testimony is diminished by the scholarly and documented knowledge of established historians? ? Likewise, what happens to the fictional story which reconstructs after the witness and the scholar the meaning of collective memory ?

All these questions form the backstory of the book by Céline Barrére and Claire Lévy-Vroelant. For the latter, who has devoted most of this research to transient accommodation, the furnished hotel has long been a privileged area. Precarious rental formula, still well established in large cities, it reflects the vulnerability of the occupant: no lease, no guarantee of remaining in the premises, no visit, no cooking possible. The appropriation of space is all the more reduced when the occupation status is precarious and the occupant vulnerable. All use is handed over to the owner of the property, who depends on the owner of the walls. Under the effect of town planning operations, the transformation into a tourist hotel, and real estate speculation, this furnished hotel park which welcomes the poorest is decreasing: from 300,000 under the Popular Front, here it is evaluated as good as possible. poorly at around 20,000 (cf. Levy Vroelant C. and Faure A., A room in the city: furnished and furnished hotels in Paris 1860-1990, Paris 2007). However, its usefulness is growing if we judge by the place that the public authorities have wanted to give to accommodation in recent legal measures (law of the right of access to enforceable housing of 2007). The municipality of Paris is now seeking to maintain a well-managed accommodation system for this entire population which is the attraction and wealth of the big city. But this park, which has welcomed waves of migrants for more than a century, is deeply stigmatized by the collective memory which readily reveals its shady marginality as a prefecture hotel monitored by the police. Thus, as Céline Barrère shows, who is not on her first literary investigation in the city, the furnished hotel remains a heterotopia (which, according to Foucault’s formula, accommodates the imagination and is used for the presentation (the gap between non-standard people) where the original space of immigration and the duty of hospitality exercised by managers developing a certain familialism are expressed.

Therefore, could the furnished hotel be the place for the construction of a collective memory, the space for the construction of a story, which could even be made a heritage site to grant recognition to immigration in its different components? ? This question posed by institutional actors attentive to this “ hollow of the city » is a starting point for research. But above all, the authors wanted to put it to the test by seeking to generate the memory narrative of furnished hotels. Thus, these sociologists positioned themselves as participant observers in around twenty Parisian hotels at the back of a dressing room, a café or in a corridor. They spoke with managers and customers. They captured the atmosphere and the exchanges vividly. In this daily framework they collected little memories, significant news stories sometimes connected to the great History, that of the Algerian War in particular.

Likewise, they echo Halbwachs’ thesis according to which collective memory is a social construction constantly updated by those who, by giving it meaning, recalling it and mobilizing it, seek to identify its vectors and its obstacles. In doing so, they summoned all the literature which, like Modiano, Cendrars, Dabit, Hemingway, Vallès or Perec (in his attempt to exhaust a Parisian place), questioned the way in which the furnished hotel, this most minimal inhabited space, the one which constitutes only the second envelope of the body after clothing can paradoxically prove to be a support of identity and collective memory, demonstrating once again the freedom and inventiveness of social. A Modiano recalling the geography of the Parisian furnished hotels that his family occupied before the Shoah validates this hypothesis.

Also, we would have liked the hoteliers and their occupants, witnesses of their own experiences, to take up these pages of literature to comment on them, compare their history with theirs, agree on a story, arbitrated by sociologists.

In this 300-page journey featuring three parts, stories and their silences, places and environments, memory, identity and transmission, Céline Barrère and Claire Lévy-Vroelant carry out both an original ethno- literary and a beautiful work, splendidly illustrated with black and white photos taken by Pierre Gaudin, the publisher. More than in places of memory, their stories which bring us hybrid geographies and languages ​​lead us into environments of memory where ultimately the labile and morning trace of affect counts more than the established mark. No offense to developers who are afraid of emptiness and the hollow city, we will not make living furnished hotels, which many still are, mausoleums of immigration. In global financial cities, they still play a discreet role in regulating the real estate market which excludes the most vulnerable.