Many Algerians who decide to leave their home country and immigrate to France construct ideal images of their new lives in their new country. These ideal images are based on hopes of a better, more plentiful, and freer life which could not be found in Algeria due to poverty, the heritage of French colonialism, and ethnic segregation. In The Suffering of the Immigrant, Abdelmalek Sayad presents a series of interviews with Algerian immigrants who arrived in France with similar hopes. One man from Kabylie, who arrived in France in the 1970s, contemplates on his immigration dreams, “The only door that was left was France - it was the only solution left. All those who have money, those who have done anything, bought anything, or built anything, it’s because they had money from France… France is inside you and it will never go away” (Sayad, 1999, p. 11-12). Therefore, when the country of origins, Algeria, cannot provide for the basic needs of its citizens, one solution to the financial and social hardship is emigration. Just a few pages later, the reader finds out the dramatic incongruence between the dreams of the emigrant and the reality of the immigrant. The same man continues his story, “And what a France I discovered! It wasn’t at all what I expected to find… in our country, dogs have a better life than this… in our France, there is nothing but darkness” (Sayad, 1999, p. 16-17).

Even if today new immigrants from Algeria do not hold the same high expectations about France that their fathers did, the destiny of many Algerians once on French territory is still marked by “darkness”. In October and November 2005, one such instance of “darkness” marked the lives of first, second, and third immigrants from Algeria and beyond: the emeutes in the Parisian banlieues. The emeutes started on October 27, 2005 in Clichy-sous-Bois, a Northern Parisian banlieue, with the death of two young men; during the following three weeks, the diverse instances of violence, such as burning of cars, destruction of schools, police stations, and stores, and interactions with the police forces, spread all over France. Such moments of vulnerability for the immigrant populations in France pose a series of questions which will be considered in this paper. What is the role of the national media in advancing the interests of different diasporic groups at times of intense discrimination or injustice abroad? and What is the relation between those who left and those who stayed and how is this relation connected with the history of immigration of a particular national community? One way to answer these questions and the approach I will take in this essay is to look at discourses constructed by the mass media of the country of emigration at moments when the diasporic communities are “in danger” and to account for the role of these discourses in weakening or strengthening the ties between the diaspora and the national community. This paper looks particularly at the Algerian case, analyzing the narratives constructed by the French media during the 2005 emeutes and the responses formulated by Algerian newspapers, engaged in a dialogic relation with the French media. By exploring the discourses in the French and Algerian press on the causes, actors, and development of the emeutes, I hope to shed some light on the ways in which Algeria (represented in this paper by the national media) responds to the needs and protects the rights of the Algerians in France.

To answer the previous questions, I will identify and analyze the main narratives and themes found in two sets of newspaper articles. Firstly, I chose four French newspapers based on their popularity and their diversity of political orientations: Le Monde (right), Le Figaro, Liberation and le Nouvel Observateur. Secondly, I looked at the Algerian daily newspapers El Watan, El Moudjahid, and Le Quotidien d’Oran, the top three Algerian publications. The focus will be on articles from El Watan, because it offers the most extensive coverage of the emeutes, with the first article being published on October 31, 2005. El Moudjahid offers a very modest series of articles which remain at the level of descriptive reporting. I encountered reference to Le Quotidien d’Oran in several French newspapers but the archives of the Algerian publication available online do not cover the year 2005. For both the Algerian and the French newspapers, I selected articles starting with October 27 and ending with November 30, dates which coincide with the beginning of the emeutes and with their gradual ending.

The Algerian Diaspora in France: emigrants, immigrants, and French citizens

Every nation experiences immigration differently based on particular historical, social, economic, and cultural encounters between the nation of origin and the host nation. Furthermore, a nation establishes different relations with the various populations of immigrants it receives; thus, there is no immigrant experience which resembles another, at the group and even at the individual level. Looking at the “destiny of the immigrants,” Emmanuel Todd argues that “des groupes semblables sur le plan des structures anthropologiques, Pakistanais et Algériens, Jamaïcains et Martiniquais, ont, dans des sociétés d’accueil distinctes,… , des destines divergents”¹ (Todd, 1994, p. 12) Mireille Rosello introduces the concept of “performative encounter” which is defined as a moment of intersection between two individuals or two groups from different cultures whose past has been marked by violent national and international conflicts but who manage to create “an unknown protocol to replace the script” (Rosello, 2005, p. 1-2). From this perspective, every interaction between France and Algeria could create new dialogues and new forms of communication which do not correspond with the general narrative developed historically between a colonizer and a former colonized nation. At the same time, “the naming of an ethnic group is usually based on such a homeland, and its members will often continue to be linked to this ancestral location even after centuries living in diaspora” (Karim, 2004, p. 6). This connection with the ancestral land and with the history of that land can sometimes prevent the Algerians to be engaged in “performative encounters” with the French.

The history of the relations between France and Algeria is marked by colonialism, by the memory of the Algerian War, and by a conflictual process of Algerian immigration to France. Charles-Robert Ageron describes the decade of 1830 as “a time of unrestricted colonization, in fact of anarchy, [when] a flight of human vultures swooped on the country [Algeria], trafficking in real estates in the city, grabbing hold of land and cutting down the woods” (Ageron, 1991, p. 24). The destructive forces of French colonialism which occupied Algeria for more than one hundred and thirty years acted as erasers of “autonomous regions of social, political, and economic difference” (Silverstein, 2004, p. 45). The cultural and political infrastructure of the country ceased to exist, being replaced with artificial bodies of power, with policies extending the legislation of the metropole, and with economies which favored the French. All these new structures eliminated the Algerian out of Algeria, transforming the North African country into l’Algérie francaise. On November 1, 1954, the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) “proclaimed the start of the revolutionary struggle for the liquidation of the colonial system, the abandonment of all relics of reformism, and national independence through the restoration of the Algerian state” (Ageron, 1991, p. 108). This “revolutionary struggle” evolved into one of the most tragic wars in recent history, which ended with the Evian Agreement in 1962, leaving behind a bitter memory of the past which the French tried to ignore and the Algerians to ignite. This disjunction in the way French and Algerians interpret the same past makes “performative encounters” rather difficult to take place.

The memories of colonialism and of the Algerian war represent a powerful narrative in the larger discourse of Algerian immigration to France. Todd Shepard describes the moment of decolonization or better said the moment when decolonization was “invented” as a point in time which “allowed the French to forget that Algeria had been an integral part of France since the 1830s and to escape many of the larger implications of that shared past” (Shepard, 2006, p. 2). However, the presence of Algerian immigrants on the French soil was a constant reminder of this “shared past”. The arrival of the largest waves of Algerian immigrants is related to the need for manual labor in France, especially during the period called “les trente glorieuses”.² Before decolonization, the Algerian workers came to France with short-term contracts which guaranteed their return to their country of origins. According to Michel Wieviorka, “although such workers were socially integrated in terms of labor relationships, they were politically and culturally excluded” (Wieviorka, 2002, p. 132). In the mid-1960s, the condition of the Algerian immigrants and their relation to France changes, when the French society faced the end of “noria,” described by Abdelmalek Sayad as the image of the immigration process constructed in the French imaginary as “a perpetual process of replenishment that brings into France - and removes from France - men who are always new and always identical” (Sayad, 1999, p. 30). Moreover, the politics of “regroupement familial” which developed in the 1970s brought permanence to immigration through the arrival of women and children.

Sayad highlights a consistent theoretical error in the sociologies of Algerian immigration to France, the lack of the dimension of emigration and departure from Algeria. Singled out as an immigrant, the Algerian on French territory has been historically and theoretically disconnected from Algeria. The author states, “rather than devoting our efforts to explaining the situation of emigrants purely and simply in terms of the history of their stay in France, we must take as our object the relationship between the emigrants’ system of dispositions and the set of mechanisms to which they are subjected by the very fact of their emigration” (Sayad, 1999, p. 29). Therefore, according to Sayad, the formation of an Algerian diaspora in France must constantly be measured to the relation the Algerian immigrants develop and maintain with the homeland. Such a view of diasporas has been recently contested by scholars such as Asu Aksoy and Kevin Robins, who define their “fundamental problem with diasporic cultural studies” in terms of the permanent connection with the “mentality of imagined communities, cultures and identities - which is grounded essentially in the national mentality” (Aksoy and Robins, 2003, p. 92). Even if Aksoy and Robins argue that “certain new developments in the migration… cannot be made sense of within this diasporic cultural frame” (ibid), the case of Algerian immigrants in France cannot be understood outside the emigration/immigration dialectic and without considering the role of national memory. Therefore, I argue that the Algerian diaspora experiences its relation to France through both a national and transnational perspective.

In order to prove the strong liaison between emigration and immigration and the effects of this connection on Algerians both in France and Algeria, Sayad constructed a genealogy of immigration formed by three ages. The three ages of immigration, presented through the dual lens of emigration/immigration, “correspond to phases that can be distinguished within processes of transformation internal to… communities that produce emigrants” (Sayad, 1999, p. 32). The first age of immigration, “an orderly emigration,” developed as a way to allow the small rural communities in Algeria to survive supported by the financial gains of the migrant workers. The immigrant, always male, married, and middle aged, was chosen by his community and invested with a very precise mission, limited in time and objectives. The “good” emigrant was that who “succeeded in remaining the authentic peasant he once was,” without being influenced by the life in the urban environment (Sayad, 1999, p. 34). Therefore, the first age of immigration produces the least changes in the structure of the homeland.

The second and third ages of immigration represent the spaces of transformation of the Algerian social landscape. The second age, “the loss of control,” embodies the first moments of rupture from the community of origins, while the immigrant becomes the element of disintegration. This new phase is characterized by a strong process of “depeasantification” of both the laborer in France and of the village in Algeria and brings to life a new type of peasant who replaces “the good peasant,” “the peasantless peasant” (Sayad, 1999, p. 41). During the second age, more and more men of different ages and social positions leave for France, changing the demographics of departure. Moreover, the money gained in France are no longer returned to the villages of origins, resulting in the degradation of rural communities in Algeria. This process of degradation produces “a major exodus of rural populations, [which] transferred potential emigrants to France to towns within Algeria itself” (Sayad, 1999, p. 41). The third age of immigration, “an Algerian ‘colony’ in France,” represents the continuation of the previous phase, accentuating to an extreme some of its traits. Sayad points out the permanent structure of the Algerian immigration to France, due to the fact that “every new wave of emigrants that came to France found an established community made up of earlier emigrants into which it could incorporate itself” (Sayad, 1999, p. 57). The permanence of the new waves of immigration creates a “little country” (Algeria) within France, reproducing social and professional structures from home. However, according to Sayad, the Algerians in France are “torn between two times, between two countries, and between two conditions,” unable to find a true home either in France or Algeria (Sayad, 1999, p. 58).

As the homeland but also as a country of emigration, Algeria cannot act as a space of identity for those who left for France, mainly due to the nature of the “break” between the immigrant and the nation, historically grounded in the memories of colonization. Using Mieke Bal’s theory of “trauma recall,” Patricia Lorcin argues that “in the Franco-Algerian context it is the collective experience of trauma that left its mark on both nations: the trauma of colonial experience as well as the trauma of decolonization” (Lorcin, 2006, p. xxi). Through media, governmental policies, and official discourses, the Algerian diaspora is constantly reminded by the trauma of the Franco-Algerian past and by the problematic position of the immigrant community in the social and cultural French context. The Algerian immigrant is never allowed to forget his marginal position and his duty to assimilate to the new society, leaving behind any identitary markings. However, “an immigrant brings a lot of baggage with him. That suitcase tied together with string is only the tip of the iceberg. The rest is in his head, his heart, his glance, and his memory” (Ben Jelloun, 1999, p. 21). From an emigration perspective, Sayad points out the fact that “there is probably not a single family in Algeria that does not have its emigrant in France, but this does not prevent anyone from speaking of emigrants in terms of denunciation, accusation, stigmatization” (Sayad, 1999, p. 111). Emigrating to the metropole, mainly in the case of the first generation of immigrants, was perceived as an act of treason if looked at through the colonial lens of memory.

In defining the Algerian diaspora, if such a definition is required, one must not get lost in overemphasizing the transnational dimension as a creator of new subjectivities while diminishing the symbolic and material presence of the national. The optimism of Silverstein’s belief that “the creation of these infranational and transnational boundaries results in the formation of new categories of political subjectivity, of new formulations of solidarity and belonging across spatial and ethnic divides” (Silverstein, 2004, p. 239) tends to minimize the role of the national element in the identities of the diasporic individual. Even the members of second and third generations of Algerians in France, who are no longer immigrants but French citizens, are placed in the general category of immigrants, especially in moments of tension and violence, as exemplified by the 2005 Parisian emeutes. Therefore, young Algerians, who may not have even stepped on Algerian soil, thus in a way members of the transnational generation and producers of “performative encounters” become part of the popular discourse of the “immigrant problem”. The national is constantly re-inserted into their experience of France thorough media and political narratives. Such narratives were used repeatedly by the French media during the 2005 emeutes. What was the response of Algerian mainstream newspapers to these narratives and how do the homeland media discourses address the safety and the rights of the diaspora? Some possible answers will be developed in the following two sections of the paper.

Narratives of the Emeutes in the French Media

Several articles from El Watan make direct references to the ways in which the French press engaged with the events in the banlieue. Remi Yacine writes “a l’exception notable de Libération et de l’Humanité, toute la presse a fait sienne la version officielle… Les medias reprennent sans le conditionnel de rigueur ‘le prêt-a-être-diffusé’ mixé par les autorités et dénient aux jeunes la moindre affirmation”³ (Yacine, 2005c). One of the major complaints of El Watan regarding the coverage of the events by the French journalists was the over-use of sensationalism and simplification of the causes of the emeutes. Therefore, the readers might get the impression that “la banlieue est musulmane, et par conséquent, les émeutiers qui la composent sont tous musulmans… A écouter, lire, et voir les informations, aucune des voitures brûlées, aucun des magasins saccagés n’ont été l’oeuvre de Pierre, Paul, David ou Jacques. Les coupables sont Mouss, Kader et Momo”⁴ (Mekbel, 2005). The vilification of the French press, with the few mentioned exceptions, is not entirely grounded in reality. Generally, the French mainstream press adopted a moderate tone in the depiction of the emeutes, maybe in an attempt to impartiality required by such sensitive issues such as immigration, Islam, violence in the banlieue, and social insecurity. A series of main narratives were developed by the French press, most of them already familiar to the French audiences: the causes of the emeutes, the social and cultural problems associated with the banlieue, and the potential failure of the French model of integration.

The causes of the emeutes have been consensually agreed upon by the French media. The French public finds out from the December 29, 2005 edition of Le Monde, that “les violentes emeutes de Clichy-sous-Bois, [ont commence] dans la nuit du jeudi 27 au vendredi 29 octobre, a la suite de la mort de deux jeunes réfugiés dans un transformateur EDF pour échapper la police”⁵ (”Les violences urbaines,” 2005). Only a few articles in Le Monde mention the names of the two victims, Zyed and Bouna, names with a clear non-French and ethnic resonance and none of the consulted articles make reference to the age of the two boys. Moreover, the emphasis on the accidental death of Zyad and Bouna prevails in the majority of the articles (”Un petit Mai-68 des banlieues,” 2005; “Quatrieme nuit,” 2005). However, the highly simplified narrative presented by Le Monde becomes more refined in other publications, who inform the readers about the background of the two victims. Le Nouvel Observateur enters into the private space of Bouna’s life in order to depict his last moments - “Jeudi 27 Octobre, Bouna Traoré repasse son tee-shirt pour être beau, ce soir, dans les rues de Clichy-sous-Bois… Bouna, 15 ans, enfant d’une famille mauritanienne aime faire du vélo en équilibre sur la roué arrière. S’hydrate la peau à la Nivea après la douche. Comme son copain Zyed, 17 ans”⁶ (Askolovitch, 2005). For Michel Wieviorka, writing for le Figaro, the event presented by Le Monde as an accident becomes a drama which happened in circumstances not yet clarified (Wieviorka, 2005). No longer framed as an accident, the death of the two boys opens a series of questions which refer to the relation between the French police and the youth in the banlieues.

The linear narrative of the tragic yet accidental death of Bouna and Zyed is fragmented by the uncertainty surrounding the role of the police. Libération is one of the first newspapers to question the innocence of the French police by asking, “Alors? Poursuivis? Pas poursuivis? Et ce cambriolage… Qu’est-il devenu, ce cambriolage, qui avait d’abord justifie la poursuite par la police des deux garçons de Clichy-sous-Bois”⁷ (Schneidermann, 2005). Stéphane Beaud and Michel Pialoux define the daily experiences of many young inhabitants of the French banlieues as “une culture de provocation” which manifests itself through various factors: exclusion from the job market, inability of the education system to integrate the youth, constant harassment from the police forces which are a permanent presence on the streets of the various suburban neighborhoods (Beaud & Pialoux, 2003, p. 346-7). Resonances of this “culture de provocation” can be found in articles from Le Figaro, who reflect on the role of “des contrôles musclés, parfois racistes, de la part de forces de police qui agissent d’autant plus brutalement qu’elles sont elles-mêmes saisies par la peur”⁸ (Wieviorka, 2005). Marwan Mohammed and Laurent Muchielli interpret the encounter between the police and the youth of the banlieue in terms of territoriality, emphasizing the negative effects of the daily presence of the police and of the random identity checks on the banlieusards (Mohammed & Muchielli, 2006, p. 101).

The nuanced interpretations of the causes of the emeutes provided by some French newspapers are nevertheless rooted in the dominant-hegemonic narrative of “the immigrant problem” which prevails in France since the 1970s and which tends to reduce the immigrants of all generations to producers of the social and economic crisis of the French society. Silverstein traces the history of the narrative to the first waves of permanent immigration from various former colonies, when “these movements of people, commodities and ideas from the postcolonial periphery to metropole have been represented, within party programs and scholarly literature alike, as novel, unnatural, and potentially threatening to European host societies” (Silverstein, 2004, p. 23). Pascal Blanchard connects the present discourses on immigration in France with the incapacity of the Hexagon to escape “la matrice coloniale” and to cease imagining the immigrant as “indigènes a éduquer” (Blanchard, 2005, p. 181). Therefore, concludes Blanchard, “le constant est clair, ce sont des immigres a part, des citoyens de seconde zone, sur eux pèse une certain malédiction qui induit une relégation systématique, réelle et symbolique, aux marges de la société”⁹ (ibid.). The majority of the consulted articles reproduce this image of the immigrant, who is nameless, without a specific ethnicity, and deprived of a personal history. Therefore, for the most part, the aspects of emigration, colonization, and memory are left out from the media narratives, being replaced with discourses on violence in the banlieues, social insecurity, and inefficiency of the French government (especially Minister of Interior Nicolas Sarkozy) to put an end to the emeutes.

The banlieue, which is par excellence the space of the immigrants, has been constructed in the French imaginary as dangerous, violent, dirty, insecure, and isolated. The emeutes brought back these images, opening new debates on old themes. Le Monde reminds the Parisian readers of the net separation between “they” and “us”. Adopting the rhetoric of Sarkozy, one article defines the banlieue through the metaphor of “nette séparation entre ‘eux’ et ‘nous’; eux, ce sont les deliquants, les voyous, la racaille; par ‘nous,’ il faut comprendre les citoyens honnêtes”¹⁰ (”Les limites d’une politique,” 2005). The same article describes the banlieues as “lieux privilégies des incivilités, des agressions physiques et sonores, de ces grands drames et petites pollutions”¹¹ (ibid.). In a chat organized by Le Monde with Eric Macé, the banlieues are described as “abandoned territories,” which function to trap large populations in urban areas which are abandoned by the public politics (Baudry & Mazzorato, 2005). For other commentators on the banlieues, the main cause of the degradation and segregation is not political but social. Therefore, “la ghettoïsation urbaine et scolaire, elles sont le fruit non d’une politique mais d’un mouvement de la société, de sa parcellisation, de l’éloignement que chacun cherche a organiser d’avec la catégorie qui lui est répute inférieure, au nom de l’angoisse du déclassement”¹² (”Apres le choc,” 2005).

Even when the banlieues are judged based on the inefficiency of the political system and on the failure of the republican system to accommodate the immigrants, they are nonetheless depicted as negative spaces which need severe reparations in a near yet imprecise future. Very seldom can one read about positive aspects of the banlieue, as in Wieviorka’s intervention in Le Figaro, “Dans ce contexte, tout n’est pas noir : il existe aussi, dans ces ‘banlieues’ tant décriées, une vie associative, des activités culturelles, sportives, artistiques, etc.; mais tout cela est gommé sous l’effet quotidien de la disqualification médiatique et de certains événements”¹³ (Wieviorka, 2005). Several journalists, mainly in Le Figaro and Libération, approached the theme of the banlieues by asking how did the banlieues become “abandoned territories”? The answers are multiple: discrimination of the youth from the banlieue in the job market, especially in the suburbs at the North of Paris (Hugues, 2005); the feeling of exclusion from the national community (Schneidermann, 2005); the lack of respect from the part of several politicians, especially Sarkozy, who is well-known for using racist and discriminatory terms such as “racaille, voyous, Karcher” (Blecher, Durand, Laske & Wallon, 2005).

If the banlieues are “abandoned territories,” who are the banlieusards and the young émeutiers who are burning cars and destroying stores and schools? The media makes no reference to any ethnic or religious affiliations of the émeutiers and tries assiduously to disconnect the emeutes from Islam (Courage, 2005; Gabizon, 2005a). The reader cannot gather too much information on the ethnic and cultural origins of the émeutiers from the newspaper articles, since they are all placed under the label of second or third generation immigrants. Once again, the narrative comes back to the construction of the immigrant and of immigration as a problem which lacks a concrete solution. Nevertheless, the solution presented by the French government, according to Nacira Guenif-Soulamas, seems to rest with the domestication and civilizing of the immigrants. She states, “les civiliser consiste donc a les amener a se dissoudre dans la société a laquelle ils doivent appartenir… il leur faudrait lutter contre eux-mêmes pour pouvoir accéder a la qualité de citoyen”¹⁴ (Guenif-Soulamas, 2005, p. 203). Guenif-Soulamas refers specifically to the Muslim immigrants who are generally considered the most different in terms of cultural, religious, and social habits, thus the most difficult to control and integrate to France “une et indivisible”. Silverstein, referring specifically to the Algerian diaspora, argues that “the postcolonial production of Algerian subjectivity in France extends beyond construction, regulation, and renovation of the built environment… the French state and immigrant actors have competed and colluded for the control of the immigrant bodily practices” (Silverstein, 2004, p. 123), in an almost colonial fashion.

Therefore, the banlieusard represents for the French government the failure of a process of civilization and integration. Officially, to conform to the “equalitarian” ideology of French politics, the identity of the immigrant is not relevant since, once on French territory, everyone is supposed to become French. However, even if the majority of the newspaper articles did not reveal the ethnic background of those involved in the emeutes, the French public already knows that the immigrants who “cause” problems are mainly North African, and, more specifically, Algerian. Even if Ben Jelloun’s following statement reflects his personal experience of France two decades ago, his observations are not completely erroneous, “Anti-North African racism doesn’t bother to split hairs. It makes no distinction between Algerians, Moroccans, and Tunisians, between Arabs and Berbers, between young and old” (Ben Jelloun, 1999, p. 85).

The Dialogic Narratives of “El Watan”

For the entire period of the French riots, El Watan covered daily the events in France, developing, similarly to the French press, a series of explanatory and analytical narratives on the emeutes. If the French media did not point fingers at the Algerian diaspora in particular, what could explain the abundance of articles on the French emeutes in the Algerian newspaper El Watan? One potential answer comes from Lorcin, who states that, until June 1999, the French government did not acknowledge that a war had been fought over the decolonization of Algeria, referring to the Algerian War as “des operations de securite et de maintien de l’ordre”¹⁵ (Lorcin, 2006, p. xxv). Accordingly, the silence of France in terms of the colonial past and of the dramatic decolonization “meant that no dominant memory could satisfactorily emerge… Instead, there was silence” since France lacked the ability and desire to formulate a coherent narrative about its Algerian past (ibid.). At the same time, many of the post-independence immigrant politics are shaped by the memory of the Algerian war (Stora qtd. in Lorcin, 2006, p. xxvi). The memory of the colonial past and of decolonization and the bitter destiny of the first generations of Algerian immigrants to France who came with hopes for a better life haunt the daily experiences of the second and third generation Algerians. According to Olivier Masclet, the young Algerians grew up seeing their fathers humiliated, losing their dignity, and feeding from memories of the old country (Masclet, 2006, p. 115). Is the discontentment and anger of the Algerian diaspora translated by El Watan in the depictions of the emeutes? What role does memory play in the narratives constructed by El Watan?

El Watan investigates, similarly to the French press, the causes of the emeutes. Various articles in the Algerian newspaper inform the audiences about the accidental death of the two boys who were running to escape the police; however, the emphasis in the coverage of the causes rests on the ethnic origins of the victims. One article states, “à l’origine, un souffle de révolte s’était levé a Saine Saint-Denis après l’électrocution accidentelle de deux adolescents de 15 et 17 ans. Zyed Benna, un Français d’origine tunisienne de 15 ans, et Bouna Troare, un Français d’origine malienne de 17 ans”¹⁶ (Belabes, 2005b). Moreover, the two victims are not isolated incidents but are part of a larger pattern of violent happenings in the French banlieues which are closely connected with the abandoning of the suburbs, also called “zones sensibles” by the French authorities. Therefore, “les deux jeunes victimes de Clichy-sous-Bois s’ajoutent à la longue liste de personnes mortes dans des conditions tragiques lors de l’incendie des maisons vétustes ou elles loges. Toutes ces victimes ont en commun d’être originaires du continent africain; d’être aussi Arabo-Maghrébins”¹⁷ (Lofti, 2005a). The ethnicity of the victims and the connection between the two boys who died on 27 October 2005 and other tragic “accidents” in the banlieue add a dimension which was left aside from most of the French press: the connection between ethnicity, immigration, and social inequality, especially in the banlieues.

The French press offers a more moderate perspective on the causes which transformed the banlieues in “abandoned territories,” blaming both the government and the French society, but also using larger anonymous narratives such as massive unemployment, lack of integration in the educational system, or discrimination. All these narratives are used in a general manner without accompanying details of who is to blame in particular for them. For El Watan, these social and political narratives have a very precise cause: Nicolas Sarkozy. From the very beginning of the coverage of the emeutes, several journalists introduce the figure of Sarkozy as a politician who makes promises he cannot keep for the ethic groups in France. In an article entitled “25 ans de promesses et de derobades,”¹⁸ Malek Boutih, one of the few French politicians of ethnic origins is quoted criticizing the promises made by Sarkozy regarding the right to vote of any non-French citizen who had lived on French territory for more than five years. Boutih states, “[Sarkozy] emprunte des concepts ailleurs puis les détourne à son profit. C’est déjà le cas avec la discrimination positive et les quotas. Cela peut l’être avec le vote des étrangers. Mais son bilan ne trompe personne. Il se limite a des mots pas a des actes”¹⁹ (Bouzeghrane, 2005a). Azouz Begag, the Minister (of Algerian origins) in charge with equality of chances, is one of the opponents of Sarkozy’s project of affirmative action (”discrimination positive”). He states, “dans la rue, la designation noire existe, elle est socialement vivante, mais on n’a pas le droit de montrer statistiquement ce qu’elle représente dans la société. Il n’est pas honteux d’être Arabe, Kabyle, Africain”²⁰ (Bouzeghrane, 2005b). Therefore, Sarkozy is constructed by the Algerian press in animosity with the interests of the various groups of immigrants, including Algerians.

Sarkozy becomes the main actor in the coverage of the emeutes in El Watan in relation to the language he used to stigmatize the banlieues. The French Minister of Interior becomes the embodiment of all the failures of the French government to accommodate the immigrant communities to the national body of France. Belabes writes in an article from early November, “les violences qui secouent depuis plus d’une semaine les banlieues parisiennes et qui s’étendent d’autres départements de France étaient prévisibles depuis le retour de Nicolas Sarkozy au ministère de l’intérieur et la multiplication des petites phrases assassines sur les banlieues”²¹ (Belabes, 2005a). These “petites phrases assassines” refer to the comments made by Sarkozy on various occasions in relations to his engagement to “clean up” the banlieues. According to him, “il fallait nettoyer les quartiers au Karcher” and punish “le racaille”²² (Maiche, 2005). Dominique Sopo, president of SOS Racisme believes that the strong, racist, and “politically incorrect” language used by Sarkozy represented a fuel for the emeutes (ibid.). Yacine speaks with several mediateurs²³ from the Parisian banlieues on the rage caused by Sarkozy’s words. Nadir, mediateur in Clichy-sous-Bois, speaks with anger and disappointment, “le gouvernement a rate une belle occasion de se réconcilier avec la banlieue. En soutenant Sarkozy, Dominique de Villepin se disqualifie. Au lieu de se demarquer du pyromane, il prefere le couvrir. C’est lamentable”²⁴ (Yacine, 2005a).

The Algerian journalists and commentators find Sarkozy’s words unpardonable and provocative, making the French politician responsible for the violence in the banlieues. The Algerian press is not trying to take a moderate approach; on the contrary, it takes sides with the young men and women who live in the banlieues, who are pushed to commit acts of violence by the unwillingness of the French government to treat them as citizens. Belabes points out the nature of the revolt felt by the young banlieusards, “la révolte des émigrés de seconde génération, dont l’écrasante majorité est française, n’est pas un simple effet de mode de jeunes en mal d’inspiration. Elle se nourit de ce genre d’humiliation que subissent les jeunes dans leur vie de tous les jours”²⁵ (Belabes, 2005a). Moreover, the ethnical dimension of the sufferance of the immigrants comes into play in the construction of the media narratives. Belabes ends one of his articles by asking, “La France arrivera-t-elle à arrêter cette grave dérive qui tend à présenter les Maghrébins comme des êtres scongenitalement non solubles dans la République?²⁶ (ibid.)

The discursive spaces which define the major gap between French and Algerian coverage of the emeutes rests in the realm of memory. The majority of the articles in El Watan link the emeutes and the situation of the immigrants and French citizens of non-European origins with the legacy of colonialism and decolonization. Similarly with the condition of the colonial subject on former colonized African territories, “l’immigre, selon les termes de Pierre Bourdieu, suscite l’embarras”²⁷ (Meddi, 2005b). Furthermore, the immigration is seen as a “hot” topic in French politics due to the colonial past of France and to the constant effort to deal with the past. This failed effort is depicted in terms of the controversial law of 23 February 2005, voted by the General Assembly, which glorifies the legacy of colonialism in former colonies (ibid.). According to Meddi, the glorification of the colonial past is in great contrast with the present situation of the immigrant populations, described as “non-être social” which are products of colonization (ibid.). The social fracture which characterizes the French society, divided between the cities and their banlieues is depicted as an effect of colonialism and of the French denial of a collective memory of the past. One article states, “la fracture sociale… passé par l’établissement d’un dialogue qui a été toujours contrecarrée par les résistances d’une société française qui se refuse a admettre que son vécu d’aujourd’hui est en grande partie une séquence de son histoire et de son passé colonial”²⁸ (Lofti, 2005b). For some journalists, the legacy of colonialism is most visible in the vocabulary used by Sarkozy to describe the young populations living in the banlieues, especially the term “racaille”. The readers are informed that “le mot ‘racaille’ a des relents coloniaux et je me souviens encore de l’époque ou l’on traitait couramment les Arabes de ‘bicots’, de ‘bougnoules’ ou encore de ‘ratons’, les juifs de ‘youpines’ et les Noirs de ‘nègres’”²⁹ (Daouzli, 2005).

The narrative of memory which persists in the depiction of the emeutes is not generally focused on colonialism in general but it reflects specifically the concerns of the Algerians in Algeria and of the diasporas in France. In reference to the causes and developments of the emeutes and the various frames used by the French media, Ahmed Benzelikha responds, “encore une fois nous sommes rattrapés par l’histoire, représentée par ce qu’il y a de pire dans les relations franco-algériennes: la guerre, la torture, l’OAS, les ratonnades, l’état d’urgence, le racisme et une haine indicible”³⁰ (Benzelikha, 2005). Benzelikha refers in his article mainly to the discourses of Jean Marie Le Pen, the leader of the extreme right French party the National Front, which are built on the damaging presence in France of “un ‘Autre’ algerien” but points out that the lepenien rhetoric spills over, being present in the “securitary populism” of Sarkozy (ibid.). Like the majority of the consulted articles, Benzelikha takes the side of the Algerian diaspora, acknowledging that “cet antialgerianisme primaire [est] induite par la présence marquée d’une nombreuse communauté algérienne ou d’origine algérienne en France, qui cristallise toutes les haines, les craintes et les dépits accumules”³¹ (ibid). As the narratives in El Watan evolve, it becomes clear that the Algerian journalists respond to the tensioned situation of the immigrant communities in France at the time of the emeutes, with a particular focus on the Algerian populations.

Conclusions

Both France and Algeria have been struggling with the memory of colonialism, adopting various strategies of collective remembering. In France, remembering has been equated with forgetting until recent times, while in Algeria, the construction of memories has been dependent on the attitude of France. Judging by the articles in El Watan, the Algerians seem comfortable with bringing back various instances of the colonial past and using them as a support for the diasporas abroad. At the same time, the usage of the colonial memories in the context of the emeutes could also be interpreted as a strategy for criticizing France at a time when the entire world is watching. Criticizing France works also as a form of empowerment for the Algerians, translated in the language of post-colonialist rhetoric, as the former colonizer state is able to criticize the metropole. Regardless of the intentions, the Algerian press fills the spaces left uncovered by the French press, especially in terms of connecting the colonial past and its legacies with the present social and cultural problems in the French society. Blaming generally unemployment, racism, and French urban development politics without creating the historical context for the current emeutes functions as a superficial depiction of the realities in the banlieues. For the most part, the French press adopted this superficial framework. By bringing in issues of memory and colonialism, El Watan offers a voice to the young men and women living in the banlieues and saves them from simplistic labels such as “delinquents” or “racaille”. If the narratives in El Watan cannot fully elucidate the relation between Algeria as a nation and the Algerian diasporas in France, they can, however, prove the existence of a certain solidarity between the Algerian public space (represented in this paper by the media) and the diasporas. The solidarity with and support for the Algerian diasporas come to life through narratives of collective memory born out of the desire to speak openly about the colonial past and its effects on those living within and outside Algeria.

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Notes:

1. ”groups which are similar in terms of their anthropological structures, Pakistani and Algerians, Jamaicans and Martinicans, in different host countries, have different destinies” [↩]
2. Les trente glorieuses (the thirty glorious years) refers to the 1945-1975 period, which was an economic peak for France. Being one of the winners of the World War II, France reconstructed itself after the Occupation using the Taylorist economic model of industrial development. [↩]
3. With the exception of Liberation and l’Humanite, the press adopted the official version… the media adopted without questioning the “ready-to-show” content offered by the authorities denying the youth their voice. [↩]
4. The banlieue is Muslim, and consequently, the rioters who live there are also Muslims; to believe what one listens, reads and sees means that all the burnt cars and the destroyed stores are the work of Mouss, Kader and Momo and not of Pierre, Paul, David or Jacques. [↩]
5. The violent riots in Clichy-sous-Bois, which took place in the night between 27 and 28 October, started after the death of two young boys who, trying to escape the police, found refuge in an electric transformer. [↩]
6. Thursday 27 October, B. T., irons his T-shirt so he can be presentable this evening, in the streets of C-s-B. Bouna, 15 years old, son of Mauritanian family, likes to drive his bicycle on the back wheel. He hydrates his skin with Nivea after the shower. Like his friend Zyed, 17 years old. [↩]
7. So? Followed? Not followed? And the burglary? What happened to the burglary which initially justified the police to chase the two boys (Note: the burglary is in reference to the reason the French police gave initially for chasing the two boys). [↩]
8. The brutal controls, sometimes racist, from the part of the police forces who acts even more brutally when possessed by fear. [↩]
9. The conclusion is clear, they are partial immigrants, second order citizens, doomed by a certain adverse destiny which pushed them, materially and symbolically, to the margins of society. [↩]
10. Clear separation between “us” and “them”. They are the delinquents, the thugs, the garbage; by “us” it is meant the honest citizens. [↩]
11. Privileged locations of incivility, of physical and auditory aggressions, of big dramas and small instances of pollution. [↩]
12. The urban and educational ghetto-ization are not the results of politics but of changes in society, such as fragmentation and tendency to get further away from the social category which is inferior in the name of the fear of a drop in social status. [↩]
13. In this context, not everything is black: there are, in these discredited banlieues, a communitarian life, cultural, sportive, and artistic activities; but all these are erased by the negative representations of the media and by certain events. [↩]
14. Civilizing the immigrants means to make them dissolve in the society to which they should belong… they will have to fight against themselves in order to become citizens. [↩]
15. Security operations and maintenance of order. [↩]
16. Initially, the revolts started at S-S-D after the accidental electrocution of two adolescents aged 15 and 17. Z. B., French citizen of Tunisian origins, 15 years old, and B. T., French citizen of Malian origins, 17 years old. [↩]
17. The two young victims of C-s-B could be added to the long list of people who dies in tragic conditions in fires in the decrepit houses where they lived. All these victims have in common their African origins; their Arab-Muslim origins. [↩]
18. ”25 years of promises and refusal” [↩]
19. Sarkozy borrows foreign concepts and uses them in his favor. This is the case with affirmative action and quotas. This could be the case with the votes for the non-French citizens. But he can’t fool anyone. He uses words and not actions. [↩]
20. In the streets, the appellative Black exists, it is socially alive, but we do not have the right to show what it represents statistically in the society. It is not shameful to be Arab, Kabyle, or African. [↩]
21. The violence which has taken over the Parisian banlieues and spread in other French provinces was predictable after the return of Nicolas Sarkozy at the Ministry of Interior and after the multiplication of small murdering phrases on the banlieue. [↩]
22. We should clean the banlieues with the Karcher (hose with very high power). [↩]
23. The profession of mediateur was created in the 1980s by the Ministry of Culture (under Minister Jack Lang); a mediateur is in charge with coordinating various activities (ex: sports, summer camps, trips to museums) for the youth who live mainly in the suburban areas. [↩]
24. The government missed a good change to make peace with the banlieue. Supporting S., D. de V. loses major points. Instead of differentiating himself from the pyromaniac, he prefers to support him. It is despicable. [↩]
25. The revolt of second generation emigrants, most of them French, is not only simple lack of inspiration. It feeds from the humiliation the youth feels daily. [↩]
26. Will France be able to stop this grave distortion which presents the Maghrebins as non-integrabable entities to the Republic? [↩]
27. The immigrant, according to P. B., provokes embarrassment. [↩]
28. The social fracture is caused by the establishment of a dialogue which was always opposed by the resistance of the French society to admit that the present situation is in many ways generated by its history and colonial past. [↩]
29. The word “racaille” has colonial connotations and I still remember the times when the Arabs were called “wog” or “rats”, the Jews “kikes” and the Blacks “negroes” (Note: the words come from the racist colonial terminology used by French colonizers in North Africa, thus it is hard to translate them into English). [↩]
30. Once again we are trapped by history, through what is worst in the Franco-Algerian relation: the war, the torture, the OAS (Secret Army Organization - militant group labeled as “terrorist” during the Algerian War), the raids, the state of emergency, the racism, and the unspeakable hatred. [↩]
31. This basic anti-algerianism is fueled by the presence of a big number of Algerians in France which crystallizes all the hatred, all the complaints, and all the frustrations. [↩]

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