Algeria in France: Transpolitics, Race, and Nation

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

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.

New Anthropologies of Europe -- Daphne Berdahl, Matti Bunzl, and Michael Herzfeld, editors

"... 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 Indiana University Press

"... 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

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

H-Africa

"[The author] 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 Indiana University Press

"" -- Indiana University Press

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

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

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.

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

Introduction

1. Immigration Politics in the New Europe

2. Colonization and the Production of Ethnicity

3. Spatializing Practices: Migration, Domesticity, Urban Planning

4. Islam, Bodily Practice, and Social Reproduction

5. The Generation of Generations: Beur Identity and Political Agency

6. Beur Writing and Historical Consciousness

7. Transnational Social Formations in the New Europe

Conclusion