Contenu du sommaire : La production officielle des différences culturelles

‪This article provides a study of state-funded associations which ensured the dissemination and the media coverage of positive speeches on immigrant workers in France since the mid-1970s. The creation, in its contemporary form, of a policy of “cultural promotion” of immigrants and then of an “intercultural policy” will be examined from the vantage point of materials that were collected in the framework of a research project on the role of French senior officials in defining the ‪social problem‪‪ of immigration in French public debates since the 1970s. Examining the evolution and transformation of the cultural component of immigration policy during this period offers insights into how officials concretely promote a state discourse on cultural differences. Since most of these associations have partly destroyed their archives, this contribution is primarily based on a study of private archival collections, supplemented by interviews with various senior officials and politicians in charge of these issues in the 1970s.‪

‪In the 1970s, French immigration policy was reoriented with the tightening of entry and residency conditions. During that same decade, parallel to actions led by activists of the Movement of Arab Workers (Mouvement des Travailleurs Arabes), Algerian authorities regularly politicized assaults against their citizens on French territory. At a time when the number of Algerian migrants authorized to enter French territory was a subject of sustained debate, finger-pointing racism was used to exert pressure on the French government. This article highlights the discursive practices and operations through which French officials of the Ministry of the Interior tried to demonstrate that such acts of violence were not due to racism. Contrarily, French officials argued that attacks were the result of cohabitation difficulties provoked by the moral traditions and lifestyles of the supposed “North African” culture.‪

‪While traditional historiography states that post-war immigration policy followed a color-blind doctrine, the case of the ‘Commission nationale pour les Études des Relations interethniques' shows that the immigration issue was in fact thought of in terms of culture and ethnicity in the 1960s within the administration. This article gives an account of the trajectories of the civil servants who created this Commission, coming from both UN agencies and the French administration of scientific cooperation. In a context defined by a reconfiguration of relations between France and its former colonies with the development of “cooperation” frameworks, this article explains how the “race issue” was articulated and reformulated by UN agencies in order to be consistent with their perception of French interests on the international stage.‪

‪October 17th, 2011. In the Parisian region and the neighbouring suburbs of the Hauts-de-Seine, the 50th commemoration of the massacre of Algerians in Paris led to the institutionalization of the colonial memory. By virtue of their duration and their size, these commemorative ceremonies questioned the particular period during which the French colonial past appeared in former and present socialist and communist councils. In Nanterre – a commune situated in the North-western suburbs of Paris that has had a communist council since 1935 – this memory is exceptional due to its long colonial and postcolonial history. Although the largest Algerian slum in France was to be found in the Nanterre of the 1950s and 1960s, for many years, the council remained completely silent about the massacre of Algerian activists in 1961. It is only recently that the massacre has started to be commemorated in Nanterre. This can be explained by two significant and recent transformations of the city: firstly, its demographic and urban transformation; and secondly, the change of its political elite, following a boom in the number of local associations and activist networks working on the question of the local (and colonial) memory. The emergence of this memory in the micro-politics of Nanterre responds to the need for a common and unified identity of its residents, an identity that the working class and communist banners have failed to provide. The residents' struggle to have a school named after the Algerian sociologist Abdelmalek Sayad – who wrote on Nanterre's slums – and a street named after Abdennbi Guémiah – a teenager killed by a racist neighbour in the early 1980s – testify to the need for such a memory. The heritage and memory of immigration in the city has now become a core issue in Nanterre's local politics. It helps political authorities build a brand-new image and overcome the mistakes of the past by recognizing its (post)colonial citizens. Beyond the dead and the words, the sudden emergence of the issue of the migrant past and the memory of immigration casts light on the deep social, cultural, and political transformations of the banlieue.‪

‪The “Association for Knowledge of Colonial African History” (ACHAC) is the source of a constant flow of publications on the colonial past. Its co-founder and director, Pascal Blanchard, is an original figure in the field of colonial studies, who does not hesitate to mix academic endeavors with business strategies. “Colonial culture” and ‪colonial‪ continuum‪‪ are the two principles used by ACHAC to delineate and legitimize the role of the colonial past in the making of the national memory. By so doing, the association is maintaining a culturalizing approach on the issue of immigration while establishing itself as a privileged institutional interlocutor on historical issues related to discrimination. This essay recounts the entrepreneurial strategy developed by Pascal Blanchard and ACHAC to address to the government and public authorities. It shows how ACHAC's multipositionality makes it possible to blur the boundaries between the marketing sphere and academic codes, thus introducing a new criterion into the social and political uses of the past.‪

‪Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Berlin police precincts, this article focuses on the so-called “intercultural prevention” policy implemented in Berlin since the early 2000s. The author analyzes how police work is informed by a culturalist framework, particularly regarding Muslim communities. The article shows how the link between prevention strategies and the culturalist approach to the treatment of minorities has broadened the police mandate, making police work closer to social work. Yet, this culturalist framework has ambivalent effects: on the one hand, it limits the effects of individual stereotyping during police interventions; on the other hand, it produces forms of reification of groups labeled as “cultural minorities.”‪

This special issue's “Perspectives of the In-Between” presents a book chapter originally published in Spanish by Eduardo Rinesi. His piece is devoted to a discussion on the problems of language in Hamlet as well as problems posed by its translation into both French and Spanish. The Argentinian philosopher extends his long-standing reflections on Shakespearean tragedies while addressing links between politics and translation.

This contribution completes the special issue and presents a brief reflexion on the role of the translator while pointing to the unique difficulties of bringing together three languages in translating the work of Eduardo Rinesi.