Contenu du sommaire : Etrangers, immigres, francais

A century of foreign immigration in France, Pierre Milza. The French melting pot is apparently no longer functioning, after performing its role quite well for more than a century. The author describes the recurrent xenophobia, the comparative capacity of the various immigrant groups to become assimilated and the agents of such assimilation : school, religion, political solidarity, industrial work. He concludes not by singling out the religious element, which would make Islam unassimilable, but by emphasizing the increasing decline of industrial employment : that is perhaps what broke the French crucible.

Location and jobs of foreigners in France since 1851, Hervé Le Bras The cartographic projection of the 1851 census clearly shows a distribution of foreigners influenced by a neighborhood effect. During the foliowing decades, the effect took root and opened on to a spatial and also social specialization of foreigners. The study of the 1936 data shows moreover a great consistency in national temperaments, geographically as well as professionally. May the recent drop in industrial employment not upset the economic and social results of a century-old process ?

Marseille, a city of immigration, Emile Témime. Marseille, a city of ail dangers ? National fancy quickly associates insecurity and immigration. To retrace the history of the migratory waves which reached the shores of the Phocaean city is to try, beyond successive stereotypes to reconstitute the phenomenon of sedimentation in this crossroads and asylum city. And to ask questions about the effect of these waves on Marseille's population and urban space.

A diffîcult integration : the Poles in France in the first part of the 20th century, Janine Ponty. After World War I, a large Polish community of a half million people emigrated to France. It was composeed of original Poles and of " Westphalians ", established since the 19th century in the Ruhr and having German citizenship. This specific community, which maintained strong national feelings, settled essentially in Northern France and worked in the coal fields. Originally opposed to any assimilation, its members tried to recreate a specific religious and cultural milieu, which caused them to be rejected by the French. The second World War broke this process, facilitated the integration of some, while about 100,000 others decided to return to and work in the new socialist Poland.

North African immigration in France : a historical overview, Charles-Robert Ageron. The number of North Africans now living in France equals that of the Europeans present in North Africa at the end of the colonial period. Starting from this " ruse of history ", the author recalls some obvious facts which seem to have been forgotten in the present discussion on immigration. Until 1959, the massive importation of North African workers did not stem from calculations of business leaders or French officials. Conversely, it was not only under-development, under-employment and overpopulation which made so many North Africans cross the Mediterranean : imagination also played its role ; the call of the " paradise of man " excited the social mobility of these people. Everything changed in the 1950s, when immigration became a family process of a permanent nature and the French realized this alteration.

The changing political attitudes of North African immigrants, Rémy Leveau, Catherine Wihtol de Wenden. From 1925 to 1962, the thirst for independence took the place of other political demands for the North African, mostly Algerian, immigrants in France. But since Algeria's independence, in the winding context of Franco-Algerian relations, these immigrants have experienced a painful double break : with their fatherland, to which they will not return ; with their second country, which offers them a precarious status. However, since 1968, their installation in the heart of production and their relative assimilation in French society, with the phenomenon of the " second generation " and the feminization of immigration, are leading them to try out forms of compromise which will allow them to cross the frontiers of the French political space.

Success and limits of another melting pot : the Hispanic Americans, Marie-France et Marileine Toinet. The Hispanic minority (Mexicans, Puerto-Ricans, and more recently Cubans and other Latin Americans), although it represents nearly 20 million people, is less taken into account and less well understood than the black minority. Its members came looking for work and pose a problem of integration. Some accept this cheap labor but others worry about its weight on the economy and on American society. Better educated in the last decade, this minority remains under-represented politically, which enlarges the gap between it, the other minorities and the white " Anglos ".

The religious factor and the integration of foreigners in France (1919-1939), Ralph Schor. In interwar France, two-thirds of the immigrant population came from strongly Catholic countries. Did the religious factor, under such conditions, play an important role in the processes of integration or rejection ? The great diversity of religious behavior among the indigenous and the newly arrived made diversity of situations the rule.

On the right use of immigrants in times of crisis and war, 1932-1940, Pierre Guillaume. The first important French law on immigration goes back to 1893, but it is above ail the law of 10 August 1932 which set down the bases of a policy of restriction and quotas in the use of foreign labor. Applied especially in Southern France and in the less industrialized areas, it gave a measure of the French xenophobia in the 1930s, which was preparing for the racist measures of the Vichy government.

The Left, the crisis and immigration (1930s, 1980s), Olivier Milza. Twice, in 1936 and 1981, the French Left in power was faced with the problem of immigration amplified by the period of crisis. The Left was obliged to make deep changes in its previous convictions, analyses and statements. This process was all the more painful as it hit the central core of its political culture and sensitivity.

Immigration : the final say of history, Gérard Noiriel. In statements, articles or books devoted to the issue of immigration, " lessons of history " are easily put forward. Often lightly and at random. Our problems today are not so new, and preconceived ideas on the " assimilation " of foreigners do not stand up to the hard test of historic facts. We must fill the gaps in historical research in this area and make sure that the voices of historians are heard more clearly.

West Germany focuses on its past, Etienne François. The Federal Republic of Germany is no longer a country without a past, suffering from amnesia after the trauma of Nazism. A strong desire for history stirs its inhabitants who crowd exhibitions and devour books. This exaltation and this rediscovery of the past are mobilising the historical profession, strongly divided and prone to polemics. In the multiplication of research, the critical sensibility of an Alltagsgeschichte, very attentive to the fringes and to daily life, is very promising. But the much-fought historicism has not given up and the social premises of this renewal of history are not always clearly formulated.