The Wretched of France: The 1983 March for Equality and Against Racism

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to

the Center for European and Russian Studies

at the University of California at Los Angeles.

We are very happy to see you both in-person

and virtually as we launch into a new year

of exciting and timely and in-person talks

and symposia. My name is Laurie Kain Hart and

I'm professor of anthropology and global studies

and Director of the Center. I'd like to begin

by thanking our generous co-sponsors and the

list is Iong, which shows you how much enthusiasm

there is for this event. The French Embassy

Center for Excellence at UCLA with the support

of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy

in the United States, the European Union Center

of California at Scripps College - so welcome

to our compatriots at Scripps, the UCLA Center

for Near Eastern Studies, the UCLA Center for

the Study of International Migration, and the

UCLA Department of European Languages and

Transcultural Studies known as ELTS now.

I hope I haven't missed anyone but if I have,

I apologize. We're really grateful to have

all of these partners in hosting a talk of

such vital importance for both Europe and

the US, question of racism, equality, the rights

of migrants, and the future of democracy. I'd

also like to thank the Center's Executive

Director, Liana Grancea, and the Program Director,

Lenka Unge, for their work on today's event

and so much else. As is our custom here at

UCLA, I want to let you know that we are here

on the unceded territory of the Gabrielino/Tongva

peoples who are the traditional

land caretakers of Tovaangar, the Los Angeles

Basin and South Channel Islands. As a land grant

institution on their territory, we pay our

respects to the ancestors, elders, and relatives

and relations past, present and emerging. Let me now

welcome our speaker and also our respondent today.

First our speaker, the esteemed author

and public intellectual, professor Abellali Hajjat.

Professor Hajjat is currently associate professor

of sociology at Université libre de Bruxelles,

a member of the GERME Group, the Group for Research

on Ethnic Relations, Migration and Equality,

principal investigator of the Colonial

Legacies in Belgium research project, and editor-in-chief

of the francophone academic journal

Race and Social Sciences. He has published

a long list of books, articles, interviews and

public scholarship. I'll just mention a few

of these. First, of course, I want to highlight

the book we're here to celebrate "The Wretched

of France: The 1983 March for Equality and

Against Racism" translated by Andrew Brown.

It was just published, the translation, in 2022

by Indiana University Press and there's a

link on our website to find it and

buy it. The longer list of books would

take me most of this hour to read, but I'll

just mention a few roughly translated into

English. A couple of books co-authored with

Marwan Mohammad, out in 2023 is "Islamophobia

in France: The Construction of the 'Muslim

Problem'" translated by Steve Garner,

University of Georgia Press, and also

"Islamophobie. Comment Les Élites Françaises

Fabriquent Le 'Problème Musulman,'”

that's the French edition.

And with Silyane Larcher, editors, "Intersectionality,

Movements and Discovery," so that is a book

out in 2019. Okay, there's a whole long list

of other books which you can find through

our website and I encourage you to explore it.

It includes as well a 2005 memoir "Postcolonial

Immigration and Memory," which is out from

L'Harmattan in Paris. I think that that

book in particular would be really interesting

for those of you who read French. I'm also

grateful that my wonderful colleague from

the Department of Anthropology, Aomar Boum,

is joining us as a respondent today and I

can't think of a more perfect voice to engage

with professor Hajjad. Professor Boum is

Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies

also in the UCLA Department of Anthropology

with me, and the UCLA Department of Near Eastern

Languages and Cultures. He's also Director

of the Lemelson Undergraduate Honors Program

in Anthropology, and his dauntingly long list

of books would also take me the rest of this

hour to read, so I will just cite some of the

recent ones. In 2018 "The Holocaust and North

Africa" from Stanford, "A Concise History of

the Middle East" in 2016, "Historical Dictionary

of Morocco" in 2016, and "Memories of Absence:

How Muslims Remember Jews in Morocco". Also

I want to point out the just about to be published

book, which is a graphic novel with Nadjib Berber

called "Undesirables: A Refugee Journey through

Europe and North Africa". So I really

recommend you keep your eyes out for that

book which is coming out at the end of the

year from Stanford. Okay, I'm done but there's

more information on the website if you would

like to pursue the longer list. A quick reminder

for the audience: please write your questions

in the Q&A box, not the chat box, at any time

during the discussion. The presenters will

be able to see them, and the speaker and respondent

will be able to read them during Q&A. The talk

will be live streamed and recorded for viewing

afterwards. With that I turn the podium over to

professor Hajjat. Thanks for coming to us.

I think you took my talk.

I took your talk. I apologize.

Thank you very much, professor Hart,

for your great introduction. I would like to

thank the Center for European and Russian

Studies and all the sponsors of this event

for welcoming me and for having me

here in a very specific time, during lunch time.

I hope that you are not too hungry.

I'm very grateful and honored

to share with you the findings about my

book, about the 1983 March for Equality

and Against Racism. It's a book that was written

in 2013 and it was translated this year

in 2022. This event is in the crosswords

of many aspects of French history.

History of postcolonial immigration, history of

working class neighborhoods, history of

racism and anti-racism after World

War II, the history of mobilizations against

police brutality etc. So the march symbolized

both the immense thirst for equality for children

of North African immigrants but also the first

appearance of them in the public space.

So that we can have an idea of the hope raised

by the march, here is a video recorded by the

French national TV during the demonstration

organized on December 3, 1983 that gathered

more than 100,000 people.

[Music]

[Crowd chanting]

[Crowd chanting]

[Crowd chanting]

As you may probably see in this video,

the demonstration brought together people

from different backgrounds. French people,

foreigners, people of all ages, young people,

older people, from all social classes, you can

find working class, middle class and

upper class, from all religions, people from

the left or from the right. So the images

gave a real thrill to anyone with an anti-racist

turn of mind. The mass of those physical

bodies all stuck together created the impression

of a real anti-racist upsearch, the feeling

that things have changed for good. And it was

a slogan at that time that suggested that

this was an event capable of changing the

political balance in favor of an anti-racist

policy. So what is the march and why is it

important in French history? The march began

on October 15, 1983 in Marseille in the

south of France and finished in Paris on December 3

with the biggest anti-racist demonstration

in French history, and the official meeting

with the French President François Mitterrand

at the Élysée Palace. And you can see here on

your right the official picture of the invitation

with François Mitterrand on the left

and some of the leaders of the march

on the right. But the number of marchers was very

low at the beginning since only 30 started

the march in Marseille. And even if it began

in Marseille, most of the marchers came

from Vénissieux, a working class city near Lyon,

and more specifically from a neighborhood

called Les Minguettes. This place has an important

historical significance since this is

the place where urban riots occurred.

These urban riots took place in 1981

and 1983 and were framed as the North

African delinquency threats in the local and

national public space. So through the march,

for the first time a specific category of

the population, North African young immigrants,

was the subject of a positive media and political

discourse. Before the march, the figure that

was most typically representing

immigration was the figure of an unmarried

immigrant worker without a female partner

or any children, exploited at will, barely politicized,

and likely to lower the wages of French workers.

Also, dominant was the image of North

African delinquency, the figure

of city youth or of young immigrants

was thus marked by the stigma that was

racial, class-based and territorial. The march

thus constituted an event in the sense of

breakdown of intimidation and eligibility.

It means that the new immigrant generation

was no longer perceived solely from the point

of view of the social stigma, but valued for

what it aspired to - the implementation of the

principle of freedom and equality. Thus the

conditions favorable to the existence of the

march enabled a large-scale national

mobilization. The march was the turning

point for a new generation of immigrant activities.

It became the moment of crystallization

of a whole new generation of activists of

immigrants origin marking the birth of the

so-called Beur Movement. Who are the marchers?

As you can see in this picture that was taken

just after the meeting with François Mitterrand,

the march is important because of a highly

unlikely alliance between different social

groups. First, a group of young immigrants.

You can see on the left the list of those

young immigrants involved in the march.

The most famous ones are Toumi Djaidja,

Farid L'Haoua, and Djamel Atallah, and they were

from the neighborhood called Les Minguettes.

And the second group is the French people

who were involved in the march and more specifically

the organization called Cimade Lyon. This organization

was created during World War II in

order to support foreigners, refugees etc.

After World War II this organization

continued to support them

in everyday life. The third group, important

but not present in this picture, are some members

of the French government, more specifically

Georgina Dufoix and Jean Blockquaux, who were very close

to Christian Delorme and Jean Costil and

were very likely to support the march.

I guess you've never heard about them, but

they played an important role in this

history, so it's important to say their name.

To understand the march, it's important

to recall some important historical facts. Firstly,

the economic crisis in the 1970s and 1980s entailed

mass unemployment among the working class

and thousands of redundancies in factories.

What is important to know is the fact

that the presence of the postcolonial immigration

in France was related to their economic necessity,

their workforce. And since most of them get

unemployed, it is the very legitimacy of

their presence in the French territory that

was challenged. The second historical fact

is about urban rebellions that occurred in

the greater Lyon area in the 70s and 80s. The

local and national press racialized these

urban rebellions by creating a reductive image

of the racial composition of the rioters,

presenting the unrest as race riots of blacks

and North Africans. So the young immigrants

from Les Minguettes had to carry the burden of stigma

of the North African delinquency - very difficult

to overcome. The third fact is the rise of

racist violence against North Africans

in the 70s and 80s. The statistics showed

that 203 racist crimes occurred during these

two decades. It's huge. 104 between 1971 and

is the deadliest period in the history of

racism in France, even more deadlier than the

century in France, when Italians for example

were murdered and massacred in the South of

France. So the marchers and their supporters

reacted to an unprecedented racist time and

demanded simply the right to live. The fourth historical

fact is the newly elected left-wing government

in 1981. François Mitterrand was elected president

of the Republic in May and the National Assembly

was controlled by the left. It was the first

time since the beginning of the Fifth Republic

born in 1956 that the left ruled the country.

So the marchers could take advantage of the

situation since some socialist officials were

open to anti-racist mobilizations and likely

to support the march. And the last important

historical facts is the first electoral success

of the National Front party in 1983. This

far-right party was founded in 1972 and it

succeeded to win the municipal

election in the working class city of Dreux,

in the neighborhood of Paris, in the suburbs of Paris.

And then again it was the first time

that this far-right party could be considered

an electoral threat. So the demands of the

marchers were welcomed by the vast majority

of public opinion in France that considered

that the National Front and its racist ideas

should be fought. So my book takes into account

this historical context to analyze the

march through its genesis from Les Minguettes,

its progress through the French territory,

and its afterlife. It raises six issues

that correspond to its six chapters.

I don't have the time, of course, to talk to

every aspect of the book, but I will give you

some insight about some or most of the chapters

and I will focus on one specific issue related

to riots and rebellions. The first

chapter studies the origins of the social

tensions that preceded the march with a micro

history of Les Minguettes neighborhood. It focuses

on, what I called, the internal class struggle

within the working class of Les Minguettes.

This neighborhood is a real laboratory

where the relations between the stabilized

working class and the more precarious working

class gradually deteriorated during the 1970s.

And it was in the context of economic crisis

and rising youth unemployment. This exacerbation

of social tensions was the result of a complex

social process. Among the elements of this

complex social process, we can give some

examples, for example the phenomenon of

residential mobility, the discriminatory policy

behind the allocation of social housing, the

social and ethnic segregation etc. All

these phenomena made the social tensions

more and more important in this neighborhood.

Chapter 2 shows that the transformations

in the social space of Les Minguettes favored

conflicts between the wealthiest sections

of the working class and the gangs of youth

and unskilled workers who constituted the pool

of rebels in 1981 and 1983. I seek to explain

the conditions of possibility of the two rebellions

and the transition from a mode of action dominated

by rioting to a non-violent mode of action.

I will talk about it later - on this shift from

violence to non-violence. Chapter 3 grasps

the political stakes in the ongoing dispute

between young people in the lower income neighborhoods

and the state authorities. I mean municipality,

police, judiciary etc. It focuses particularly

on the great difficulty the authorities had

in acknowledging police brutality and racism.

So I try to understand why the town hall and

the police forces have great difficulty to

acknowledge racism and police brutality.

I use the concept of state solidarity

in order to understand it. The fourth chapter

studies the mobilization in itself, from Les Minguettes

to the streets of Paris, and explains how an

unlikely political alliance made it successful.

Actually, the march was a resurgence, perhaps

one of the last resurgences of the widened

change of May 68. Indeed, the quizzes of consent

of the 1986 unrest had radically altered

the space of mobilizations, blurring the boundaries

between social groups and destabilizing the

multiple forms of domination embodied by the

institutions of social control: businesses,

schools, universities, police, prisons etc.

So May 68 marked what the sociologist Michel

Dobry called de-sectorization of French

society. It means that it allowed unlikely

alliances between social groups that had previously

been unaware of one another, alliance between

students and workers etc. The political

effects of May 68 persisted for

several years. In the 1970s for example immigrant

workers, immigrant movements,

worker movements, allied themselves with renowned

intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre or Michel

Foucault, French trade unionists and Christian

activists. The unlikely alliance that made

the march possible was the continuation of

a long tradition of support for the struggles

of immigrant workers. And with it by the increasing

number of reception committees. These committees

welcomed the march in every step from

Marseille to Paris. So the unlikely alliance

demonstrated the existence and the mobilization

of an anti-racist France ready to confront

the racist France. Chapter 5 shows that

this national anti-racist unanimity should

not obscure certain ambiguities. Indeed, there

are ambiguities related to the difficult position

of the labor movements who didn't really support

the march, the construction of the Muslim

problem at that time - this is the beginning

of what we could call Islamophobia

after the Algerian War, the silence about the

colonial history etc. There are many ambiguities

that I try to analyze in this chapter. But

on the other hand, the March was also

a vector of political socialization. It was

a way for thousands of young immigrants to

get involved politically. I define the march

as a kind of May 68 of immigrant

children since they expressed

themselves for the first time in the

public space without

the fear of the racist baggage.

And the last chapter deals with the march

as an object of memory. Actually, I studied

the commemoration of the event in 2003 and

reinterpreted relating to the racial and

social tensions in contemporary

France, and more specifically regarding the

surge of Islamophobia. So that's a very broad

abstract of the book and now I would like

to focus on one specific issue related to

the riots and rebellions.

In the summer of 1981, hundreds of young people

defied the police and took part in an urban

rebellion, which became a symbol of

the suburban resistance. On March 21, 1983 the

second rebellion took place in Les Minguettes

ending with a demonstration in Vénissieux, a hunger

strike among young people, and the creation

of the organization SOS Avenir Minguettes. The

events triggered in France the theoretical

debate about the political dimension of these

riots, and I guess this is the same kind

of debate that exists here in the U.S. about

rioting and the relationship about that political

dimension. Were they apolitical,

which means pure violence with no political

meaning? Were they proto-political

with a social consciousness but without any

political significance? Or were they political

with a conscious challenge to the social and

political order? Instead of postulating

total disconnection or conversely a necessary

connection between riots and the political

meaning, I try to focus on what I call the

borders or the boundaries of the political.

As the historian Jean Nicolas stated, I

translated one phrase of his book, a

great book, I don't know if you've

read it, La Rébellion française:

"The collective use of violence is always part

of the system of representations by which

the community designates its place in the

world order. These mental images that are translated

into acts thus refer to meaning and the conflict

is to be read not as pure disorder, but as

revealing another coherence."

And so to reveal that coherence, I would

like to raise three questions. First, under

what conditions can the legitimacy of the

use of physical force by the police be directly

challenged by the government? That's a classical

political science question. Second, how to explain

the shift from the illegitimate use of physical

violence to the use of the repertoire of legitimate

action? How to explain the shift from violence

to non-violence? And third, was there a social

consciousness a coherence among rioters, and

is it so different from conscious political

discourse? Answer to the first question.

So in order to analyze the way police authority

is challenged by a rebellion, I propose to reconsider

the origins of the rebellions by drawing on

Norbert Elias' concept of figuration.

It means that the riots

should be interpreted as a breakdown in the

balance of power between, on the one hand the

youth of Les Minguettes and on the other the

police force. Until the early 1980s this balance

rested on the existence of two forms

of social institution, youth gangs

and the police. It means that police actions

to combat delinquency were accepted by the

residents of the neighborhood since or if,

and only if they were not perceived as

an attack on the dignity of their social

owner. So there is no evidence about

the impossibility for police forces to go

in the neighborhood. They were accepted since

they were not perceived as an attack on the

dignity and social order. And in fact, young

people belonging to the less integrated section

of the working class appropriated various

urban spaces whose functions included keeping

these young people out of sight of the various

forms of authority: family, education, school,

and police etc. These young people should

be found not only on the streets but also

in the cafeteria, in a shopping mall, the bar

etc. The poster here on the right of

The Fifth Festival of Immigrant Workers

organized on Lyon in 1980 illustrates very well

the appropriation of this public spaces by

the young people of Les Minguettes. It shows

how the police presence in the neighborhood

can be perceived as a form of intrusion, both

physical and symbolic. This figuration favors

the emergence of gangs that are poorly structured and

made up of friends from the same neighborhood and various ethnic

backgrounds. But this balance between the

youth and the police was gradually disrupted

by two factors. And this disruption

caused the rise in social tensions and

the rebellions. First was that one of the most

effective means available to the police to

combat delinquency and to obtain information

was the threat of deportation of foreigners.

This was the principle of double punishment.

The foreigner was convicted once for the crime

he committed and he or she then

could be convicted a second time by being

deported from the French territory. But in April

Delorme again, Jean Costil again, those who

started the march in 1983 and a young Algerian

Hamid Boukhrouma in order to protests against such

deportations. And the newly elected

socialist government decided to suspend the

deportation of young foreigners in May and

June 1980. Then the police of Vénissieux felt

somewhat betrayed by the government and there

was a kind of resentment from them against

the socialist government. The second factor

was that the police had the will of perceived

impression that the territory of Les Minguettes

was no longer under control not

because levels of delinquency

were rising but because some suspects

managed to get away and the most significant

example is the story of Amar Djaidja,

who was the older brother of Toumi Djaidja, one

of the leaders of the march. He was the son of

Harki. I don't know if you know what is Harki.

It's a term used in French for

Muslim Algerians who fought in the ranks of

the French army during the Algerian war of

independence between 1954 and 1962. So

they were considered as traitors by Algerians.

And they left Algeria in 1962 in terrible

conditions and lived several months in a Harki

camp in the south of France. Then they moved

to Vénissieux and live in the neighborhood

of Les Minguettes where a certain percentage

of the apartments were reserved to the Harki

community. But Amar had to do his mandatory

military service and he faced blatant racism

in the military, so he decided to desert the

military. He became a fugitive. He became a

fugitive and came back to Les Minguettes and he

became what the historian Eric Hobsbawm

called the social balance. Like Robin Hood

of Les Minguettes stealing from the rich and

giving to the poor. He succeeded several

times in getting past the vigilance of the

police and making a getaway. So these two

factors, the resentment of the police against

the socialist government, and the fact

that they couldn't use the double punishment

as a tool against the foreigners, and the second

factor is about the fact that some people

like Amar Djaidja succeeded to get away

increased police presence in Les Minguettes.

This presence made a succession

of minor incidents which then generated

and provoked the rebellion of 1981 and 1983.

The second question is about the shift from

violence to non-violence. One of the specificities

of the events that occurred in Les Minguettes in 1983

is that some of the rioters were also committed

in classical political actions, such as sit ins, hunger

strike, demonstration, creating an organization,

and finally the march. The chronology of the 1983

events, here is the chronology,

shows the escalation of violence, but

also the shift from violence to non-violence.

A dozen of people used violence against

police officer after an identity check.

The identity check triggered the violent

section because of the police presence. Then

more police officers came to control the area,

then even more people from the neighborhood

participated in the riots, then again law enforcement

officers withdrew from the place etc.

So there was this escalation of violence but

some of the rioters were imprisoned just after

the riot. Most of the rioters

reacted not by using violence

but by organizing a demonstration, then a sit in

in front of the police station and the town

hall. Two days later some young immigrants

started a hunger strike in order to denounce

police brutality and founded the organization

SOS Avenir Minguettes. Toumi Djaidja, who was the president

of SOS Minguettes, was shot by a police officer on

June 20, 1983. Luckily he survived and it

was in his hospital bed that he had the idea

that the march should be organized from Marseilles

to Paris.

Given the low politicization of the young

people of Les Minguettes, why did they use demonstrations

and hunger strikes rather

than continuing to riot?

First, these young people were familiar

to the repertory of activist actions, notably

the organization of support committees and

hunger strikes in order to ask for better

detention conditions. So some of them were

detained or knew people in prison, and the hunger

strike was a way, a tool used by them to

ask for better detention conditions. What I

want to say here is that Les Minguettes was not

at that time a political desert. There were

people involved in some kind of political

actions. Secondly, non-violent action was made

possible by a pragmatic analysis of the configuration

and relations of interdependence between urban

youth police, media, immigrant support organizations,

and the political field at the local and national

levels. It means that these rebels, rioters

concluded that the balance of power with the

local police was unfavorable to them in the

context of street battles. So by using non-violent

actions the police was disowned symbolically.

It couldn't use violence, its force against

young immigrants.

And another important element is the alliance

between these young people and Christian Delorme

and Jean Costil who were Christian and

non-violent activists and were very influenced

by Gandhi's or Martin Luther King's actions etc.

The last question is about social consciousness.

One of the most fascinating things that happened

in the 1983 events is the fact that some rioters

wrote a poem and distributed leaflets

in the neighborhood just after the riots.

The leaflet is on the right, on the left side

of the slide.

Some of the rioters became activists and founded the organization

SOS Les Minguettes whose statutes detailed its demands.

The comparison between the leaflets and

the statutes is very interesting. On the one

hand the rioters denounced "rejection,

racism, and injustice" and demanded more justice,

more human rights in the neighborhood, and

dignity. On the other hand, the statutes denounce

social and ethnic prejudices in the repressive

institutions of the state and demanded

"a fair application of French and French

civil and criminal laws."

A bond built on the categories of justice,

dignity and recognition. So the contrasts between

riot action and non-violent political action

with apparently quite different meanings

is called into question by this discursive

continuity. The boundary of the political is

therefore not as watertight because from their

point of view there is no major break between

the two meanings. Thank you very much!

Shall we bring the chairs?

Perfect! That's good.

Abdellali, thank you so much.

Welcome to UCLA again. This is

not only a celebration of The Wretched of France

but also it's a celebration of your work.

I have a lot of questions. I'm going to,

for the sake of time, try to minimize

them because I want to open the floor for

the audience if they have any other questions.

When I look at your work, and I can

see this connection between racialization

of the immigrant, who later on became the Muslim

in France, the idea of how race and law fits

into French society in the post-independence

period, and also this issue of assimilation

and naturalization, I think your book really

brings all these points together and it allows

us to think about how they shift from bringing

the immigrant, bringing the colonized back

to metropolitan France, then dealing with

generations of the descendants of the

immigrant. I think the whole book,

as far as I'm concerned,

the book does really a good

job as far as highlighting this.

I want to open up the conversation by asking

you a question about the participants

and the agents in that start of 83,

but before that we want to go back

to this background. So if you can explain

to the audience this connection, the stereotypical

word "beur" and the immigrant who, as you mentioned,

could be also Harki, could be somebody

else, or could be just a worker in the minds

of France. So if you can break down these categories

because we're talking about

"the beur", we're talking about

the Arabs, we're talking about the immigrants,

we're talking about laïque, the immigrant

who is secular and Muslim who could be

assimilated, who could not be assimilated.

So all of these things. I think they're so

complicated in this scene and in this stage

of 1983. If you can just explain

that a little bit. Thank you

very much for the question. You're right

to highlight this issue of categories because

I have to explain every category

in the way they are defined in the French

context. The first one is the term, the category

of "beur". Beur is a French slang. It's a

new version of the term Arab. Arabe is the first

word, and then you change the order

of the syllabus.

It is beura, then beur.

So it's a double inversion of the term Arab.

And the term beur was used in the Paris

region by children of post-colonial immigration

to identify themselves. And it was a way to,

you know, distinguish themselves

from the first immigrants but also to

distinguish themselves from French people, French

white people. And there was a kind of pride

to identifying as a beur, but the term,

the meaning of the term shifted just after the march

for equality and against racism because it was a way

to oppose the children and the families with

the idea that they are good beur, they are

good children of the post-colonial immigration

who want to assimilate, who want to become

French, and on the other side the bad or immigrant

workers, who are involved in strikes, who are

contesting the government authorities etc.

It's interesting because in 1983-1984

there were strikes in the car

industry and most of the people involved in

the strikes were immigrant workers and

they demanded simply to keep their jobs.

But the government at that time didn't support

the strikes even if it was a socialist

government. On the contrary, the government

framed the strikes not as a class struggle

strike, but as religious strike. That's why

I told in the beginning that it is the

beginning of the construction of

the Muslim program in France after the

Algerian war because the classical class

struggle was dismissed. And this is the

idea of religious struggle that was

at the core of the way the French government

analyzed this. So in 1983-1984 there

was opposition between good beur and bad immigrant

workers. But in this context, there is very

specific situation of the Harki, because the

Harki were men involved in the French

army. Some of them were volunteer,

some of them were obliged to be

in the French army without different cases

but at the end they were considered

as traitors by Algerians. But they were

also considered as Algerians, or Arab by French

people. So they were stigmatized both by

Algerians and by French people. So they were

in a very specific situation in the social

and racial order in the neighborhood

and I think it's maybe because of that specific

situation that they were the most likely

to denounce racism in general because

they were at the bottom of the racial

order. But this issue of Harki, the

category of Harki was not

at the center of their own mobilization. For

example Toumi Djaidja was the leader of the march

and he didn't mobilize himself as th

Harki because at that time there was

actually kind of shame telling that

you are fond of Harki community.

Let me go back. Before I move to a

question over Zoom by my colleague

Susan Slyomovics, I want to ask you another question

about the moment of 1983. For me, when I read

your work, what I noticed is, and you

talked about it in your presentation,

this idea of this really high political consciousness

among the youth. And in the way

they responded to the social malaise and the

economic malaise that existed

in France prior to 1983. So you're talking here about

two governments, the Giscard d'Estaing government,

and then Mitterrand after 1981.

So there was a possibility

for what some of these youth called

"the daddy state" to really adjust

to the concerns of the youth which they didn't.

So how much of that has to do with the

beginning of the new urban policy,

the idea that, you would see later on, I'm going

to come back to that later on, you would

see post-2000, post-2010 this idea of

now you have the ethnicization of different

neighborhoods across France according

to the ethnicity, according to the language

they speak, according to where they come from.

That's a very interesting question. Actually

when the 1981 riots occurred, it is important

to understand how the government on the

national and local level analyzed it.

Chapter 3 called "The Fear of the Rebellion"

is very focused on this, on the way the state

analyzed and interpreted the riots.

Someone of sociology

could analyze the riots in terms

of articulation between social and racial

tensions that occurred in Les Minguettes at that

time. But it was not the way they interpreted it.

They interpreted it as a race riot.

And I found a very interesting

document called "The Analysis of the Situation"

written by the local police authority.

And in this document you can find what

are called the state hidden transcripts. I

use the concept forged by James Scott, public

and hidden transcripts. And Scott used this

concept to analyze the discourse by

two battle groups. But I propose to use it also

to the dominant groups, which means that even the state,

even the dominant groups have public and hidden

transcripts. And via the archives, I could

have access to the hidden transcripts. And

in all these you can find all the categories.

Race. People are rioting because of their race.

So there was a process of rationalization

of the riots by the French state. But in public,

the political and police authorities never

use the term race or ethnicity etc. And

it's important to highlight this, the way the

riots were interpreted, because it

had consequences in urban policy.

Since the riots should be explained by ethnicity

and rights of the rioters, the problem is race.

The problem is that we should as a state change

them. They should assimilate. This is not a

problem of unemployment, or the problem of

housing etc. And the beginning of

what is called the urban policy

was during the summer

of 1982 - a campaign which was called

a campaign against hot summer,

because the riots happened during

the summer since most of the

rioters were not at school, they didn't have

any occupation, they couldn't work,

and they didn't have any leisure etc.

So they thought the problem was that

there was no control on the young people

during the summer. So they organized this campaign

anti-hot summer. So they went on

holidays in the South of France with police

officers etc. And actually it worked since

there were no riots during the summer

of 1983. But the focus on the youth

as a problem was a way to obscure the old

issue of social housing, of unemployment

etc. So it was a kind of, what I call

politics of compensation. They couldn't do something

about unemployment, about housing etc.

so they thought that they could do something

on the youth. And so after that there

was a commission that was

gathered just after the riots and

the Dubedout was the mayor of

Grenoble, not very far from Lyon,

who founded the French urban policy.

That's great. I'm gonna go back to the hidden

script, but after we ask you this question

from Susan Slyomovics. Susan writes:

A question about the Lyon organizers and

marchers and their personal histories

as fragments of colonial history. How did it

play out in the 1980s and now again that the

marchers were and are the children of Harkis, FLN and

MNA internecine factions in Lyon, or early North African labor migrants?

Another silence of colonial history: was Mitterrand's

role as Minister of Justice during the Algerian

War responsible for ordering the guillotining

of Algerian imprisoned militants acknowledged

when he came to power in a socialist government?

Thank you, Susan. It's a very interesting

question because when you look at the picture

of the Élysée Palace meeting, just in the beginning,

you can see François Mitterrand who was, as

Susan said, the Minister of the Interior

during the Algerian war of independence. So actually he

is supposed to be accountable to colonial crimes.

And you also have Toumi Djaidja

who was a son of Harki, Algerian

Muslims who were involved in the French army.

And you also have, you don't see him in this picture,

but there is also Christian Delorme who was

a Christian activist. He is famous in Lyon

because he supported mainly minority. Before these young immigrants,

he supported Algerian colonial people in Lyon, so he supported FLN.

Then in 1970, he supported prostitutes with

the idea, with the very first interpretation

of this mobilization. It means

that the colonial Algeria,

the colonized Algeria, the prostitutes or the young

immigrants are the new face of Jesus Christ.

so they should be supported as this image

of Jesus Christ. So in the same place you find

someone who fought against Algerian FLN.

One who supported the FLN, and the son of one

who fought against FNL. So history is everywhere

in this picture, but at that time noone, very

few people talked about colonial history. And

when I studied the archives of the

march and I went to many centers

in Lyon, Paris etc. And even the press,

of course I analyzed the national and the local

press, and I was very surprised by the fact

that very few journalists for example underlined

the fact that Toumi Djaidja was the son of Harki.

Sometimes you can find some fragments

of colonial history in the the media coverage

of the march, but even people form the

group of the marchers didn't really

talk about the colonial issue. So I asked

them. Because I analyzed the archive, but I also

made interviews with them. Most of them. And

they told me that it was too painful and more

specifically for Harki, the people from the

Harki community. It was in 1983. It was even if

it was 20 years after the independence of

Algeria it was too painful to talk about this

history, so they preferred consciously or

unconsciously, I don't know exactly, not to talk about it

because of the effects, the impacts of this

revelation we believe through their

own personal history. I think that's of

the one of the main reasons that

explained the silence about colonial history.

There is this famous 30-year rule

about memory. It's like for the Holocaust

against the Jews in France. France had to

wait 30 years until the public discourse

about this issue etc. So I don't know why these 30 years

mean something socially, but it is what happened

naturally for the Algerian war and for

the colonial times. It's only in the beginning

of the 1990s that the colonial history became

a public issue in the country. So I want to

go back to, before I open the floor for the

audience if they have any questions, I'll go

back to the hidden script because I think

it's really important. So you talk about

his association, which was part of

the 83. In 84 you have what would become known

as SOS

which had all these figures in the Socialist Party.

I want to ask two questions about it.

What came after the march of 1983

as far as the aspirations of these young North

Africans? And how the state, and this year we

get back to the "daddy state", how the

state co-opted the march and whether it

did from your perspective, from your research?

To shift the conversation from the economic

and urban rights to the "tolerance",

to the "racism discourse" that

fits what Chirac wanted. Not Chirac. Mitterrand

and his government really, were they trying

to, after this meeting, did they really had in mind

to meet the needs of this generation, or that

there was a pressure from within the state,

from within the infrastructure, legal infrastructure,

reconstruction of the state to shift it

to somewhere else where

they can probably manage it?

You're right.

Actually just after the march

some people within the Socialist Party considered

that it would be interesting to found a new

anti-racist organization. And it was founded in 1984.

It was called SOS Racisme. But none of them were

among the organizers of the march, so there

is this contradiction between who were

at the initiative of the successful

march on the one hand,

and on the other are the members,

the founders of SOS Racisme which became

one of the most important anti-racist

organizations in France in the 1980s.

Since it was supported by many important

intellectuals, and artists

and they organized very big councils in France.

I remember that. So it was a way for

some members of the Socialist

Party to take advantage of the anti-racist

consciousness that emerged after the march

in order to impose a certain framing of anti-racist

mobilization. And it's important what you

said about the shift. Clearly there was

a shift just after the march between demands

that were focused on the state and

what we could call institutional

racism, but also related to economic

demands and also to the issue of housing etc.

So we could say material conditions

and what the state could do in terms

of material conditions. So it has to improve

the political and social situation of post-colonial

immigration. That was the idea of the march.

So from this kind of demand to a more

global discourse, not very radical, on

racism and antiracism. Racism was

defined individually. We could say that

SOS Racisme defined racism as something

individual, so the structural or institutional

dimension of racism was not taken

into account at all. So yeah, I think in

this respect the state, the French

government let's say, which supported

SOS Racisme was quite...

Since the state was not at the center of

the demands, structural or institutional

racism was not, you know, challenged by

SOS Racisme, the state supported SOS Racisme.

Just after the march, one can

observe a shift, a divide within

the anti-racist movement. On the one hand this

moral anti-racism focused on individualization,

the state sponsored etc. on the one hand and

on the other the grassroots organizations

founded and led by young immigrants.

And actually in 1984 these young immigrant

activists gathered in Lyon

and most of them knew each other during

the march. This is why I said that

the 1983 march is a vector

of political socialization.

People from Toulouse, from Lyon thought that they were

alone, but the march made their situation more global and

they discovered what happened in other cities

with of course the same kind of issues. So

they decided to... Sorry to interrupt you.

So they decided to gather in

this kind of like a congress of organizations

of young immigrants. It was enduring

during the summer 1984. But for many reasons

they didn't succeed to found the national

anti-racist organization, grassroots organization. So SOS Racisme

was completely free to defend

it's own political agenda. So that's the problem.

So do you think this was a missed opportunity

on the Socialist Party's level to include

these youth as part of it? Because there

was the political mobilization and

these youth, very conscious, could have

been part of the political system

as early as 83. Of course. So you don't

have to wait till post-2000 and then 2010

to having these token immigrants

as part of this government. So if the mobilization

happened and then you have to include these

youth in the political system, I am

assuming that political system in France

would be much better if you have this inclusion,

this real inclusion in the political

system. I guess you're right,

but the problem is the fact that the Socialist

Party and also the Communist Party, I didn't

talk about the labor movement,

didn't consider these young activists as

people who could become full members

of their own organization.

It's a classical way.

They had to be loyal to the French society,

to be responsible, also to the French state.

But since most of them were very critical

against the way the French state defined

the boundary between who is French, who

is not. It's the same categories of the

Likud and the Labor Party, the North

Africans in Israel. The same logic.

And I guess that

it would have been very different if

they were included in the political

system. The first young immigrant

activists was elected in France

in 1988. She was in the Green Party

but for European elections. And we have

to wait the 1980s and the 2000 to find these

activists who made the 1883 march become

an integral part of the political system,

but mostly the local political system.

I think there was a big difference between

the national and the local government.

I have two questions on Zoom and then, if you

like, we'll definitely open the floor too.

Yeah, so there's a question from Susan

again. I think I'm going to put it in

this order. You can answer them in this order.

So Susan is asking: Can you say something about

the physical space of Les Minguettes now?

Decay? Improvement? Population and demography

changes? More or less police presence?

That's the first question and there

is a question by Taryn. I hope I'm pronouncing

your name right. Do you find that there has

been a change in rhetoric from the youth of

the march to the youth of France today in

the wake of the Black Lives Matter

conversations in France?

Now Les Minguettes looks like this, okay?

The neighborhood still exists, but many buildings

were destroyed. And more specifically these

towers where the more precarious

working class people were living, because

at that time the urban policy considered

that if there were riots, it is because there

was a concentration of foreigners in some

buildings. They use the concept

of tolerance thresholds and they

suppose that if there were too many foreigners,

too many blacks or Arabs in one building,

they considered that it may

make the problems and the riot more

likely. So they explicitly decided to destroy

buildings and to make it more difficult mainly for

black people and North African people to get

access to social housing. And you can

see this trend in the 1980s, 1990s

and the year 2000. But today

Les Minguettes has changed a lot.

It's more connected to the city of Lyon

and in the beginning of the 2000s

a tramway was built between the center

city of Lyon to Vénissieux. So it is only

central train station in Lyon, to Vénissieux.

There is a process of gentrification that

occurred after the building of this tramway,

but still there is some neighborhood

within the neighborhood. I use

the category Les Minguettes. It's 30,000 people.

And within Les Minguettes there are some smaller

neighborhoods. And some neighborhoods within

Les Minguettes are more middle class, other are

more from the upper classes. So

the social housing landlords decided

very explicitly to divide the space regarding

the different social classes. So there

are some neighborhoods in Les Minguettes,

which are sacrificed, which means that

we put there all the people with problems,

with social problems

and so the physical space changed

a lot. And it is in this small neighborhood

where some with social problems

are concentrated, this is where the new migrants

come. For example since 2008 and the economic

crisis in Italy, you have many people from

Italy with Moroccan, Nigerian

background, coming to Les Minguettes.

You have many people, gypsies also, coming

from Eastern Europe, coming to Les Minguettes.

So there is always a place where people

who can't find a house, an apartment

in other places in Lyon can come. So the

BLM question? Well, for the BLM question.

Today, the Black Lives Matter

movement in France

is quite important and actually we can

observe different way on defining racism

today compared to what happened

in the 1980s. The demands of the 1980s

were quite simple. The right to live,

the possibility to have an employment etc.

So they were not different from what is demanded

today. The right to live, the right to work,

right to have a house etc. But

I think that in terms of political

approach, things now are not quite different.

Because in the 1980s, these activists didn't

read the famous intellectuals.

Today, when you look at the BLM

website and their publications,

they are a very influenced by all

these intellectuals. So I think that

the change in terms of rhetoric is related

to the way some anti-racist intellectuals

influence the political discourse. So at that

time there was no inter-sectional approach.

The gender was not there.

Do you have any questions?

I'm going to end with one question.

I just want to say this was terrific.

I was doing field work in Le Coudeau

in 1984. A failed field work in some sense

because I wanted to compare East Harlem to

Le Coudeau but I couldn't. It's really, really interesting

for me to understand this more systematically

from you, because it looked too much like heaven

to me for me to be able to understand

why people were even talking about violence

because I couldn't see any violence and that

was supposed to be a horrendous,

you know, drug-ridden neighborhood...

And it just didn't make sense to me.

It was swarming with social

workers. It wasn't even being gentrified.

It was just being abandoned at

that time. And the state was stepping in and

seizing the private property and turning it

into public housing and spending,

you know, millions of dollars rebuilding it.

So it didn't become what the South Bronx

and East Harlem were doing

at that exact moment. The other thing

that was totally confusing

was, you know, trying to understand the

inconsistencies of French racism from an American

point of view. You know, I did get

beaten up by Europeanists

and so forth. So I saw how,

you know, with knives and

so forth, so I saw how virulent and sort

of organized fascist it was in a way that

it wasn't in the United States. And that

was really terrifying. But the hegemony just

there wasn't, you know, the hegemony was so

anti-racist at least in the kind of discourse

one wanted to give to an American who is obviously

not racist. And so it was very hard to do any

field work that made sense in that sense for

me. So it's fascinating to see this. I just

wanted to mention that it's interesting.

Also the thing that kept hitting my head is

they actually knew, could recognize class

in France, where there's never any

mention of class even in Black Lives Matter.

You know, the U.S. Black Lives Matter

doesn't recognize it. They even managed to

read Fanon and not know that he's a Marxist.

You know, how Americans can do that?

The only thing they can hear him say is

about racism as if it didn't articulate with

class, as if he wasn't worried about the bourgeoisie

takeover of false consciousness in the liberation

of Algeria. And it's just amazing - that

disjuncture. So I really misunderstood

everything. Okay, thanks, Phillip.

Do you want to respond to that?

There's so much going on in this book. There's

really so much. We could stay here for all day

just talking about this book and how it

connects to your brilliant and excellent work

that you've done. I think the question

of gender, the absence

of, not really absence, but how people

talk about the male versus the female.

So all of these things. I'm gonna leave

that for the readers and the viewers to

really buy the book and read the book and

interact and engage with the book. I want to

ask you a question that is always a personal

stuff here. So I want to ask you. I can't

let you go without asking you this question.

This is a project about memory and history

and a sociological understanding of what the

French society is going through.

Even from the way you re-edited, and

the stuff that you added to the book.

Why does this matter to you as a son

of a North African, as a son of a Moroccan?

Why does it matter to you? Actually, I discovered

the existence of the 1983 march quickly when

I was a student in Lyon and I was

very surprised because I lived in

Les Minguettes. Actually, I am from Les Minguettes.

And we see this contrast between the historical

importance of the events and the fact that

as the resident of Les Minguettes who never

knew about it that made me think of the

issue of memory. Actually this is my

first student investigation: How the memory of

immigration and most specifically the memory

of the 1980 march is transmitted or not transmitted

in post-colonial immigration families. So this

is my first

investigation as a student, but after that

I realized that the history, the political

history of colonial immigration has

to be written. There are many historical,

sociological accounts about the history of

the social labor, of the labor movements,

of the Communist Party, of trade unions, and

the link to European immigration.

The role European immigration played

in the history of social movements,

the history of the labor movement is written,

even if, of course, there is always

work to be done. But regarding

the post-colonial immigration, when

I began my work in the beginning of the

decided to work on the 1983 march and after

that I studied the Arab workers' movement

which was founded by Driss El Yazami,

a friend of yours. And I published

in 2008, I made it a book called "Political

History of Post-colonial Immigration in France from

dealing with this political history. And we

gathered in this book main historians,

sociologists that were specialized in one specific

area, or a historical period, or in one specific

migration origin. I still continue working

on this issue because with other colleagues

we are working on, I would say

dictionary of immigrant

movements. There is a biographical dictionary of

labor movements and we have many biographical

notices on traditionalists, on members of the

Communist Party etc. It's very useful for historians

interested in this history, but there were

very few people from this post-colonial immigration

background, so we launched this project and

we hope that it would be a long-lasting project

plan. Thank you so much. So I will just

conclude by thanking everyone for participating,

for your questions, and especially to Aomar

for his wonderful interview. And thank you

so much for coming. Thank you very much for

coming. Thank you. Thank you to our online audience

and please do check the website for upcoming

events. We have some exciting events, including

a symposium on Ukraine and Bosnia and the

impact of cultural destruction in December,

and an interview, a panel discussion on the

films of Theo Angelopoulos which are

being shown at the Hammer Museum this month.

So I encourage you to check out the website

for upcoming events, including our usually

Tuesday lecture series, but sometimes Wednesday

lecture series. So thanks to everyone.