ABSTRACT
In France, like in other European countries, for around the last thirty years the issue of immigration and that of security have become impossible to separate in the political-media debate. As has been shown for some time by certain authors,1 the history of foreigners or immigrants in France is structurally linked to the construction of the nation-state and industrialization. In the French case, however, one must also add the impact of de-colonization and, in particular, that of an Algerian War that was traumatic in various senses and not acknowledged as such for a long time, even when, in the 1960s and 1970s, Algerian workers and then their families became the most numerous group among immigrants.2 The consequence has been a powerful anti-Arabic racism (Gastaut, 2000). Finally, over the last few years, the new research approaches point to a third dimension
1 See, for example, Noiriel (1988), Viet (2004). 2 See Stora (1991, 1992). Since then, Algerian immigration (and later Moroccan
of the analysis of the history of immigration, that of a ‘post-colonial’ society that preserves, nolens volens [whether it wants to or not], a devaluing, suspicious and often discriminatory attitude towards populations whose origins lie in its former colonies (Fassin and Fassin, 2006). All of this makes it possible to understand the persistence, over the last thirty years, if not of a more or less explicit xenophobia, at least of an attitude towards populations with immigrant origins that is marked by suspicion. A suspicion of ‘regressive’ violence (as is witnessed by the frequent use of the term ‘barbarism’ in describing certain criminal events), suspicion of cynicism (‘they take advantage of the system’, of social benefits etc.), suspicion of ‘poor integration’, suspicion of rebellion or subversion.
