Foreign Affairs, March/April 2005
"This informative and sophisticated work...examines Algerian immigration to France....[Silverstein] deftly summarizes the history of Franco-Algerian relations...."

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Algerian migration to France began at the end of the nineteenth 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" (or 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 an elaboration of alternate political loyalties that cross national boundaries. In this way, the book elucidates the mechanisms by which the Algerian civil war has been transferred onto French soil.

SYNOPSIS