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Christiane Taubira's spirited invocation of colonial poetry at the French National Assembly in 2013 denounced the French politics of assimilation in Guyana . It was seen as an attempt to promote respect for difference, defend the equality of gay and heterosexual rights, and give a voice to silent social and cultural minorities. Taubira's unmatched passion for poetry and social justice, applied to the current Political arena, made her an instant star in the media and on the Internet. This book relates to the mimetic and transformative powers of literature and film. It examines literary works and films that help deflate stereotypes regarding France's post-immigration population, promote a new respect for cultural and ethnic minorities. The writers and filmmakers examined in the book have found new ways to conceptualize the French heritage of immigration from North Africa and to portray the current state of multiculturalism in France. The book opens with Steve Puig's helpful recapitulation of the development of beur, banlieue, and urban literatures, closely related and partly overlapping taxonomies describing the cultural production of second-generation, postcolonial immigrants to France. Discussing the works of three writers, the book discusses the birth of a new Maghrebi-French women's literature. Next comes an examination of how the fictional portrayal of women in Guene's novels differs from the representation of female characters in traditional beur literature. The book also explores the development of Abdellatif Kechiche's cinema, Djaidani's film and fiction, French perception of Maghrebi-French youth, postmemorial immigration, fiction, and postmemory and identity in harki.
4 The North African syndrome: madness and colonization Introduction Fanon concludes Black Skin, White Masks with an exclamatory statement: ‘Oh my body make a man that questions!’ This enigmatic statement is at odds with his critique: while interrogating, he still espouses an assimilationist discourse which is at the origin of the Negro’s acculturation and alienation. However, in his article ‘The North African Syndrome’ (1952) and in his critical appraisal of the School of Algiers of psychiatry in The Wretched of the Earth (1961), he refutes France
chapter highlights three generic socio-economic issues that affected all strata of colonial society: taxation, labour supply, and urban development. The last subject is analysed in regard to French North Africa, the one colonial arena where Europeans in tens of thousands interacted directly with colonial populations. Taxation The French colonial state taxed
How does migration feature in states’ diplomatic agendas across the Middle East? Until recently, popular wisdom often held that migration is an important socio-economic, rather than political, phenomenon. Migration diplomacy in the Middle East counters this expectation by providing the first systematic examination of the foreign policy importance of migrants, refugees, and diasporas in the Global South. Gerasimos Tsourapas examines how emigration-related processes become embedded in governmental practices of establishing and maintaining power; how states engage with migrant and diasporic communities residing in the West; how oil-rich Arab monarchies have extended their support for a number of sending states’ ruling regimes via cooperation on labour migration; and, finally, how labour and forced migrants may serve as instruments of political leverage. Drawing on multi-sited fieldwork and data collection and employing a range of case studies across the Middle East and North Africa, Tsourapas enhances existing understandings of regional migration governance in the Global South. The book identifies how the management of cross-border mobility in the Middle East is not primarily dictated by legal, moral, or human rights considerations but driven by states’ actors key concern – political power. Offering key insights into the history and current migration policy dilemmas, the book will provide both novices and specialists with fresh insights on migration into, out of, and across the modern Middle East.
emigration and the economic urge to embrace it. The chapter aims to unpack this dimension of Middle East states’ migration diplomacy further by shedding additional light on the state–diaspora relations as they have developed across North Africa. The examples of Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt demonstrate how states are torn between ‘controlling’ and ‘courting’ their diasporas residing in Europe and North America. Regime security considerations have led the first four states to develop intricate control mechanisms that aim to prevent political activism abroad
of coronavirus measures, which have limited existing sources of income and restricted future livelihood opportunities ( UN Women, 2020a : 30). The 2022 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) figures indicate that the number of displaced persons in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region exceeds 16 million, with a significant share being vulnerable women and children ( UNHCR, 2022a ). Existing livelihood barriers in the region include: restrictions
With a selected focus on Europe and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Knowledge production in higher education presents a reflexive understanding of how Europe is taught and studied at MENA universities and how knowledge about the MENA is produced in Europe. This focus is based on the observation that higher education is rarely an apolitical space and an acknowledgement of how ‘every view is a view from somewhere’. It therefore explores the politics of institutes of higher education in view of often competing scholarly practices. Furthermore, it examines the historical evolution of French, German and Italian scholarship on the MENA; analyses the cases of Malta, Palestine and Turkey with their respective liminal characteristics in between the MENA and Europe, and how these impact on higher educational approaches to the study of the Other; considers critique as the driving force not only of the higher educational establishment but of liberal and illiberal contexts, with a specific focus on Denmark, the Netherlands and Egypt; and examines influences upon knowledge production including gender, the COVID-19 pandemic (with a focus on the UK and Syria) and think tanks.
The Mediterranean Sea has recently become the deadliest of borders for illegalised travellers. The victims of the European Union’s liquid border are also found near North African shores. The question of how and where to bury these unknown persons has recently come to the fore in Zarzis, a coastal town in south-east Tunisia. Everyone involved in these burials – the coastguards, doctors, Red Crescent volunteers, municipality employees – agree that what they are doing is ‘wrong’. It is neither dignified nor respectful to the dead, as the land used as a cemetery is an old waste dump, and customary attitudes towards the dead are difficult to realise. This article will first trace how this situation developed, despite the psychological discomfort of all those affected. It will then explore how the work of care and dignity emerges within this institutional chain, and what this may tell us about what constitutes the concept of the human.
discussing the context of the private SAR operations in the Mediterranean and the events following the rescue of migrants by the Sea-Watch 3 , I will try to make sense of the German response to these events. Although most irregularised migrants do not enter Europe by sea, and in recent years the Central Mediterranean route (from Tunisia and Libya to Italy and Malta) has not always been the most often used sea route, for the past ten years or so, European public attention has focused on the waters between North Africa and Sicily. That is largely because the Central