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DOI: 10.1177/0020715206066165 ‘Foreigners’, Nationalism and the ‘Colonial Fracture’Stigmatized Subjects of Historical Memory in FranceLongwood University, USA The riots that shook the French banlieues in 2005, while unique in their geographic extension and political resonance, are but the most recent manifestation of an ongoing escalation of violence and repression that has periodically rocked the economically devastated, socially fractured and highly cosmopolitan cityscape of post-industrial France. The stigmatization of unemployed youths and outcast working-class families as ‘foreign’ is a complex and multi-layered phenomenon. This article traces the history of the so-called ‘immigrant problem’, and of policy responses to it, from the time of the Algerian war to the republican nationalist backlash against multiculturalism over the past two decades. The trauma of decolonization, increased visibility of Maghrebi, West African, Antillian and other communities with origins outside of Europe, fears of ‘islamicization’, and political/ideological controversies over how the nation's history should be remembered and taught to future generations, have weighed heavily on the representation of immigrants and their descendants as unassimilated threats to national cohesion. Far from limiting their agency to criminality and random social violence, the youths of the banlieues have played an active role in redefining the terms in which citizenship and national identity, as well as the colonial heritage of France, are cast in the arena of public debate, challenging state policies and well-entrenched historical myths in the process.
Key Words: diaspora spaces • historical memory • nationality • politics of heritage • postcolonial migration • racialization
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