Algiers–Paris Round Trips: Diasporic Pathways of a Public Civil Dissidence

ABSTRACT

The fourth term official announcement of the Algerian President provoked in February 2014 a microscale protest movement called “Barakat” (Enough!) in Algiers. The state repression of the pacific protesters triggered a political mobilization among the Algerians living in France, particularly in Paris. Through an Algiers–Paris round-trip analysis, this article sheds light on the political involvement of the Algerian protesters in Paris. It explores the new Algerian diaspora process experience in the Arab civil uprising context, post-2011, and its protean outlines and contributions to reshape (or not) the frontiers of nation, citizenship, political participation, and public debate.

KEYWORDS:

• Algerian diaspora
• Algerian migration
• public sphere
• Algerian election
• dissidence
• civil protests
• nation-state

Acknowledgments

This research is developed in the framework of Professor Nilüfer Göle's “Public Space Democracy” Project on movements of Public Place, the public agency, and performative citizenship since 2013 at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) in Paris.

I would like to show my gratitude to Claire Beaugrand and Vincent Geisser, the guest-editors of this special issue. They selected my proposal on the Algerian case study in the international conference “The Role of Diasporas, Migrants and Exiles in the Arab Revolutions and Political Transitions” in Tunis, held October 16–17, 2014, and organized and supported by WAFAW ERC Project. The colloquium provided fecund discussions around the diaspora's concept and the Arab civil movements, post-2011.

My special thanks to Zehra Cunillera, my friend and colleague, whose meticulous proofreadings have provided valuable input to my manuscript.

Last, but not least, my special thanks to the Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies team and the guidelines of the anonymous reviewers, whose comments and recommendations on earlier versions of the manuscript have been invaluable.

Notes

1. The DRS (Direction du renseignement et de la sûreté) is the Algerian Intelligence Agency.

2. The FLN (Front de Libération Nationale – National Liberation Front) is an Algerian political party founded in 1954 for leading the Independence War.

3. In English in the original (Translator's note).

4. Transcribed here as it was written on the poster with its mistake: Yaqablouch has been written with a « k » instead of « q ».

5. Part of the empirical enquiry was also filmed by the author in order to capture the sounds, gestures and the oratory of the staging of public action by the protesters. The video materials harvested, which belong to the archival data of this research, deserve specific treatment, analysis and developments. General translator's note: Impossible to quite render here in English the author's fruitful word-play in French between place (a place, a locus) and place (a square, an open urban space).