Uncovering Silence: France’s Move to Reconciliation and the Depiction of Algerian Migrant Workers

Abstract

In the catalogue Algériens en France: 1954–1962, la guerre, l’exil, la vie (2012), Benjamin Stora and Linda Amiri represent the lives of Algerian labourers and their struggles in the shantytowns around Paris during the Algerian War for Independence. From 1954 to 1962, the Algerian population in France rose sharply; yet, the workers were silenced in the national story until 2001, on the fortieth anniversary of the 17 October 1961 massacre of peaceful Algerian protesters in Paris. This article examines works that move Algerian migrant workers into the spotlight while considering historian Benjamin Stora’s 2021 report Les Questions mémorielles portant sur la colonisation et la guerre d’Algérie . This article analyzes how formal reconciliation work functions in the memorialization of Algerian migrant workers in France from the 1990s onwards, and how new memorial efforts embrace a discourse of silence and forgetting that effectively covers over the memory work that had already been undertaken.