Algeria in France: Transpolitics, Race, and Nation

Algerian migration to France began at the end of the 19th 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"
("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 elucidates the mechanisms by which the Algerian civil war
has been transferred onto French soil.