| abstract |
In this dissertation, I explore how immigrants to France from North Africa understood "belonging" in relationship both to their country of origin and to their adopted home, adding new perspectives on the phenomenon of North African immigration and its influence on French politics, culture, and society. To achieve this, I place the issue of immigration on a transnational scale, studying newspapers in France in French and Arabic, which has enabled me to gain an understanding of the Moroccan community and its active involvement and participation in key political debates about rights, citizenship, colonialism, and religion within French society, and how they have contributed to economic and legal changes in France.
I focus my research on Al Jaliyah, an Arabic-language newspaper published in France from 1972-1984, which provides insight into the perspective of immigrants and their families on key shifts in immigration discourse in recent French history, as well as how they understood developments in Morocco. Because the paper was funded by the immigrant community, and not by the government or by any major media organization, I also decenter normal positions of power, offering the means to write a history from below.
This dissertation argues for and examines the shifts regarding the discourse of belonging to understand the immigrant experience. I show how during the 1970s and half of 1980s, many Moroccans came to present themselves as guest workers because their status was temporary. It was only later that they emphasized their status as immigrants and started to demand modification of their residency status in relationship to their work. The presence of Moroccan immigrants in France and their activism during the late twentieth century has shaped the social imaginary of the Moroccans and French in France in ways that transformed the self-understanding of both communities that allowed the Moroccans to maintain their ties with their counterparts back home.
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