The Visible Invisibility of French Women, Descendants of Algerian Immigration

This paper will attempt to evaluate the challenges of integration and belonging faced by the author's female respondents, Franco-Algerian descendants from immigration living in France. Their trajectories are collected in unique oral histories tracing the women's dynamic self-identifications in national, ethnic and deeply personal terms. In an environment where the hijab, and now the abaya have been banned in French schools, Franco-Algerian women choose different paths of self-identification within the legally-coded assimilatory narrative of the French institutional actors. While more often than not sociological, historical and cultural studies focus most often on the way a receiving society is changed or challenged by immigrants and their born in the receiving society descendants, this research study turns the lens onto the subjective process of self-definition in children of immigration. Often, born in France and deeply unfamiliar with the country of origin of their parents - Algeria - descendants from immigration suffer othering and ascription of the same immigrant identity as that of their parents. Women, including some who are Muslim and lesbian, are often left in the shadow of the sociological studies as their politically essentialised background remain the predominantly men-led terrorist attacks or suburban uprisings. Yet women have been consistently politically and socially targeted for their cultural or religious visibility, whether they are Muslim or not. This paper offers to evaluate the strategies of acculturation, ethnic polyvalence and national ambivalence that some Franco-Algerian women apply, to preserve a culturally rich and non-antagonistic social self. Their unique trajectories lead to some clear hypothesis on the collective trends that mark the identification trajectory of Franco-Algerian women living in France today.