following the decolonization movements that swept the globe after World War ii, between four and six million people were “returned” to Europe from the colonies. From an exporter of people, Europe Andrea L. Smith (ed.) turned to a site of immigration for the first time in the twentieth century. until now, these migrations have been overlooked as scholars have highlighted instead the parallel migrations of former “colo- nized” peoples. Europe’s Invisible Migrants cor- rects this bias. This multidisciplinary volume Europe’s Invisible Migrants presents essays by prominent sociologists, his- torians, and anthropologists on their research andrea l. smith is assistant with these “invisible” migrant communities. professor of anthropology at Their work explores the experiences of colo- Lafayette College. She has nists returning to France, Portugal and the published on social memory, Europe’s Netherlands, the ways national and colonial citizenship law, and race, class ideologies of race and citizenship have assisted and ethnicity in colonial Alge- Andrea L. Smith in or impeded their assimilation and the roles ria and Tunisia. Her current (ed.) Invisible history and memory have played in this pro- research explores memories cess, and the ways these migrations reflect the of Algeria among pieds-noirs in return of the “colonial” to Europe. contemporary France. Migrants Amsterdam University Press isbn 90 5356 571 x www.aup.nl 9 789053 565711 Amsterdam University Press Europe’s Invisible Migrants Europe’s Invisible Migrants Andrea L. Smith (ed.) Amsterdam University Press Cover illustration: Pierre Domenech Cover design: Randy Lemaire, Utrecht Lay-out: Japes, Amsterdam NUR 764/747 ISBN 90 5356 571 X © Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2003 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or trans- mitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the aut- hor of this book. Table of Contents Acknowledgements 7 Introduction Europe’s Invisible Migrants Andrea L. Smith, Lafayette College 9 Part One: Repatriates or Migrants? Returning “Home” 1. No Sheltering Sky: Migrant Identities of Dutch Nationals from Indonesia Wim Willems, Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies, The Netherlands 33 2. The Creation of the Pieds-Noirs: Arrival and Settlement in Marseilles, 1962 Jean-Jacques Jordi, Université de Provence, France 61 3. Race, Class, and Kin in the Negotiation of “Internal Strangerhood” among Portuguese Retornados, 1975-2000 Stephen C. Lubkemann, George Washington University 75 4. Repatriates or Immigrants? A Commentary Caroline B. Brettell, Southern Methodist University 95 Part Two: The Migrants, History and Memory: Reconfiguring Colonialism after the fact 5. From Urn to Monument: Dutch Memories of World War II in the Pacific, 1945-1995 Elsbeth Locher-Scholten, Utrecht University, the Netherlands 105 5 6. Pied-Noir Memory, History, and the Algerian War William B. Cohen, Indiana University 129 7. The Wrinkles of Decolonization and Nationness: White Angolans as Retornados in Portugal Ricardo E. Ovalle-Bahamón, University of California, Irvine 147 8. Postcolonial Peoples: A Commentary Frederick Cooper, New York University 169 Notes 185 Sources Cited 209 Index 237 6•Europe’s Invisible Migrants Acknowledgements Most of the authors of this book first met at the April 9, 1999 confer- ence, “Europe’s Invisible Migrants: Consequences of the Colonists’ ‘Return,’” which was sponsored by the Institute of French Studies, New York University. Before that time, we had been working on our own, isolated from each other by geography and disciplinary boundaries. Once together, we quickly found that our research covered much common ground. Conference attendees commented on the multiple ways that the papers intersected, and suggested that this represented an exciting moment of convergence in academic scholarship, one that may even represent the emergence of a new field of study, and one that cer- tainly merited consolidation into a common text. We thus embarked together on the longer project of developing this book. The Institute of French Studies, New York University, generously supported the initial conference. I thank Susan Carol Rogers for sug- gesting that I organize such a conference, and for her unflagging and intelligent counsel throughout my fellowship year at NYU in 1998-9. I also thank the other institute members, including Ed Berenson, Jay Hogge, Emmanuelle Saada, Muriel Darmon, as well as institute stu- dents, for their warm welcome and the dynamic esprit de corps that characterized my tenure there. I am grateful to Lafayette College, in par- ticular the members of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology, for the research leave that made that fellowship year possible, and for a second leave in fall 2001 that allowed me to bring this manuscript to publication. Lafayette College also provided financial assistance for manuscript preparation. I thank William Poulin-Deltour for his care in translating Jean-Jacques Jordi’s chapter from the French. Caroline Brettell and Fred Cooper provided expert advice on all aspects of this project. Many colleagues generously assisted me in identifying potential conference 7 participants, in further honing the conference theme, or in reading draft chapters and the book prospectus, including Thomas Abercrom- bie, Gerard Althabe, Joëlle Bahloul, Thomas Beidelman, Peter Benda, Jonathan Boyarin, Renate Bridenthal, Robin Cohen, Colette Dubois, Kathryn Earle, Alison Leitch, Tony Judt, Ruth Mandel, Robert Moeller, Ceri Peach, Peter Romijn, Daniel Segal, Ionanni Sinanoglou, Steven Vertovec, and Thomas Wilson. I am grateful for their contributions, however I take responsibility for any shortcomings of the final volume. The book benefited from the assistance of Amsterdam University Press editors Suzanne Bogman and Chantal Nicolaes, and the careful atten- tion of the copyeditors Marica Ognjenovic and Tijn Zweerts. We are grateful as well to Randy Lemaire who drew the map, and to Pierre Domenech for his powerful photograph that graces the cover. Finally, special thanks are due Lafayette College Excel Scholar Jennifer Bennett for her remarkable dedication to the project as we prepared the manu- script for publication, which included her keen editorial advice, research assistance, and unstinting attention to detail. 8•Europe’s Invisible Migrants Introduction Europe’s Invisible Migrants Andrea L. Smith In the wake of worldwide decolonization movements, an estimated five to seven million people were repatriated to Europe over a thirty-five-year period that began during World War II. This mass population move- ment represents Europe’s first important shift in the twentieth century from a site of net population exportation to one of immigration. It has now been sixty years since the first of these migrants, Italians from Libya, began to return “home” in 1940. It would be a reasonable assumption that considerable research has been completed on the long-term consequences of these migrations – the consequences for the migrants themselves, as well as for the host nations and their soci- eties and economies, and, furthermore, that the results of this research has influenced wider theoretical developments in the social sciences. This is not the case. The subject is only now gaining the attention of more than a handful of social scientists. Previously, this work had been carried out by scholars of different disciplinary affiliations who for the most part were working within specific metropolitan contexts with little knowledge of each other’s work. As a result, their contributions also remain isolated from wider debates in anthropology, history, and sociology, and most notably from the rich and burgeoning literature on European immigration, integration and multiculturalism. This book brings together for the first time work in English done by scholars who have explored the consequences to the migrants and the metropole of postcolonial return migrations to Portugal, France, and the Netherlands. Here I introduce the reader to the three decolonization experiences covered in the chapters that follow, presenting them first in the wider context of the array of European return migrations associated with post-World War II decolonization movements. I underscore anal- ogous and contrasting features of the colonial and decolonization his- tories involved. Finally, we will consider reasons for the “invisibility” of 9 these migrants in academic literature to date, and the ways a considera- tion of this new subject can challenge and advance current theory. Migrations of Decolonization – An Overview The decolonization migrations considered here occurred principally in the decades during and after World War II. Certainly, mass migrations had been tied to decolonization in earlier historical periods; across the centuries of European imperialism, states often embarked on new con- quests while granting independence to others. In addition, some colo- nial officers and settlers did not leave the region following decoloniza- tion movements, and those who did were not always bound for Europe, such as the Belgians who left Central for South Africa (Salman 1994:198). However, the mass decolonization of much of the colonial world that has occurred since World War II represents a sea change in world history, and the resulting