Migrations in the Maghreb and Western Mediterranean* Kamel

MIGRATIONS IN THE MAGHREB AND WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN* Kamel Kateb and Hassène Kassar This chapter discusses emigration and immigration in the countries of the Maghreb: Tunisia, Morocco, and especially Algeria since its colonization. It will also mention the role of Malta and Sicily as sending societies as well as Europe’s southern littoral both as region of departure and, later, of arrival. In a brief retrospective we will survey the multidirectional migrations from ancient times to the end of Ottoman rule. French colonization of Algeria from 1830 ended traditional patterns of migration and resulted in flight from colonial rule and massive immigration from Europe. The colonizer families’ need for the labour of those dispossessed of their land led to a legislative attack on mobility: flight from colonial rule and emigration was illegalized as in-migration to France would be after 1974. Dur- ing World War One, France—la grande nation—needed the help of the colonies: Soldiers and workers were drafted from the Maghreb and had to leave their families behind. Through these involuntary migrations they “discovered” potential destinations for labour migration in the metro- pole. With independence in 1962, the large-scale European immigration to Algeria, 1830s to 1914, reversed and, in addition, a large-scale North African out-migration began. The oil price-shock in 1973–74 resulted in legal restrictions on immigration to France and the whole of Europe. Each of these major periods and moves showed distinctive demographic characteristics. Over the whole period the family and gender composition of migrants changed from families and tribes fleeing French rule to indi- vidual men and, later, women, taking urban jobs in the Maghreb’s cities and then in France. Retrospective: Immigrations to the Maghreb over the Centuries For many centuries, the Maghreb, as crossroads between the north and the south, was a space of human mixing and cultural exchange or fusion. It connected sub-Saharan Africa and Mediterranean Europe through * Translated and abridged from the French by Dirk Hoerder. 218 kamel kateb and hassène kassar long-distance commerce and human exchanges. The region—once settled by east-west migrations from the Nile Valley—experienced the arrival of the Romans from the Italian peninsula and the departure of Arabs for the Iberian Peninsula, the south of France, and Sicily in the eighth century. In all of these migrations, men and women were involved, communities and societies were built. When the Catholic rulers of Castille expelled the Jews—men, women, children—in 1492 and, later, the Muslims, many found refuge in the Maghreb’s cities. With Ottoman rule from the six- teenth century, soldiers and administrators arrived, often with families. Trading in sub-Saharan, Muslim, and Christian slaves—mainly men— added to the mix of peoples. This interaction changed in the early nineteenth century. Of the European powers, the British and the French ones penetrated into the Mediterranean spaces and impoverished Italian, Mal- tese, Sicilian, French and Spanish migrants arrived. Europeans of many cultural backgrounds lived in the Maghreb societies before French colonization. While no quantitative data are available, references are numerous. Those longest established were the descendants of manumitted slaves, adventurers, and especially merchants from Mar- seille and Genoa in the Regency of Tunis. They lived under protocols of coexistence or written “capitulations” with no need for passports or other papers. Few cared to register with their consulates, thus the British Con- sul in Naples could only estimate the number of subjects of the Crown in North Africa. In the eighteenth century, the ports of Goulette, Tanger, Algiers, and Oran, long the debarkation stations of invading Ottoman and Spanish forces, received considerable numbers of Sicilian, Sardinian, Mal- tese, and Spanish in fishing or construction. These families built their own “villages” and churches within the several coastal cities and lived accord- ing to their customs and traditions. In the first half of the nineteenth century, migrants from the densely populated islands of Malta and Sicily fled poverty and lack of jobs, during the nineteenth-century agrarian crises in the south of both the Italian and Iberian peninsulas impoverished Italians came to the coast of Tunis and eastern Algeria and Spanish to those of western Algeria and Morocco. The “free” migrations, self-decided under severe economic constraints, reflected political, economic, and societal crises, imperial penetrations and revolutions, military defeats, agricultural disasters like phylloxera, a pest that destroys vineyards. In the 1860s, when the misery in Sicily became even more acute, young men fleeing military conscription as well as local bandits fleeing the police came. All, men and women, took advantage of the opportunities that France’s colonization of .

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