From Revolution to Rights: the Politics of Immigrant Activism in France (1968-1983)

From Revolution to Rights: The Politics of Immigrant Activism in France (1968-1983) Cole Stangler Honors History Thesis May 6, 2013 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………...3 Guide to Acronyms and Initialisms……………………………………….4 Images…………………………………………………………………….....5 Introduction………………………………………………………………...7 Chapter 1…………………………………………………………………..18 Chapter 2…………………………………………………………………. 30 Chapter 3…………………………………………………………………..47 Chapter 4…………………………………………………………………..66 Chapter 5…………………………………………………………………..80 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………93 Bibliography…………………………………………………………........97 3 Acknowledgements I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my thesis advisors, Professor Osama Abi-Mershed of the History Department, Professor Sylvie Durmelat of the French Department, and Professor Henry Schwarz of the English Department. Each of their distinct academic backgrounds and interests contributed greatly to this work, and my thesis is undoubtedly indebted to the invaluable criticism and encouragement they provided along the way. I would also like to thank Professor Howard Spendelow for his guidance and my classmates for their input over the course of our many seminar meetings. 4 English Guide to French Acronyms and Initialisms (By order of appearance) Trade Unions CGT: General Work Confederation CFDT: French Democratic Confederation of Labor UNEF: National Student Union Federation Political Organizations ENA: North African Star FLN: National Liberation Front MTA: Arab Workers Movement PCF: French Communist Party MTLD: Movement for the Triumph of Democratic Liberties MNA: Algerian National Movement SFIO: French Section of the Workers International, or The Socialist Party MCFml: French Communist Movement (Marxist-Leninist) PSU: Unified Socialist Party CAPR: Pederastic Revolutionary Action Committee FHAR: Homosexual Revolutionary Action Front MLF: Women’s Liberation Movement LC: Communist League GP: Proletarian Left MRAP: Movement Against Racism, Anti-Semitism and for Peace CDVDTI: Committee for the Defense of Life and Rights of Immigrant Workers 5 Images Figure 1: “Travailleurs français et immigrés unis. À travail égal, salaire égal…” Atelier populaire de l’ex-Ecole des beaux-arts, May 1968. Image retrieved from Bibliothèque nationale de la France online database. Accessed November 2012. 6 Figure 2: “Pour l’unité avec tous les travailleurs contre le racisme,” Mouvement des travailleurs arabes, Unknown date. Image retrieved from Génériques association online database Odysséo. Accessed April 2013. Translated by author. “For our rights, our dignity. For unity with all workers against racism. With the Palestinian people.” 7 Introduction In late May 1968, in the midst of a crippling general strike and national protest movement that was still growing across France, a poster appeared on the streets of Paris reading, “Workers, French, Immigrants, All United.”1 Below this message the demand “Equal Work For Equal Pay” appeared in smaller font, written in French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Portuguese, Croatian and Arabic. This poster, produced at the prestigious School of Fine Arts, then under student occupation, was one of the roughly 700 produced during the May-June protest movement that year.2 “May ‘68”, as that movement is now commonly known, began as a protest among university students before rapidly escalating into a series of spontaneous work stoppages that eventually brought the nation to a standstill and political crisis. This particular poster, while anchored in the theme of student-worker unity so characteristic of May ‘68, was also one of several to evoke specifically the situation of France’s large immigrant labor force—a growing group that, despite making up over 5% of France’s population,3 was effectively excluded from the national political and social arena. Non French-nationals were prohibited from voting in elections, forming state- recognized associations and serving in union leadership positions. On the one hand, therefore, the poster reflects a desire to overcome these boundaries, speaking to the interest in the lives of immigrants that was part of May ’68 and the intense period of political activism that ensued. But it also beckons, the utopian effervescence of its 1 “Travailleurs français immigrés tous unis. À travail égal, salaire égal…” Atelier populaire de l’ex-Ecole des beaux-arts, May 1968. See Images, Figure 1. 2 Michelle Seidman, The Imaginary Revolution: Parisian Workers in 1968 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2004), 133. 3 “Recensements de la population de 1962 à 1999: Tableau rétrospectif départemental - Population totale par nationalité,” Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques. 8 creators aside, larger questions about the political participation of France’s immigrant population during May and its aftermath. The May-June social movement was effectively squelched in June 1968 after the nation’s trade unions, led by the General Work Confederation (CGT),4 agreed to end the strikes in an agreement with George Pompidou’s right-wing government. The following month, in snap legislative elections, Pompidou’s party coasted to its largest victory in the history of the then ten year old Fifth Republic, and in 1969, held on to win the presidential elections. It is thus tempting to view May ‘68, as the political philosopher and public intellectual Raymond Aron famously put it a month after the movement, as a “non-event.”5 Or perhaps to regard it, as Michael Seidman titled his more recent book on the events, as an “imaginary revolution.” But while a specific social movement did whither away in June 1968, this paper rests on the premise that the politics and ideology of that movement—in addition to the counter-reactions it produced in French society—continued to have a profound impact over the following decade. While avoiding either romanticizing or disparaging the still hotly-debated events of May-June 1968, this paper adopts the framework of historians like Michelle Zancirini-Fournel, Daniel Gordon and others who refer to the “’68 years” as a specific historical sequence of French political and social life. This paper considers that period to be one of heightened political militancy, increased contestation of hierarchy and social norms, a flourishing of new forms of political organization with a preference toward direct action, and, perhaps most importantly, as the starting point for new political 4 Confédération Générale de Travail. 5 Raymond Aron, The Elusive Revolution: Anatomy of a Student Revolt (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1969), iv. 9 movements that sought to address historically marginalized groups—women, the LGBT community, immigrants. The years immediately following 1968 were a period during which immigrants of varying national origins living in France drew on a new host of allies, gained autonomy as political actors in their own right, and mobilized on a range of issues—they called for better working and housing conditions, spearheaded initiatives to combat racism and discrimination, and launched campaigns to obtain a more stable legal status in France. In doing so, these immigrants relied on support networks and alliances built with a new political generation of French activists: one forged by opposing the Algerian War and emboldened by the revolutionary possibilities opened up by May 1968. While the different struggles waged by immigrant activists never coalesced into a sustained movement with coordinated national reach, this paper aims to analyze these various contestations as a whole. The most prominent autonomous immigrant organization that emerged during this period—the Arab Workers Movement—was also marked politically and ideologically by the post-68 wave of contestation. This paper will examine the origins and evolution of this wave of immigrant political activism, aim to better understand its dynamics by situating it in a historical sequence, and trace its fizzling out by the end of the 1970s. When a younger generation of activists organized a now well- known national march in 1983, the March for Equality and Against Racism, this previous sequence of immigrant activism had been forgotten by both the press and the participants of this march.6 6 Saïd Bouamama, Dix ans de marche des Beurs: chronique d’un mouvement avorté (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1994), 24. 10 While French scholars have, on balance, been relatively slow to examine immigrant-led political movements in their nation, an increasing share of historians have devoted attention to the anti-colonial nationalist movements that gained a foothold in the French Metropole in the first half of the 20th century. There has been an array of scholarship on the origins and various incarnations of Algerian nationalism in Metropolitan France, from the North African Star (ENA)7 in the 1920s to the National Liberation Front (FLN)8 in the 1950s and 60s.9 There has also been, albeit to a lesser extent, research on the anti-colonial political activism of Vietnamese immigrants living in France during the Indochina War.10 Some attention has been given to the forms of political action taken by immigrants living in post-colonial France.11 Of this body of research, most scholarship has focused on the so-called Beurs, the children of North African immigrants to France, who in contrast to their first-generation immigrant parents, typically grew up in metropolitan France, went to French schools, and held French citizenship.12 Interest in the Beurs spiked notably after the 1983 march, which made front-page news in nearly all 7 Étoile

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