delcroix:print 24/7/09 16:00 Page 87 TWO GENERATIONS OF MUSLIM WOMEN IN FRANCE: CREATIVE PARENTING, IDENTITY AND RECOGNITION by Catherine Delcroix In bringing up and educating their children, Muslim immigrant parents (coming ABSTRACT from North Africa and living in France) are very aware of the difficulty of the Key words: task. Their children face a double bind: on the one hand, French society asks creativity; them to ‘integrate’, that is to enter into labour markets and melt into French parenting; ways of life. On the other hand teachers, employers, the police and media Muslim; keep considering them as ‘the other’. Immigrant parents show tremendous France creativity in trying to help their children, boys and girls differently, to cope with this double bind. In France today there are approximately one educate their children to face the difficulties million families who come from North Africa. linked to economic instability: unemployment, Many of these are large families. Their children chronic shortage of money, and discrimination.2 are born in France and they are French citizens. For studying the educational strategies of Their language is French, and they are raised in these families, I have used a methodological French schools. They feel French. But given the approach based on the reconstruction of family colonial past of France, the metropolitan histories, drawn from life story interviews with French continue to consider them somehow as several members of each family: parents, chil- ‘the other’. This post-colonial attitude has very dren and so on. I have repeated these case damaging consequences, encouraging discrim- studies in many different regions and cities of ination by some teachers, by employers, by France. For each case study, I chose families landlords and by the police.1 with similar living situations, and similar prob- Their parents and especially their mothers lems in terms of migration, work, resources and are fully aware of what their children will have family life. My aim was to identify the different to face. Mothers in particular are concerned to types of life paths and diverse profiles of these prepare their children to encounter the risks of city families. discriminatory situations. I myself have been In order to have a better understanding of reconstructing in-depth case studies of Muslim the experiences of families confronted by such immigrant families in France for many years. daily uncertainties, it was essential for me to For the last twenty years I have focused in hear their own intimate accounts of their lives. particular on how these working class families But this was a difficult challenge. In effect, originating from the Maghreb – the mountain- confronted by a typically accusatory public ous rural interior of Algeria and Morocco – discourse, Muslim families had very rarely Autumn 2009 ORAL HISTORY 87 delcroix:print 24/7/09 16:00 Page 88 opened their doors to researchers, whom they same legislation with the ‘Métropole’. But the equated with judgemental journalists or social problem was whether or not full citizenship workers. However I explained at the start that should be given to the Algerian Muslim natives: I had not come to interrogate them, and ‘Les Indigènes’. There were nine million of denource them as neglectful parents. I wanted them. Most were Arabs and Kabyles (one third to grasp and then describe the efforts which they of the population). There was also a small were making to overcome their difficulties, and Jewish minority who had been living there for similarly with those of their children who centuries. The ‘Décret Crémieux’ of 24 October agreed to participate. This positive approach 1871 gave full citizenship to the 37,000 Jewish opened the door. Algerians, and also to European colonisers It seemed to me esssential in order to under- coming from Spain, Italy or Malta. But Muslim stand the lives of these households in depth to Algerians, if they wished to acquire French citi- develop a research approach combining the zenship, had to renounce their religious faith – ethnographic with the sociological. The ethno- and few did this. So the French government graphic approach is based on living and staying condemned Algerian Muslims to a subaltern with the families studied, joining them on status. outings and on holidays, observing their daily The very influential French colonisers actitivies and their reflections on them. claimed that they needed a docile labour force Salvador Juan points out that in contemporary (of Algerians) with subaltern status to develop western cities it is no longer possible for a the fertile lands that they had conquered during researcher to share the daily life of of inhabi- the colonial war. This, however, ran against the tants for as long and with as much intensity as republican principles of ‘Liberté, Égalité, earlier generations of anthropologists in far- Fraternité’ for all, of whatever race or religion. away cultures. Nevertheless a valid ‘socio- The solution to this contradiction was found anthropological’ approach is possible insofar as through basing differences in religious adher- relationships of confidentiality can be estab- ence. The new law stated that nobody in Algeria lished, complemented by observation, and could become a full French citizen without resumed at intervals.3 The sociological giving up Islam. But to legitimise such discrim- approach seeks to identify the collective ination against one specific religion by a French processses shared with thousands of other fami- state which boasted a secular identity, a whole lies which have similar experiences to those of discourse had to be developed. It was claimed the Nour, the family I chose to study over a that Muslims men were barbarian, uncivilised, period many years. The Nour are a Moroccan cruel and oppressing women.5 Algerians still family with eight children, who have been living remember today very bitterly how the French in France for over thirty years. In keeping with Republic betrayed its ideals and closed the door the spirit of my original approach – to them and to all Muslims while letting the Jews becoming to other families – I have published a portrait French citizens. And the French collective atti- of their family and their struggles, a sequence tude towards Muslims is still shaped by the of testimonies of first Madame Nour and then negative images of Islam which were propa- all the eight children, which as a livre de poche gated at this time. (cheap paperback) has had a wide circulation These stereotypes were greatly revived in France: one step towards a wider under- during the 1954-62 Algerian war of Indepen- standing of this crucial French minority.4 dence. About one million Algerians and 23,000 From early on in this long observation of young French soldiers were killed. With the Muslim families, I was recurrently amazed by defeat of France in 1962 about a million French the great creativity that their mothers show in colonisers, not all of them rich, left Algeria in a bringing up their children.But before turning hurry, abandoning their properties. But the to the core of this article, let me outline some paradox is that in the three years that followed, points about the historical context of Muslim more than a million Algerian men came to work immigration to France. in French factories, agriculture and building I believe that the present negative French trades. They were the frontline of immigration perception of Islam stems especially from the coming from North Africa. The reason for this colonisation of Algeria. This part of Africa, considerable human flow is unknown to most which is larger than France itself, was French people. There was a secret agreement conquered by French troops between 1830 and between the French government under de 1860. In 1871, the French political regime Gaulle and the new revolutionary government changed drastically. Napoleon III had to resign of independent Algeria. According to this agree- and a republic was eventually established. In ment, the Algerian state agreed that up to one this new context, it was decided to incorporate million young men could work for French Algeria into the territory of France, sharing the employers. 88 ORAL HISTORY Autumn 2009 delcroix:print 24/7/09 16:00 Page 89 France at that time was undergoing a own life history to their children. This history process of very rapid industrialisation and will have been shaped by a twofold series of modernisation, which later on was called the humiliating experiences. First, and common to ‘French miracle’. Western European powers everybody, irrespective of whether they were were competing to import low cost labour born in France or have emigrated, is the expe- which employers wanted to keep as cheap as rience of having occupied the lowest posts in possible. During their first years these young society. Second, and specific to immigrants, is men worked hard and lived in miserable slum the racism that they have experienced. In conditions. But before long rapid economic common with everyone from the southern growth allowed the development of decent shores of the Mediterranean. Arabs and Berbers housing on the periphery of cities in the form are proud and noble peoples, who are prone to of huge housing blocks: the now famous silence when it comes to admitting what they ‘banlieues’. Initially these were built to host have been through. But this silence is also a French workers from rural backgrounds, collective phenomenon, and the media plays a Portuguese or Spaniards, and eventually North large part in contributing to it – as they also do Africans workers also got access to this in ignoring the history of the French working housing. Some had already brought in a young classes when compared with the rural history wife illegally, but after the closure of the French of the population – which has been more borders to new immigrants in 1974, the immi- comprehensively reported and seen as part of grants workers who were installed in France got national identity.