Housing for single foreigners in 20th-century France:
Three historical configurations.
Marc Bernardot, sociologist, associate member of URMIS (Migrations and Society research unit)
22 February 1999
The question of housing for single foreigners is one aspect of the broader problematics of the emergence of 'colonial' populations in the migratory flows towards metropolitan France. Among such populations, 'Algerian' workers are particularly concerned on account of their numbers and early migrations. Several hypotheses may be advanced about the special features of this movement and its importance in the history of the handling of foreign populations in France.
The first hypothesis would argue for a double continuity: (1) between the nineteenth-century strategies of control and sedentarisation of single workers and those applied to Algerian workers in the twentieth century and (2) between the representations and techniques of pacification of the colonial territories and the conceptions of the supervision of 'native' immigrants in metropolitan France on the other [1]. The second hypothesis relates to the consequences of the State's traditional reticence to involve itself in a housing policy before the 1950s. Two alternative solutions to the migrant housing problem may be cited as examples of compensation for the lack of interest on the part of the public authorities: the responsibility of the military in periods of crisis and a delegation to local, philanthropic or employers' initiatives. The third hypothesis concerns the place of relations between the area which we shall designate as Algeria [a French colony between 1830 and 1962] and France's administrative structure.
The specific nature of the problematics tied to Algeria's incorporation into the French territory (from both geopolitical and migratory standpoints) required French public institutions to modify their system of action, including the division of tasks between ministries in the metropolis [2]. Through its historical recurrence, the case of the housing of single foreigners, or 'colonials', allows us to bring out on the one hand the succession of actors concerned (along with the evolution of their cognitive systems) and on the other, the changing forms of action and their effects on the specific question of housing. The growing difficulties with housing encountered by single foreigners during the twentieth century was accompanied by a gradual transfer of its management from the civil society to the State. Similarly, the [French] protagonists' representations gradually shifted from hygienist issues to preoccupations with urban planning, although neither the protagonists nor the representations and issues were ever totally substituted for each other. Indeed, the successive elements of these patterns were to be combined and accumulated in function of the historical context. The real beginnings of Algerian immigration in France coincide with the First World War. It was a military organisation, the Service de l'organisation des travailleurs coloniaux (SOTC, Department for the Organisation of Colonial Workers), which designed and applied the selection and recruitment, essentially of Kabyles, in order to use the colonial reservoir in the war effort both at the front and behind the lines. Closely taken in hand and supervised by their officers, the soldiers of the African army were housed and fed by the military institution. The management of these companies of soldiers was vigilant and strict, with separate barracks, mosques in the wintering camps and meals conforming to dietary laws. But if the living conditions and contacts (or not) with the rest of the military population were particularly supervised, notably by agents of the Bureau des affaires indigenes (Native Affairs Bureau), the demobilization left a considerable share of these migrants without any surveillance. This context led to growing public preoccupation in areas with a heavy concentration of Algerian populations.
1925-1933: Assisting the 'native' returnees
The role of the prefecture of Paris in providing housing and health assistance
for the returning 'native' labour force
At the request of city councillors following a “sensational crime [which]
had attracted the nervous attention of public opinion to the invasion of
France by foreign or colonial elements and notably by North African emigrants”,
the Paris Municipal Council and the Country Council of the Seine, in conjunction
with the prefecture of Paris, set up a section for North African native
affairs in 1925 [3]
[4]. One of the activities of this unit was the management
of residences and it thus encouraged the establishment of an Authority for
North African Residences in 1931. As the prefect of the Seine declared at
that time, “Many immigrants are without housing. The disgraceful hovels
where North Africans used to be packed in by the dozens constituted a dangerous
scandal. Our residences provide clean, healthy rooms with fresh air and
sunlight, at rates which are considerably lower than those charged by ordinary
hotels” [5].
The offices at 6 rue Leconte in the 17th arrondissement of Paris, which
depended on the Paris police prefecture, were to serve as the base for the
extension of the Home Office's prerogatives in the years following
the Second World War. During this period, the main actor in the administrative
management of immigration was the unit handling labour immigration, the
Service de la main-d'oeuvre étrangère (SOME, Department
of Foreign Labour), which was supposed to keep an eye on the intrigues of
the Société générale d'immigration (SGI,
General Immigration Company), an employers' organisation which showed
little concern for the question of migrant housing.
For the local promoters of the first public responses to the housing problems
encountered by Algerians living in the metropolis, the crucial issues were
health (tuberculosis and syphilis) and insecurity. The results in terms
of housing were as limited as the means implemented (a few residences constructed
or rehabilitated in Paris and the northern suburb of Gennevilliers). On
the other hand, certain social and cultural efforts aimed at this public
were to last (residence for intellectuals, the Great Mosque of Paris and
the Avicenna Hospital). In the eyes of their promoters, these local initiatives
were nonetheless aimed at “limiting the invasion and reducing its dangers
to a minimum”. Under pressure from the French settler-landowners in
Algeria, it was.
deemed necessary to encourage the return of these migrants to the Algerian
'departments'.
1947-1954: encouraging separate housing for the 'colonials'
The Ministry of Labour, a modest instigator of
a policy of 'separate' housing for 'colonial' migrants
During the 1948-1954 period, the Ministry of Labour involved itself in the
management of foreign workers even if it had no control over the displacements
of the 'Algerians'. The considerable workforce needs did not suffice
to reduce the desire shared by most of the institutional actors to 'select'
workers in function of their origin. When this selection proved relatively
ineffectual, as in the case of the 'Muslim French from Algeria',
these populations were handled through strategies of control on the national
territory. The particular architectural solution of workers' residences
seemed the most appropriate for supervising these single foreign workers
while contributing to the “human advancement of the North African workers”
[6]. It was, moreover, used to take charge of foreigners only for the housing
of 'colonial' workers, whose presence could only be temporary
given the refusal of their inclusion in a strategy of permanent settlement.
The institutional situation was marked by competition between different
departments which did not want to relinquish possession of the sectors concerning
the populations under their responsibility. With regard to the residences
and centres for lodging and reception, the Ministry of Labour, along with
the Direction de la main d'oeuvre (DMO, Labour-Force Department) and
the Home Office, as well as the General Secretariat for Algerian affairs,
intervened in function of their respective powers. The residences of the
first were exclusively reserved for North African workers actually holding
jobs. In this case, the users were supposed to pay a rent corresponding
to operations costs. The centres run by the Home Office, intended for North
African natives, provided free housing.
From 1947 on, the Ministry of Labour was the main public promoter of housing
for Algerian workers, but its policy was limited above all to incentives
and support measures. This policy on “housing in the particular domain
of the lodging of single North African employees living in the metropolis”
followed three main lines: it encouraged employers to create installations
specially reserved for the lodging of these employees; it initiated the
construction of residences for North African employees and it participated
in identical initiatives undertaken by various public or private bodies
or local communities [7]. For the Ministry of Labour, the major need was
for “emergency centres”. Another problem faced by the Ministry,
however, was institutional competition from the Home Office; for several
years, the latter had been encroaching upon its authority in the area of
migrant labour-force management, in terms of both the maintenance of public
order and social action.
1955-1962, the promotion of coercive hygienism [8]
The Home Office, as the metropolitan heir to the military culture of colonial
management, develops a policy of “coercive hygienism” specifically
aimed at Algerian workers.
In 1955, the Home Office's special services made the following observation:
there were a significant number of shantytowns in the greater Paris, Lyons
and Marseilles areas and these shantytowns were essentially inhabited by
North Africans, especially Algerians. Such a situation raised a series of
interrelated questions. Plots of land were being illegally occupied in close
proximity to urban “nerve centres”. The lifestyle of the populations,
supposedly cut off from the rest of the world, was, according to the Home
Office's representatives, both humanly intolerable and sociologically
harmful because these populations “escaped” both the behaviour
of other inhabitants and outside controls. They asserted that the Algerian
conflict was at the core of the problem [9].
In this struggle between ministries over the management of the 'North
African' population, the Home Office had the most hegemonic attitude.
Profiting from gaps in the handling of this file, its services began by
turning their attention to the housing of migrants and set up associations
affiliated with it for the management of migrant workers' residences.
As of 1956, it focused its social action more clearly on the Algerians in
metropolitan France because Algeria no longer came under its authority (its
responsibilities were transferred to the General Government of Algeria as
of 16 March 1956) [10]. But this increased social action (the creation of
a “Service des Affaires musulmanes et de l'action sociale”
[Department of Muslim Affairs and Social Action] [11]) was combined with
growing repression through the creation of detention camps for Algerian
nationalists. With the Home Office's creation of the Sonacotral (the
public enterprise for the construction of housing for Algerian workers)
on 4 August 1956, the Home Secretary gained a powerful commercial relay
for the control of Algerians' housing and the recovery of the outlying
plots of land which had been transformed into shantytowns [12].
Notes
[1] M. Murard and P. Zylberman, Le petit travailleur infatigable ou le problème régénéré. Villes-usines, habitat et intimités au XIXème siècle (Paris: Recherches, 1976).
[2] P. Legendre, Trésor historique de l'État en France, l'Administration classique , Fayard, 1992.
[3] in P. Godin, ' Notes sur le fonctionnement des services de surveillance, protection et Assistance des indigènes nord-africains résidant ou de passage à Paris et dans le département de la Seine '. Paris, Imprimerie municipale, 1933.
[4] These municipal services were to benefit from the support of the Algerian Affairs department of the Home Secretary's Office.
[5] Cited by Godin, op. cit.
[6] In ' le logement des travailleurs à faibles revenus ', Avis et rapports du conseil économique, janvier 1956.
[7] As of 31 December 1955, a Department of Labour (DMO) note placed the number of North African workers at 186,418. Of the 56,226 of them who were housed, 42,739 were in employers' establishments following the action of social service inspectors assigned to the North African labour force and 11,487 were in residences or centres created on the initiative of the Ministry and in various administrative centres. See Note pour le ministre des Affaires sociales, de la Sous-direction de l'emploi, 4e bureau, Direction de la main d'oeuvre, 12 March 1953. 860271, C.A.C. ministère du Travail.
[8] This term is borrowed from A. Jeantet, “Les foyers en question”, in Le logement des immigrés en France (conference papers) (Lille: OMINOR, 1982).
[9] They were notably afraid that the emerging Algerian maquis would spread to metropolitan France, with a geographical base in the shantytowns thus permitting the creation of a “second front” for the Algerian War. Each time that the idea of not allowing individuals to live in extremely difficult conditions was mentioned, it was generally followed by conditions of public order because such locations bringing together thousands of people were not under police control. The image of a police force which did not want to enter the shantytown was contrasted to the idea of the National Liberation Front (FLN) collecting funds for the conflict in Algeria.
[10] On the subject of the “ping-ponging” of responsibilities between the Home Office and the General Government since the 1890s, see Legendre, op. cit.
[11] This department could rely on a strong network of social assistance to the Muslim French of Algeria, composed of associations employing agents coming form the African army and managing nearly 135 workers' residences (20,000 beds) and reception centres. Cf. V. Viet, La France immigrée (Paris: Fayard, 1998).
[12] See my PhD thesis, “Une politique de logement, la Sonacotra (1956-1992)”, Université de Paris I, 1997.