The Question of the Colonies

In this anti-colonial treatise, Ricœur reflects on the responsibility of every French citizen and of the French state with respect to colonialism. He establishes five principles that should guide his readers in their reflection on this issue and expresses his support for the independence of the colonies.

La question coloniale

In this anti-colonial treatise, Ricœur reflects on the responsibility of every French citizen and of the French state with respect to colonialism. He establishes five principles that should guide his readers in their reflection on this issue and expresses his support for the independence of the colonies.

La cuestión colonial

In this anti-colonial treatise, Ricœur reflects on the responsibility of every French citizen and of the French state with respect to colonialism. He establishes five principles that should guide his readers in their reflection on this issue and expresses his support for the independence of the colonies.

Unpacking ‘status migration’: The racialized status politics of ‘skill’ in French-Maghrebi expatriation to Dubai

This ethnographic article details the resettlement process of Mounir, a French citizen of Maghrebi background migrating from Paris to Dubai. In so doing, it examines how social status formation plays out in the context of skilled labour migration between France and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Drawing on semi-structured interviews and multi-sited participant observation, it questions human capital theory’s premise that ‘skills’ largely consist of a transposable set of objective technical qualifications. Instead, it finds that any effective validation of skill sets encompasses ‘claims-making’ processes that are co-dependent on social hierarchies of place, such as citizenship, class and race. The ‘expatriate’ portrait presented here demonstrates how tertiary-educated members of the Euro-Maghrebi minority engage in transcontinental migration not only as a way of dealing with hampered economic conversion yields of Bourdieusian capital forms in their home societies, but equally to renegotiate a more comprehensive transformation of social status. By describing Mounir’s hybrid repositioning at the interstices of more dominant status markers in Dubai, this article theorizes ‘status migration’, a transnational process of human mobility, characterized by the skilful propensity of acting-by-moving from the part of (racially) degraded citizens in dealing with the status deficiencies specific to them in their home societies.

Some aspects of personal identity on the materials of french media

The paper studies the concept of identity verification of the personality in the state system from the perspective of finding additional socially marked meanings/connotations of the word “identity/ identité”. It is also necessary to consider the contexts affecting the variety of meanings that this concept embraces.The study is based on the contexts derived from the French mass media. While describing the concept of identity verification, we use the term “diagnostic markers” to classify the meanings of the lexeme “identity/identité”. These markers can be represented by the linguistic units of different levels, which are used to detect the meaning of identity in a particular information context. The study of the concept helped to detect the associative field of “identity/ identité” from the perspective of personality verification in the state system. Thus, the nuclear meaning is the obligation for a French citizen to carry la carte d’identité/an identity card, while the peripheral meanings include the following: true and false optionality for providing the proof of identity; the contrast between real and official identities; identity as a proof (official document) of one’s nationality; lack of identity in the meaning of absence of legal proof of identity; identity in the context of restrictions imposed as a result of tough immigration policies. The social markers used to identify the personality within the state system were also analyzed from the perspective of ascribed and achieved identity. The first type refers to the situation of actually living in the chosen country, while the second type occurs when a person chooses a country for future residence.

Diasporic Sexual Citizenship: Queer Language, (Im)Possible Subjects, and Transfiliation

This chapter reviews scholarship on queer language in the diaspora through the lens of flexible accumulation and neoliberal citizenship. The relevance of these ideas to queer linguistic data is illustrated through an analysis of ethnographic fieldwork with 2Fik (pronounced “Toufik”), a French citizen of Moroccan descent and multidisciplinary artist living in Québec, Canada. Queer diasporic speakers like 2Fik stake claims of belonging to multiple spatiotemporalities, drawing on new intersectional possibilities involving families of origin, various local communities, and still wider diasporic terrains—for example, the Maghrebi homeland(s), French society and Francophone global cities, and the broader global and often queer North Atlantic. Yet the use of flexible language(s) associated with “queer diasporic citizenship” differs from previous examples in the extant scholarship. 2Fik’s use of performance and virtual-mediated spaces questions the response to his invitations to participate in a diasporic citizenry, highlighting elements of hypersubjectivity, dis-identification, transgressive filiation (transfiliation), and dissidence.

„Cadre de vie”. Jean-Luc Godard’s „Deux ou trois choses que je sais d’elle” (1967), French TV and Architectural Discourse

The article demonstrates how Jean-Luc Godard’s Deux ou trois choses que je sais d’elle (1967) contributed to the contemporary critical discourse on (social) housing estates (grands ensembles). With his work, the filmmaker aimed to show the grand ensemble, or ‘the big(ger) picture’ of what it meant to live in contemporary consumerist oriented France. The protagonist Juliette Johnson represents the French citizen and simultaneously the metaphor of the Paris Region that underwent a huge transformation. The main interest of the text lies in the use of the 360-degree pan shot and the notion of cadre (frame), as they connect film theory and the contemporary discourse about how the décor, i.e. the (built) environment, influences people’s cadre de vie (living conditions). A close reading of two film sequences and a historical contextualisation of architectural discourses and theories is completed by a comparison with documentary TV programmes. While they had fostered the critical discussion about housing estates already before, they used the panorama shot only after Deux ou trois choses…

1. Camus, son of France in Algeria

To grasp fully and appreciate Camus’s achievements and the ambiguity of his works, it is important to consider the historical situation that shaped his formative years. Albert Camus (1913–60) was a French citizen born in Algeria. He would live there from his birth until the middle of the Second World War. ‘Camus, son of France in Algeria’ outlines the structure of Algeria under the rule of the French Republic and the early education of Camus and his two major mentors, Louis Germain and Jean Grenier. It also documents his ill-health, unsuccessful first marriage, his early writing, and introduction to politics through membership of the Communist Party.

Prologue

I became a French citizen in 2017 as I was writing this book. There was no pomp and circumstance, no singing of the Marseillaise in a tearful ceremony attended by joyful relatives eager to welcome me into the folds of France. None of my relatives are French. The plain white envelope that arrived in the mail from the French consulate contained a red, white, and blue folder bearing the image of Marianne swinging the tricolor, an image taken from Eugène Delacroix’s famous nineteenth-century painting ...