Marseille and Montréal in North African Migrant Narratives: From Postcolonial Entanglements to Radical Imaginations?


Maricia Fischer-Souan, Sciences Po Paris and Université de Montréal

This article explores the migratory imaginations of Algerians, Moroccans, and Tunisians living in two different European and North American contexts: Marseille, on the one hand, as a long-standing “window onto Europe” from the Mediterranean, and Montréal, on the other – a new gateway of Maghrebin migration to North America. While immigrants from the Maghreb are among the most numerous of foreign-born residents in both these metropolitan areas, the historical contexts and trajectories characterising North African migration in each location are extremely different. Indeed, the diversification of migration routes beyond the traditional Maghreb-France relationship can be seen as an illustration of the growing ‘ex-centricity’ of North African emigration processes, unsettling traditional postcolonial linkages. Yet, this paper argues that the Maghrébin presence both in Marseille and Montréal can be understood in terms of European (post)colonial continuities, rather than ruptures. I show how Maghrébin migrants both in Montréal and Marseille are embedded within complex legacies of coloniality. Using Olivia C. Harrison’s concept of the ‘transcolonial imagination’ and Cornelius Castoriadis’ ‘radical imagination’, I cast light on the heterogeneity of (post)colonial sites and temporalities that emerge in migrant narratives in both cities. Through biographical interviews with North Africans in Montréal and Marseille, I find that migratory imaginations vary in their critical and comparative scope and degree of connection-making between individual biography and structured (post)colonial processes. These connections are nourished by processes including (i) the ongoing significance of (post)colonial legacies in the society of origin, (ii) diasporic and racialized forms of consciousness in the society of residence, and (iii) encounters with unresolved legacies of colonialism, both in Canadian and French national contexts.

This paper will be presented at the following session: