1On September 19^th 1973 Houari Boumédienne unilaterally banned Algerians from migrating to France, ostensibly in response to rising racist attacks against Algerians. This characteristically authoritarian move had limited impact, since primary immigration to France was halted the following year anyway, and it has been argued that it was motivated by other concerns : a protest against earlier migration restrictions imposed by France (Hauteville, 1995) or an indication of the ascendency of arabophone intellectuals in the administration (Meynier, Meynier, 2011). Nevertheless, this event stands out in the historical record as a moment when the Algerian state exerted a powerful symbolic control over the emigration of Algerian nationals. It reflects an authoritative confidence in the post-colonial relationship with France that characterised much Algerian state action during the Boumédienne era and brought Algeria widespread admiration. In terms of migration control, however, it was unique. From that point on, international migration and the activities of migrants fell much more obviously outside government control and confidence has only been gradually restored. This paper examines the developments in international migration to and from Algeria during this period when the Algerian state abandoned and subsequently struggled to regain control over international migration.

2 Large-scale migration, such as that between Algeria and France, may become self-perpetuating and theoretical approaches to migration have tended to emphasise the role of social networks in explaining this tendency (Massey, 1990). Such explanations are important but they have tended to dominate analysis of migration systems to the exclusion of other factors such as political economy, the dynamics of conflict or changes in migration governance (Castles, 2003 ; De Haas, 2010). The impact of these factors in generating further migration or altering established migration systems is clearly illustrated by recent migration from Algeria. Yet migration does not only respond to social change but also generates it, either through deliberate activities of migrants or the unintended consequences of migration (Van Hear, 2010) and these transnational activities present an additional challenge for states to manage. Alejandro Portes (2010) argues that changes provoked by migration are usually limited and can only really be appreciated over a ‘middle time-frame’ of two or three generations. The last three decades of Algerian migration provide a clear example of these types of changes in migration systems, the subsequent activities of migrants and attempts by governments (in Algeria and Europe) to respond.

3 Until very recently Algerians have emigrated almost exclusively to France, a migration system of tremendous symbolic importance in both countries. In France, Algerians are ‘the most immigrant of immigrants’ (Talha, 1983, p. 8). According to Patrick Weil, from 1947 onwards, ‘legally immigrants were still Italian, Spanish, Polish or Portuguese. Politically, then socially, they became Algerian.’ (Weil, 1995, p. 93). Abdelmalek Sayad, the greatest chronicler of Algerian emigration, described this movement as ‘an immigration unlike any other, an immigration that is exceptional in every respect, as much by its overall history as in each of its characteristic details.’ (1985, p. 101). Towards the end of the 1970s, Sayad’s famous characterisation of ‘three ages of Algerian emigration to France’ identified the formation of an ‘Algerian colony in France’ culturally distinct in many respects from mainstream French society yet also becoming increasingly cut off from Algeria itself (Sayad, 1977).

4 This picture described by Sayad provides the starting point for this analysis of migration from Algeria between 1980 and 2010. This ‘exceptional’ migration system between Algeria and France was, according to Sayad, showing signs of profound changes, even by the late 1970s. The paper investigates first how changes in Algeria since then have affected patterns of international migration. It goes on to examine the impacts of these ‘new’ migrations on the situation in Algeria. The third and final section of the paper returns to the activities of the Algerian state in controlling, or ‘managing’ these various impacts. Sayad’s deliberate characterisation of Algerian migration specifically to France appears to be changing by this ‘fourth age of Algerian emigration’ during which migrants have travelled to a range of other destinations. In addition to important changes in the Algerian ‘colony’ in France that are also considered constitutive of this fourth ‘age’, the impact of developments in these comparatively new destinations becomes an important control on further emigration. During the most recent period, since 2000, there is also growing evidence that Algeria is becoming a destination for migrants from elsewhere, initially as a point of transit but increasingly as a focus for new forms of immigration.

A FOURTH AGE [1] OF ALGERIAN EMIGRATION ?

5 The end of temporary labour migration to Europe in the early 1970s did not halt Algerian emigration, though it changed substantially in character, as rising numbers of female migrants corrected the overwhelming gender imbalance of earlier migration. [2] At the time of the 1982 census there were officially 805,100 Algerian immigrants resident in France, including 310,500 women (INSEE, 1982). Available data suggests that migrants in France represented 98 percent of all Algerians resident in OECD countries [3] (OECD, 1986). Since migration from Algeria to non-OECD countries was not yet significant, this illustrates the overwhelming concentration of Algerian emigrants in France. Thirty years later, France continues to dominate the Algerian migration system, but not so completely ; other destinations have become more significant, particularly Germany, Spain, Canada and the UK.

6 In addition to a diversification of destinations, this period witnessed a clear polarisation in the social background of emigrants. One of the key social figures of the 1980s, the hittiste, [4] became emblematic of despondency and hopelessness amongst the overwhelmingly young population. From 2000 onwards a comparable moral panic developed around the figure of the haraga, [5] similarly marginalised, mostly young, and sufficiently desperate to leave the country to risk their lives in extremely hazardous journeys in overcrowded boats across the Mediterranean. Emigration has also affected others at a very different position on the social spectrum. Much of the violence of the 1990s targeted established middle class professionals and forced or encouraged large numbers of people to leave Algeria who would not previously have had to consider making a life elsewhere. The new diversity of emigration from Algeria resulted in a sufficiently distinct migration profile to receive the label ‘new migrants’, concentrated particularly during the 1990s (Bettahar, 2003).

7 The conditions described by Sayad as the ‘third age’ of Algerian emigration to France continued broadly as he described them into the mid 1980s. In 1986 two developments took place which strongly affected the characteristics of migration from Algeria and indicated the direction of further changes to come. First, 1986 saw the first loi Pasqua, [6] which introduced visas for a wide range of nationalities, including Algerians. This was the first in a long line of increasingly stringent barriers to immigration to France which, given the closeness of the relationship, were also barriers to emigration from Algeria. An important effect of these restrictions was to encourage Algerian nationals resident in France to opt for naturalisation as the easiest way to continue to guarantee mobility. In the longer term this increased links with France and for many exacerbated the conditions Sayad described by further cutting them off from Algeria.

8 The second change, in Algeria itself, was also a precursor to developments to come. The gradual decline and final collapse in the price of oil in 1986 exposed the fragility of the “rentier” state model. The shrinking economy was exacerbated by the rapid population growth, which required an additional 146,000 jobs to be created annually simply to maintain the unemployment rate at the mid 1980s level of 18% (Belkaïd et alii, 2011). As austerity began to bite, the rate of unemployment rose and social tensions became inevitable ; in November 1986 student riots in Sétif and Constantine left four people dead and many more injured.

9 The economic and social changes towards the end of the 1980s resulted in a greater demand for emigration which coincided with new restrictions on migrating to France, the only destination most Algerians at the time even considered. And migration controls became progressively more restrictive, with the second loi Pasqua in 1993 [7] and the even more controversial loi Debré in 1997 [8] (Lessana, 1998). France was not alone in these restrictions, indeed to some extent the French government was under pressure to keep up with migration controls imposed by its neighbours. Visa controls were virtually universally imposed by European Union Member States by the end of the 1980s.

10 For the population of Algeria, most legal exits were blocked or at least closing, well before the riots of October 1988. Following Hirschman’s (1970) famous formulation of exit, voice or loyalty where exit is difficult or dangerous, ‘voice’, in this case in the form of violent protest, becomes an inevitable consequence. In common with many other emigration states, the FLN state had used emigration as a way of getting rid of surplus or potentially troublesome elements of the population since independence, and by the mid 1980s this had been significantly closed off. Although there were clearly many factors contributing to the 1988 riots, the gradual closure of emigration options was no doubt one of them.

11 As conditions deteriorated further, following the cancellation of the elections and the declaration of the state of emergency in 1992, more and more people felt the need to leave, often with great urgency (Evans, Phillips, 2007 ; Stora, 2001).

12 France remained the main country of destination for Algerian emigrants, yet the gradually tightening visa policy in France set out by the Pasqua laws of 1986 and 1993 was further exacerbated by the closure of the French consulate in Algiers in 1994. In 1989, 900,000 visas were issued by France to Algerians, by 1994 this had fallen to 100,000 and reached its lowest point in 1996 when only 47,000 visas were issued from the Bureau des visas pour l’Algérie established in Nantes. Instructions were given in 1997 to be flexible in issuing visas to Algerians who ‘feared for their lives’ and the number gradually rose again though it had only reached 132,135 by 2008 (Cimade, 2010). The worst point of the crisis of the 1990s therefore coincided with the greatest difficulty of access to France. The 2010 Cimade study found that almost 50 percent of visa applications in Algeria were refused, the highest refusal rate for any country in the world.

13 The closure of access to France forced individuals to look elsewhere for a route out of Algeria. Some highly skilled and well-connected Algerians were able to receive visas for Canada (mainly Quebec), which saw a substantial increase in its Algerian population to an estimated 23,000 by 2006, and the US where the population of Algerians approximately doubled to 8,752 (Khelfaoui, 2006). Elsewhere, applying for asylum was the only option for many. From 1990 to 2010, 139,585 asylum requests were received from Algerians across the range of countries for which the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) regularly collects data (UNHCR, 2011). Almost 100,000 of these were received during the decade from 1992 to 2002, yet barely 17 percent of these requests (17,172) were registered in France. In Germany, the UK, Switzerland and Spain the population of Algerian nationals increased from virtually nothing to tens of thousands, suggesting that social network explanations for continued emigration required modification (Collyer, 2005).

14 Applying for asylum is of course not the same as being granted residency. Rates of recognition were particularly low in France but initially much higher elsewhere. Both Germany and the UK quickly gained a reputation for sheltering Islamists, though after September 2001 both countries sought to restrict their activities much more carefully. Since 2004, asylum applications from Algerians in the UK and Germany had fallen below 1,000, while applications in France have since risen (UNHCR, 2011).

15 As the conflict receded from about 2003 onwards, three further trends became clear. First, the development of patterns of irregular emigration of Algerians, the harrag. Beyond the immediate need for protection of those who were directly threatened by violence, the conflict ravaged the Algerian economy so that even those who were able to escape the worst effects of the violence saw their fragile livelihoods deteriorate further. The combination of generalised violence and vanishing economic opportunities destroyed the morale of the population. This underlying social distress continues to motivate substantial undocumented emigration from Algeria. In 2005, 300 people were intercepted by the Algerian navy but by 2007, this had risen to 1,500 and there were further increases in 2008 to an annual figure of approximately 2,800 (Mebroukine, 2009).

16 Second, this trend has not only involved Algerians. A significant social change in Algeria that has become clearer from 2000 onwards is the arrival of sub-Saharan African migrants. Although the intention of many such migrants is thought to be to pass through to reach Europe, a larger number are staying in Algeria, occupying marginal positions in the labour market, particularly in the south (Bensaâd, 2008). Since 2003, immigration had begun to increase and by 2007 approximately 30,000 migrants were arrested on the southern borders of Algeria. A study conducted by the CREAD found that 40 percent of those interviewed declared their intention to remain in Algeria (Musette, 2007a) with the remainder planning on moving on to Europe, though ultimately a proportion of them will also remain in the country.

17 Third, and finally, return migration has also become more significant. Return of all Algerian migrants was a government policy in the 1970s, though this was later abandoned in the face of the reality of the ‘myth of return’. The study of the MIREM project identified more than 20,000 migrants who had returned to Algeria by 2000, most of whom had previously lived in Europe, though this included those who had been forcibly repatriated (Musette, 2006). Particularly since 2005, a more modest return objective has become government policy and there has been some support to reintegrate return migrants (Musette, 2007b).

18 This ‘fourth age’ of Algerian migration has clearly resulted from the dramatic social and political changes witnessed by Algeria since the 1980s. From a predominantly working class phenomenon of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, the impact of emigration has diversified and there are now few segments of society unaffected. Recent changes, since about 2003, include the rising risks taken by Algerians to leave the country without documents, substantial return migration to Algeria and most recently an apparently permanent immigration. These changes could even be seen to constitute a ‘fifth age’ of Algerian migration as migration patterns become increasingly unrecognisable from those described by Sayad 35 years ago. These changing migration patterns have, in turn, provoked substantial changes in Algeria.

THE IMPACT OF INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION ON THE ALGERIAN ECONOMY, SOCIETY AND POLITY

19 Changes can be most easily attributed to migration at the point of destination. Research since the early 1990s has recognised the importance of a transnational element to these changes, analysing ongoing connections between migrants and their areas of origin (Vertovec, 2009). This section aims to explore the impact of Algerian emigrants’ activities on the situation in Algeria, so a transnational approach is the primary focus. Sayad’s continual emphasis on ‘emigration/immigration’ in his research in the 1970s anticipated many of the advances of the transnational paradigm. Unfortunately, given the Anglophone dominance of research into the transnational activities of migrants, Sayad’s early focus on the emigration context is often missed. Paul Silverstein’s insightful monograph Algeria in France (Silverstein, 2004) is a notable exception, offering a detailed consideration of the activities of Algerian migrants in France towards Algeria. This section follows Silverstein in his recognition of the central importance of the Franco-Algerian relationship but, like the previous section, also considers ways in which destinations outside of France have become important.

20 Economic change is the easiest influence of emigration to identify and attribute to migrants – the potential significance of economic impact explains the tremendous rise in interest in the relations between migration and development over the last few decades, typically focused on remittances. The falling levels of financial transfers between France and Algeria are often quoted to illustrate the growing isolation of this emigrant colony, though they have recovered more recently. In 1976 Algerians in France were responsible for almost half of all the private financial transfers from France to North Africa. By 1986 this had fallen to a mere 0.4 per cent (Bank of France quoted in Simon, 1990). The OECD uses less dramatic figures, including all transfers to Algeria, not simply those from France, but the difference is still remarkable. In 1970 Algeria received US$195 million in private transfers compared to 23 million to Tunisia and 36 million to Morocco. By 1991, transfers to Algeria had increased to 269 million dollars but this was a fraction of the increase in transfers to its Maghrebi neighbours : 590 million to Tunisia and more than 2 billion to Morocco (OECD, 1994). In 2010, Algeria had caught up with Tunisia, receiving just over US$2billion in remittances, though was still short of the $6.5 billion transferred to Morocco (World Bank, 2011).

21 The geography of flows also reflects the continued concentration of Algerian emigrants in France. Schiopu and Siegfried (2006) consider remittances to nine Southern Mediterranean countries in 2004 ; none of them received more than 50 percent of their remittance income from a single country with the exception of Algeria, where almost 99 percent of official transfers were received from France. The relatively small, highly concentrated remittance economy suggested by these figures does not represent the complete reality of the situation, since these statistics are only based on officially reported transfers. There were advantages to transferring money at the informal market rate (Khandriche, Bennaceur, Kouidri, 1999). There is also a huge ‘suitcase economy’ of returning Algerians taking goods back to Algeria, which became semi-institutionalised in the 1980s trabendo. Yet neither the activities of the “trabendists”, nor the inflated exchange rate symptomatic of reliance on oil exports can fully account for the relatively limited remittance economy since the 1980s. Part of the explanation must be that Algerians emigrants in general do not express their connections to Algeria in financial terms, or, as Sayad suggested in 1977, the emigrant colony in France has limited connection to Algeria.

22 Investigations of political transnationalism have focused on those who are engaged in political activity, so they are more selective than statistics on economic connections. The practice of politics is also a highly selective activity and the emigrant community has played an increasingly significant role over the last three decades. Hugh Roberts described this process as the ‘extravasation’ of factional conflict in Algeria ; where emigrant politicians were once on the ‘touchline’ of Algerian politics, waiting for an opportunity to reengage with the critical debates taking place in Algeria, from 1989 onwards factional conflicts have been played out much more openly and the ‘international gallery’ of international opinion has played an important role legitimating particular factions (Roberts, 1998). This has increased the power of an emigrant location. Paul Silverstein even suggests that France could have become the primary site for conducting Algerian politics (2004, p. 242).

23 The experience of transnational political activism during the 1954-’62 war (Stora, 1992) alerted the immediate post-independence governments in Algeria to the dangers of the political influence of their own nationals overseas and encouraged the development of structures of observation and control. Following the collapse of the FLN state in 1989, these controls also disappeared and the Algerian community once again became a political resource to be contested and a location for that contest to take place. Like emigration itself, the significant controls had moved from Algeria to the countries of destination, particularly France where the then Minister of the Interior, Charles Pasqua, made it clear that he would not tolerate Islamist activism. After it was banned in Algeria, the FIS established an International Executive (IEFIS) in countries which had not yet established such a strong opposition to political Islam : Rabah Kebir in Germany and Anwar Haddam in the USA, with a number of others, such as Djaffer El Houari in London (Denaud, 1997).

24 In 2000, El Houari reported that London hadn’t been a choice, he was just interested in anywhere other than France, though he expressed his frustration with his isolation from the Algerian media and the difficulties of getting together with other members of the IEFIS (Collyer, 2002). Throughout the 1990s the UK and German governments were criticised by both the Algerian and French governments for their relatively laissez faire attitude to political Islam. New anti-terrorist legislation introduced in the UK in July 2000 was targeted at Irish organisations, though the GIA was added to the list of proscribed groups in March 2001. The change in the international climate following September 2001 made it much easier for the Algerian government to secure international cooperation in its efforts to act against the transnational activities of Algerian Islamists.

25 The legitimacy of the Algerian government after 1992 was not only challenged by Islamist groups. A diverse range of other causes were championed amongst those in the diaspora, though in some cases allegiances were blurred and activist strategies depended on a location outside of France. The Mouvement Algérien des Officiers Libres (MAOL) provides an example ; a pressure group established in the 1990s based in Madrid, it is at least sympathetic to the Islamist cause, if not actually a front for Islamist groups as many suspect, to the extent that it would not be able to operate easily from France. The Internet has allowed groups such as the MAOL access to public debates in Algeria and France. Indeed, accusations about the nature of the Algerian army’s involvement in key events of the conflict that were later aired in more detail in a series of high profile books published in France (eg Souaidia, 2001) were first disclosed on the website of the MAOL.

26 Transnational impact depends on influencing public debate in Algeria itself and public debate in France is by far the most effective way of achieving this impact transnationally. A handful of books published from 2000 onwards, that collectively amount to a thesis of a sale guerre, illustrates this transnational influence. This range of personal testimonies provides evidence of complicity of high levels in the Algerian regime in some of the worst acts of the violence. They received tremendous media coverage in France, generated pages of hostile reviews, though also some support from respected commentators (eg Benramdane, 2004), filled lecture halls across France for public debates with the authors and eventually forced a response from figures in the Algerian government.

27 One of the criticisms of this current of protest was that it implied a shifting of blame from political Islam. For campaigners for the repeal of the 1984 Family Code, such as the Rassemblement Algérien des Femmes Démocrates (RAFD), founded in 1993, this was particularly unjust. Although mobilisation of the RAFD and others had a strongly transnational character, they never attracted the same level of media coverage and with the exception of a relatively timid reform in 2005, had limited impact in Algeria. A third distinct current of political protest, Amazigh activism, also had powerful links to France (Silverstein, 2004), particularly following the events of the printemps noir in Kabylia in 2001, though the Algerian government was much more effective at neutralising the transnational element of these protests (Collyer, 2008).

28 Much transnational political activity involves mainstream political parties and a successful response of the Algerian government to transnational protest has been the extension of voting rights to emigrants. This was first introduced for the 1995 presidential elections and turnout was extremely high, though it began to slow down for the 1997 legislative elections and has continued to fall since then. The Algerian electoral system is particularly unusual since, from the 1997 legislative elections, emigrants vote for their own representation. Eight deputés are elected by selected world regions, which again reflect the particular geography of Algerian emigrants : four of the eight external seats are filled by Algerians resident in France, the remaining four cover the rest of the world.

29 Finally, there is some discussion of what Peggy Levitt has called ‘social remittances’ (Levitt, 1998) – the transnational effects of migration which are not obviously economic or political. The separation of the Algerian population resident in France from Algeria that Sayad characterised as ‘colonial’ mitigates against direct impacts. This link undoubtedly retains a strong influence over Algeria, but change caused or encouraged by emigrants is resisted in Algeria, whereas change arising within Algeria appears to be naturally occurring (Gillette, Sayad, 1984). Some have traced certain demographic impacts, such as the preference for smaller families, common in the Maghreb, to the influence of emigrants (Fargues, 2006) but, although this is persuasive, any causal relationship is inevitably difficult to substantiate. It seems likely that social and economic issues, such as the limited availability of housing in Algeria, are a more dominant influence on family size.

30 One of the clearest social impacts of migration may be to encourage further migration. In 1975, Sayad conducted a series of interviews with a Kabyle migrant in France before and after a return trip to Algeria. He remarked on the dominance of connections with France :

31

‘Even in conversations, what did all the men in the village talk about ? About France ! The old people repeated their memories... those who were back for visits spoke of France, in the middle of their village they thought they were still in France ; the young people who are waiting to leave dream of France. You don’t hear anything else but talk of France.’ (Sayad, 1975, p. 35)

32 Despite the radical upheavals of the intervening years, the social dominance of emigration in Algeria did not appear to have changed in almost thirty years. A young man I interviewed in 2001 described discussions in his village in similar terms :

33

‘In Algeria we were really well informed, we knew all the dates, someone would say ‘you have to go by Spain, it’s really easy at the moment, but only until next week’ then someone else would add, ‘yes, but Italy’s not bad’. We’d spend hours around a table in the café, always the same table, then when it was time to eat we’d all go back home and the afternoon we’d come back, and the same the next day. [...] if someone arrived with some information about foreign countries, we’d all listen ! If you want to have a lot of friends, you have to have a lot of information about emigration !’ (Collyer, 2002, p. 118)

34 An interesting contrast is that the focus on France described by Sayad’s informant has vanished. This new figure of the migrant is increasingly distinct from those who left during the phase of mass migration to France. ‘New migrants’ are more open to destinations other than France, increasingly Anglophone, often University educated and sometimes employed, at least in relatively low level service occupations, before migration. The focus is now ‘emigration’ regardless of the destination. Although the life of the young unemployed population of Algeria is clearly influenced by dreams of leaving, emigration increasingly requires access to capital. This represents one of the major ongoing challenges of emigration for the Algerian government, one which, after a long period of difficulty they are starting to respond to.

STATE EFFORTS TO CONTROL INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION AND THE TRANSNATIONAL ACTIVITIES OF MIGRANTS

35 Managing international migration in the best interests of Algeria is clearly amongst the obligations of the Algerian government and it has the sovereign right to do so however it sees fit. Yet deciding what the best interests of Algeria are, results from a political process in which all Algerians should ideally be involved. The nature of the relationship between Algeria and France has given some emigrant organisations in France a disproportionately powerful position in shaping these kinds of national debates. In addition to managing international migration, governments must therefore also manage the activities of international migrants. The first involves moderating the impact of social changes on the movement of individuals, the second implies managing the impact of those individuals on social change more generally. Both of these activities pose a challenge to governments everywhere, though Algeria presents an extreme example of this over the last few decades.

36 Algeria was, and to a large extent remains, almost unique amongst countries with significant emigrant populations in the tremendous concentration of that emigrant population in a single country. During the period of relatively free movement between Algeria and France that movement was controlled as much by the issuance of passports in Algeria as by immigration regulation in France. This began to change from 1974, when France along with other European countries of emigration ended primary labour migration. Although that had little impact on the number of people entering France, it changed the composition of the emigrant population and initiated a rupture in the links they maintained with Algeria that only a few years later Sayad could qualify as ‘colonial’. The controls on movement shifted from the countries of emigration, which increasingly issued passports with little intention to control movement, to countries of immigration, where restrictions became gradually more rigid. In the case of Algerian immigration in France the Pasqua laws of 1986 and 1993 were central to this process.

37 The extension of the right to vote to emigrants in 1995 initiated an important current in the Algerian government’s management of emigration. This decision followed a consultation amongst emigrants organised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which also involved the establishment of a provisional council. The council has evolved through various guises, including the current system of a Secretary of State with responsibility for the National Community Abroad. Since 1997, the Algerian government has always included representatives of the emigrant community in both the legislature and the executive.

38 In a similar way to migration control, controls on the activities of international migrants initially moved across the Mediterranean. Like its neighbours in the Maghreb, the Algerian government maintained a close watch on migrants through the institutions of Amicales, a kind of secondary diplomatic service linked to the Ministry of the Interior with directors appointed directly from Algiers. This system collapsed with the end of the FLN state and civil society organisations flourished amongst emigrants including legitimate registered political parties, such as the RCD, founded in 1989, as well as organisations completely outlawed in Algeria, such as the MAOL. These organisations were controlled much more effectively by the countries in which they were based than by the Algerian government. Following September 11^th 2001, the international community was broadly cooperative in supporting the Algerian government’s objective of eliminating Islamist terrorism, though, even then, this was not entirely unproblematic and the government faced difficulties in certain areas, such as the extradition of suspects from the UK.

39 Beyond the Islamist challenge, the Algerian government initially struggled to respond to the tremendous range of accusations emanating from the emigrant community. An attempt was made to contain the more damaging accusations around the sale guerre when Khalid Nezzar, the former (Algerian) Minister of Defence, sued an individual (Algerian) author in the French courts for libel. Whatever the rights or wrongs of the situation, Nezzar’s civil case against Habib Souadia in July 2002 marked a low point in the Algerian government’s management of the crisis, an indication of the extent to which senior figures in the Algerian regime had lost control of the story. At about the same time, the ‘black spring’ in Kabylia resulted in huge protests against the Algerian regime, initially in Algeria itself but also spreading across Europe, further delegitimising the authority of the Bouteflika administration.

40 Yet the transnational dynamic of these protests was not sustained. The Algerian government responded skilfully to divide various currents of protest and reterritorialise political authority, without directly addressing the roots of the crisis. The following year, Djazair 2003, the Year of Algeria in France offered an opportunity for the Algerian government to demonstrate that they remained the definitive source defining what it meant to be Algerian. The year included more than 2,000 cultural events across France and despite widespread calls, particularly from Amazigh artists, for a boycott, it generated a positive image of an Algeria that had distanced itself from the violence of the 1990s. This kind of transnational governmentality was also in evidence in government responses to Amazigh protests, with Bouteflika’s criticisms of people living in ‘gilded cages overseas’. These strategies effectively undercut the powerful transnational element of protest that had built up since 2000 and contributed to the process of re-establishing the link between political legitimacy and a territorial location in Algeria which has not been effectively challenged again since.

41 From 2005 onwards, interest in migration in the Algerian government began to return. New legislation was passed in 2008, which provided a legal basis to regulate immigration into the country. It was significantly targeted at sub-Saharan immigrants, but irregular emigration of both Algerians and foreign nationals was severely punished. This legislation was at least partially in response to pressure from the European Union, which has sought an additional level of migration controls beyond Europe and was initiated by the signature of an Association Agreement in 2005. There are concerns about the securitised treatment of migration, rather than the long-term development focused approach that Algeria, as a signatory to the 1990 Migration Workers Convention, has declared a preference for. The equation of the emigration of Algerians and that of foreign nationals in the legislation has also been criticised by associations advocating for families of victims of irregular migration (Labdeloui, 2008).

42 Despite this string of valid criticisms, this law was also a response to the changing situation in Algeria, including concerns around rising immigration and the renewed possibility of liberalising the movement of people between Algeria and the EU, a declared long term aim of the European Neighbourhood Policy. If these can be implemented, Algeria will once again have achieved, perhaps, a more balanced approach to the challenge of migration management than it has achieved since at least 1973.

CONCLUSION

43 Since Boumédienne’s powerful symbolic gesture to ban emigration from Algeria to France, the control of international migration switched to the other side of the Mediterranean. In many respects, this fourth age of Algerian emigration since 1980 has much in common with earlier stages. Emigration remains significant, with as many as half a million people leaving the country, mainly from 1990 to about 2005. There are three substantial differences, which distinguish this stage in emigration from previous periods. First, a large proportion of emigration has involved asylum and this has diversified destinations away from France. From 1990 to 2010 the population of Algerian emigrants who did not live in France grew from almost nothing to approximately 100,000. Second, since about 2000 Algeria has begun to experience a new degree of immigration. This is a small trend compared to the dominant emigration but indicates a trend which is likely to continue into the future. Third, a further initial trend which is likely to continue is the progressive return migration of Algerian nationals.

44 The impact of this migration on the situation in Algeria itself is, as Portes (2010) argues, much less certain. In economic terms, the dominance of oil in the Algerian economy has discouraged remittances, and financial transfers remain less significant to Algeria than to neighbouring countries. Politically, the control of migrants’ transnational activities also escaped the Algerian government during the 1990s as initially France and post-2001 the UK and Germany restricted certain opposition activities. In socio-cultural terms the ‘colonial’ status of the emigrant community tends to undermine their influence on attitudes and behaviour, though emigration itself retains the social significance that it did when Sayad described it in the late 1970s.

45 Since 2005, there has been a greater interest in monitoring and regulating migration flows in Algeria. New legislation in 2008 was partially a response to pressure from the European Union but it also reflects the changing position of Algeria as a country of immigration. The Algerian government has also become increasingly skilful at monitoring and neutralising the political impact of emigrants’ activities. This return of the capacity and interest in control of international migration in Algeria itself, combined with new patterns of immigration and the beginnings of return of Algerian nationals, suggests a broad reterritorialisation of international migration which may establish the context for a further ‘age’ in the evolution of international migration to and from Algeria.