25 Jahre „Marche des Beurs“: Kämpfe der Migration im Frankreich der 1980er Jahre und heute

Abstract

Abstract

25 Years after the „Marche des Beurs“: Immigrant Struggles in France in the 1980s and Today. The present essay appears twenty-five years after the ‘Marche des Beurs’, the name given to demonstrations staged throughout France by the children of North African immigrants. It studies the social and political context of this movement, examining both its successes and its failures. By looking at the present-day conflicts in the suburbs (banlieues), it argues that the configurations that came about in the 1980s continue to influence immigrant struggles. Yet, despite this influence, today’s ‘housing-estate generation’ clearly differs from the ‘Beur Generation’. Thus, despite the tense social situation, a depoliticisation has occurred, which, in conjunction with the interventions of the French president Nicolas Sarkozy, has confronted immigrant struggles in contemporary France with new challenges. Accordingly, the essay concludes with a discussion on the anti-racist strategies that propose to take up these challenges, as well as critically assimilate the experiences of the ‘Marche des Beurs’.