Categorization and ethnicization of Algerians within Lyon’s housing and urban policies (1950–1970)

Abstract

According to the ‘French Republican integration pattern’ – based on the principle of colour-blind universality – naming people using ethnic or racial references is illegal in the administration’s documentation as well as in the census. Yet, aspects of the colonial rights system were adopted into the French Republican ideology, thereby constituting a very specific relationship between nationality and citizenship in the administrative management of colonial natives on French mainland soil. This paper reveals the ambiguities of the Republican ideas when they were implemented by street-level administrators within Lyon’s metropolitan area (1950–1970). Examining the administration’s documentation in the Archives of the Rhône Department (ARD), this paper demonstrates how the Ministry of the Interior took leadership in the welfare sector, especially in housing and urban policies. Its role and work built upon the roots of institutionalized racism which accompanied the settlement of Algerian populations in France, even after Algeria’s independence (1962). By institutionalizing racial treatment, the successive administrations in charge of housing and urban policies within the Lyon metropolitan area have contributed to the legitimization of an ideology of segregation based on opposing aims: on the one hand, the mixing and coexistence of different cultural and ethnic groups, and on the other hand, the adherence to a supposed ‘tolerability threshold’ using arbitrarily developed quotas for the settlement of Algerians.