Reimagining North African Immigration: Identities in Flux in French Literature, Television, and Film

Taking the pulse of French post-coloniality, this volume invites the reader to explore the many different faces of Frenchness at the dawn of the twenty-first century. The essays explore the challenges and hopes facing the multicultural country of today, in relation to the legacies of its colonial past. 

The contributors invoke the transformative powers of literature, film, and television, pleading for an honest and open recognition of the centrality of post-beur authors and directors on France’s cultural scene, and of their vital role in overcoming monocultural norms. The variety of approaches – sociological, historical, political, literary, and cultural – celebrates recent films, television programs, and novels produced by citizens of so-called ‘immigrant’ and North African heritage, who use French as their language of choice. 

Located at the intersection of migration studies and diaspora studies, as well as film and literature studies, the various chapters throw fresh light on challenging works that deflate stereotypes regarding France’s post-immigration population. They foreground themes such as urban culture and globalization, cultural metissage, racial diversity, transnationalism, mobility, and connectedness across generational, social, and racial divides, as well as the healing of historical trauma, the decloistering of memories through post-memory, and ‘illiterature’. 

The contributors draw on a wide range of seminal literary and film authors, from Tahar Ben Jelloun, Faïza Guène, Dalila Kerchouche, Mohamed Teriah, Samuel Zaoui, to Merzak Allouache, Yamina Benguigui, Rachid Djaidani, and Abdellatif Kechiche, while also revealing important new voices.