Their story begins with a sign hanging from a factory gate: OUT OF BUSINESS. LOOK FOR WORK ELSEWHERE. Or else it begins with a letter in the mailbox: WILL NOT PAY FINAL MONTH’S SALARY OR PROCESS REQUESTS FOR SEVERANCE PACKAGES.

Or rather, their story begins earlier, with an owner’s calculation that juicier profits can be scored through some different investment in some other corner of the world. The impact on workers, their families, and the surrounding community have no place in this equation.

The real story begins when workers, instead of taking one last order from their boss and walking away, decide to stand up and stay put. After all, they cannot just pull up stakes in the middle of the night and disappear. They do not make their living in the exploitation of others’ labors or the shifting of money from one place to another, but in the production of real goods, and their livelihoods are tied to this factory and the community around it.

In the last year, variations on this story have been growing increasingly common around the world. Many in the United States are already familiar with Chicago’s Republic Windows & Doors, where 260 workers successfully organized a sit-in to demand severance pay owed them, along the way garnering international attention and expressions of solidarity from the likes of President Obama. However, there have also been boss-nappings in France, a “wall-in” in Poland at Europe’s largest coal producer, and a ten-week, 500 worker occupation at the Ssangyong Motors plant on the outskirts of Seoul, South Korea, to name only a few.

Something unusual about these worker actions is the extent to which they are taking place in the so-called developed world. For while the Global South is rich in tales of resistance, in previous decades such protests have been rare in the world’s richest countries. But something has changed, and now in centers of wealth and power from Chicago to Seoul, workers are rising up to defend their livelihoods.

Progressive media outlets have been following this phenomenon, often portraying workers as heroes standing up against the perversity of an unbalanced economic system. However, little of this attention has focused on bridging the gap between the symbolism of resistance and the possibility of a real working alternative. If not this, then what? Can these workers hope for anything better? And what will become of them the morning after “Occupation Day,” when the spotlights have moved elsewhere but their working lives still hang in the balance? To answer these questions we turn to Argentina, the country with by far the most contemporary experience in worker-occupied and, perhaps more importantly, worker-run factories.

Argentina in the ’90s was a poster child for economic policies like deregulation, liberalization and privatization, and while the number of people owning personal yachts soared, so did the number going hungry on the street. When in 1999 the country began to spiral into recession, it turned out the politicians had sold off their ability to defend against capital flight and currency speculation. Within a few years, unemployment soared to nearly 30%, while more than half the population fell into poverty. With factories closing overnight, no new jobs on the horizon and the reality of empty dinner tables setting in, workers began to resist. They were not driven by political conviction or an ideological vanguard, but by an inability to stand the sight of more working factories boarded up in a moment of such personal and community-wide need.

Like with this current wave of resistance, Argentina’s occupations began as a series of atomized protests, largely contained within the factory and directed simply against the closure. But when it became clear neither factory owners nor politicians cared much about the workers’ plights, they decided to take matters into their own hands, towards the return to a dignified working life. And with a disarming straightforwardness they did just that: turning on factory lights, dusting off machinery, and starting up production under worker control. It happened one at a time, with much difficulty and fraught with set-backs. But slowly, it began to work, and over the next couple years these isolated acts of courage began to grow together into something bigger than the sum of their parts.

Today there are approximately 250 recovered factories all over the country, from the famous Bauen Hotel in downtown Buenos Aires to Fa.Sin.Pat: ex-Zanón, the largest ceramic tile manufacturer in South America, located thousands of miles away in the southern province of Neuquén. These businesses produce everything from heavy machinery and textiles to balloons and chew bones for dogs; their services range from accommodations and steak houses to fumigation and air-condition repair. And in the last year more than a dozen businesses have been recovered, including the generations-old Arrufat chocolate factory in the center of Buenos Aires, where 30 workers are right now fighting for their right to work.

In all, an estimated 13,000 men and women earn livings in Argentina’s recovered businesses, all because they refused to join the growing number of unemployed outside boarded-up factories. They work hard, take good money home to their families, and often even manage their own health and retirement benefits, all through democratic decision-making and collective business management. And remember, they accomplish all of this in factories abandoned by their former owners because they weren’t profitable enough.

Furthermore, these businesses have shown a lot of resilience in the latest economic slump. Despite another countrywide outbreak of factory closures, only a couple recovered businesses have had to shut their doors, far below the national average. In part, this is thanks to their democratic structure, with consensus decisions helping to foster greater solidarity and commitment to a shared future. However, there is another reason reflected in these businesses’ bottom lines: without inflated managerial salaries or an investor demanding 15% off the top, worker-run businesses are able to stay in business even when profits aren’t sky high. And with workers sharing profits instead of earning fixed salaries, the burden of truly bad moments is shouldered equally by all, instead of falling disproportionately on an unfortunate few. And what’s more, this business structure provides a healthy alternative for the community as a whole, since economic downturns lead to fewer jobs lost and fewer factories abandoned.

How did they do this? What can occupying factory workers around the world – and those cheering them on – learn from the hundreds of formerly occupied and now recovered businesses in Argentina?

Lesson 1: There is an alternative.

Workers do not have to accept the whims of owners who close perfectly good factories to chase bigger money elsewhere. Nor need the terms of their fight be limited to severance packages and other debts owed. Ask most any worker if he’d prefer a few thousand bucks or the chance to keep his job and be his own boss in a democratic business. Workers in Argentina have already fought for this right and proven it’s possible. Much more than just fleeting symbols of resistance, these businesses are here to stay, proving every day for years they can compete in a cutthroat market against bigger and more established companies.

Lesson 2: Be ready for a fight.

The possibility of worker-run factories is a threat to those living by the myth that only a select few are fit to lead. These people will fight hard to avoid democracy in the workplace, because it is a direct challenge to their place on a throne among those privileged elite. Winning freedom from exploitation has never been an easy task, most obviously because exploiters have appropriated and built up a power they don’t want to lose. In Argentina the fight to win back old jobs under new management often took months, and in some cases more than a year. To this day, many of these factories struggle against corporate interests, powerful politicians, and the daily grind of a marketplace that has no pity on the underdog. But despite all the difficulties, these worker-run businesses exist; and the democratic alternative for which they stand, while at times fragile, is very real.

Lesson 3: Turn the factory occupation into a community-wide issue.

Outside the factory, one of occupying workers’ most important battles is to gain, and maintain, support in the community. This is where local democracy can really work; if you believe in what’s happening, support it: through buying or selling what the workers produce, attending or organizing demonstrations, distributing literature, writing letters or articles, donating food or time, or even just informing friends, family and co-workers. Every action, big and small, adds up to let the workers know they’re supported; it also makes critics and politicians understand the issues won’t just go away. If their struggle disappears from the public eye, it becomes much easier for ex-owners to use heavy-handed tactics to retake the factory and force workers out on the street. In Argentina this support grew up from the ground through community initiatives. And while everybody might not agree with these business recoveries, enough do to have given the option a legitimate space in the public debate over alternatives to unemployment and local business closures. In fact, over time this worker-run option has slowly begun to receive begrudging recognition from the country’s bastions of political power, leading to several favorable court rulings, large subsidies, and even cooperative jobs created by the State.

Lesson 4: Seek some legal footing to gain greater traction in the struggle.

Soon after the protests began in Argentina, many groups of occupying workers registered as cooperatives, both to solidify their status as a working entity and to create a legal body with which to fight for the right to work. They then began to look for some way to obtain permission to use the assets or, more ideally, become owners of the businesses they were occupying. One common strategy was to request that the government expropriate the businesses from their owners and sell them to the new cooperatives, with their accumulated debt owed constituting a portion of the payment. Toward this end they cited a legal norm put into practice by a dictatorship in the ’70s, used to evict families from homes so as to make way for the construction of a freeway. According to this norm, expropriations were legal if used to further “the public good,” a case a number of these cooperatives have  made successfully.

These expropriations have been slow in coming, but the coverage the on-going legal processes provide the movement is invaluable. In many cases they give the businesses time to produce, insert themselves into the market, and win approval from larger segments of the society. And significantly, some of these court battles have been won, most recently that of Fa.Sin.Pat, ex-Zanón, whose 451 workers are now proud owners of the factory they built. The hope in Argentina (and a very real possibility in countries whose legal systems are precedent-based) is that this and other similar rulings will pave the way for wider legal acceptance in the future.

Lesson 5: In the heat of “Occupation Day,” don’t lose sight of what comes the morning after.

For the Argentine women and men who successfully recovered their factories, the occupation period, while vitally important, was still only a brief interlude between two working lives. And while their act of resistance is an important symbol for many around the world, it is this second working life that matters most to the workers. This needs to be remembered when, in the heat of the occupation struggle, the logistics of managing a return to production might start to seem secondary. As soon as possible, occupying workers need to start planning for the business they will soon be responsible for running. This means organizing workers’ assemblies and holding elections for positions such as President, Secretary and Treasurer. It also means staying in touch with former suppliers and clients while simultaneously discussing new strategies for production and commercialization.

This practical reminder is important not only for workers, but also to those for whom the protests and recoveries mean something bigger. For it is through this return to production that the symbolism of resistance can transcend the mere repudiation of injustice, becoming instead an affirmation of a working alternative to support.

Lesson 6: To get back to work, recovered businesses need credit.

This is a practical problem faced by many recovered businesses in Argentina, particularly in the early stages of production. Still fighting the legal battle for expropriation, the workers found themselves without sufficient collateral to access the capital needed to buy raw materials. However, at the same time they were almost always too large for traditional microcredit. Too big, but still not big enough, the recovered factories appeared to have leapt bravely forward into a world that did not have a ground for them to plant their feet. But as time went by, the revolutionary seeds planted by these workers began to sprout in the form of fresh and unexpected ideas in the surrounding community. Responding to the workers’ need, a new concept in lending emerged in Argentina.

Pioneered by the NGO The Working World, along with its loan fund La Base, this new lending approach combines elements of microcredit with low interest rates and an explicit objective to support worker-run business alternatives. Loans are made for productive projects, and instead of collateral are backed by sound business plans and consensus agreements reached in democratic worker assemblies. The Working World:La Base shares the risk, and if the project fails the money loaned does not have to be returned. This means the business can never end up worse after a loan project than it was before. Though some detractors claimed it couldn’t work, WW:La Base found that when working together on a common project, most people want to do the right thing. Over four years, hundreds of projects with worker-run businesses, and two and a half million pesos (nearly a million dollars) loaned to date, their loan return (and hence project success) rate is in the mid-nineties, significantly higher than that of any major private bank.

The Working World:La Base and other similar organizations were born from a concrete need that arose with the wave of factory recoveries in Argentina. This support, increasingly accompanied by government efforts, has been crucial in helping these men and women to get back to work. However, the millions in loans and subsidies are still far from matching the huge sums of cash injected into similar but privately-run businesses. Today, recovered businesses all over the country find themselves fighting an uphill battle to survive without adequate financing. This proof of the possibility to support and affect real change, followed by the stark reality that so much help is still needed, brings us to the final lesson.

Lesson 7: Channel the energy created by the workers’ occupations to affect progressive change in the world around you.

There are moments in life, be it that of a single person or an entire society, in which the possibility to make change happen is a bit closer within reach. The skies open up, and for a short time the ground is more fertile for fresh ideas and different ways of doing things. If you sense this moment, either in your own life or in the world around you, don’t let it pass. In Argentina groups of workers refused to be turned away from their jobs, and from this act of defiance a progressive working alternative was born. Their path was not smooth, and by no means did all their stories end happily, yet nor did they fold up and fade away as so many had predicted. The hundreds of worker-run businesses producing today in Argentina attest to the viability of the path they chose and, more broadly, breathe hope into the possibility of making something fresh and unexpected work.

For supporters of the worker protests taking place around the world today, grasping the moment might mean finding out more about how to lend a hand. However, it might just as easily mean channeling the energy from the workers’ struggle towards some other worthy cause. What’s happening now is significant to me and many others, but to make the world a better place requires a constellation of concentrated interests supporting progressive actions large and small, ranging from the personal to the local to the regional, national and global levels. These workers have made their stand; now it’s up to other concerned citizens in all walks of life to step forward and join them. The story begins.

Water is essential to life. Yet 1.6 billion people lack access to clean water. Every 15 seconds, a child dies from drinking unclean water. “Power, poverty and inequality” are root causes to lack of clean water. (UNDP’s Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis) Although 70% of the earth is made up of water, only 2.5% is fresh water. Less than 1% of the earth’s water is renewable and ready for human consumption. (Water Facts) The world’s clean water supply is also decreasing from pollution, overuse and industrialization.

The 5^th World Water Forum, named Bridging Divides for Water, kicks off on March 16^th and ends on March 22^nd, 2009 in Istanbul, Turkey. At first glance, the 5^th Forum is an international event for water experts, activists, government officials and water organizations to exchange ideas and develop policies on these and other water issues. Panelists and participants will discuss 100 topics under the Forum’s six themes including climate change, development, protecting water resources, governance, finance and education. Yet a closer look at the forum shows that it is driven by the business industry, particularly the world’s two largest water corporations, Suez and Veolia. Previous forums promoted policies that benefit the business industry while threatening people’s access to water.

How the Business Industry Dominates the World Water Council

World Water Forums have been held in Marrakech (1997), the Hague (2000), Mexico (2003) and Kyoto (2006). The forums are organized by the World Water Council, which was created in 1996 as a platform for governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), businesses and other organizations. Despite a move in 2003 to include a wider variety of organizations, the business industry still makes up 41% of the Council’s membership, a significant proportion compared to professional and academic institutions (27%), governments (17%), civil society (10%) and intergovernmental organizations (5%). (World Water Council Biennial Report)

Most importantly, the world’s two largest water corporations, Suez and Veolia, have powerful positions in the Council. Loïc Fauchon has been the president of the Council since 2005 and is on the International Steering Committee for the 5^th Forum. He is also the president of Groupe des Eaux de Marseille, a company owned equally between Veolia and a subsidiary of Suez. (Société des Eaux de Marseille) The alternate president is Charles-Louis de Maud’huy who has been working at Compagnie Générale des Eaux, a subsidiary of Veolia, since 1978. (Board of Governors) Suez and Veolia’s powerful positions are a clear example of how the business industry dominates the Council.

There is Significant and Legitimate Opposition to the Forum
The number of participants has increased since the 1^st Forum with 20, 000 participants expected at the 5^th Forum. Yet significant opposition to the World Water Forum has also grown. Water activists, NGOs and some governments oppose the Council and 5^th Forum because their policies promote the management and sale of water services by private companies. This resistance stems from the belief that water should not be commodified (sold for profit) and privatized (companies own, manage and provide water services for profit). As a resource that belongs to everyone, we need to protect water as a human right, part of the global commons and a public service. We should not have to pay into companies’ profit for something that is essential to life.

The 1^st and 2^nd Forum aggressively promoted water privatization. However, the Council has since stated that they do not support “real privatization” as an attempt to dodge the criticisms against them. (World Water Council’s Triennial Report) Instead, the Council began promoting Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs or P3s), agreements between private companies and local governments that divide responsibilities between them. However, private companies often manage the sale of water - the more lucrative segment - while governments are responsible for funding costly infrastructure. PPPs do not put water infrastructure into private hands, as full privatization does. Nevertheless, the sale of tap water by private companies has resulted in price increases, water cut-offs and water pollution preventing people from accessing clean water.

The World Water Forums Promote Policies That Have Harmful Impacts

Water systems have been privatized in varying degrees all over the world including in Canada, the US, Bolivia, South Africa, the UK and Australia. In the mid-1990s, a PPP in Hamilton, Canada resulted in 180 million litres of untreated human waste and chemicals spilling into Lake Ontario and backing up into people’s basements. (Hamilton’s Crown Jewel) In 2000, Suez’ subsidiary cut off South African residents’ water forcing people to drink from dirty lakes. This “lead to one of the worst cholera outbreaks in decades.” (Whose Hand on the Tap?) The harmful impacts of privatization are felt most by women, particularly in the global South, because they are often responsible for caring for the sick, gathering water and household duties that require water. (Diverting the Flow: A Resource Guide to Gender, Rights and Water Privatization)

Despite these harmful impacts on people and the environment, the World Water Council and their forums still encourage governments to transfer segments of the water sector to private companies. The Report of the World Panel on Financing Water Infrastructure: Financing Water for All, also known as the Camdessus Report, was presented at the 3^rd Forum in Kyoto in 2003. Some of its most controversial policies reduce risks for corporations using public funds and lock governments into contracts using agencies such as the World Bank’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA). MIGA offers coverage for breaches of contracts, political instability and violence. Their dispute resolution process allows investors to seek compensation if a government breaches its contract. This type of guarantee would penalize a government for canceling a contract, even if they had done so because citizens could not access clean water. If we believe that every human has the right to water, then a government should have the right to cancel a contract if it prevents people from accessing clean water.

The Camdessus Report’s policies coincided with Suez’ corporate strategies. At that time, Suez and Veolia were withdrawing from Latin America because of fierce protests against their management of water services. They were receiving negative publicity and their profit returns were low. Suez would only enter into contracts where risks were minimal and profits guaranteed. (Suez 2004 Annual Report; Suez 2003 Annual Report) Although making profits are important to businesses, profit should not trump people’s access to water. The report’s policies create conditions that ensure company profits without regard to people’s ability to access water.

The Camdessus Report has had real impacts on countries’ water polices. Prior to the report, only one water project in Ecuador was covered by MIGA. After the Camdessus Report, there were nine contracts covered by MIGA with two involving Suez and two involving Veolia. The latest is a request pending approval submitted by Suez with China. (MIGA’s Waste and Water Projects) The Camdessus Report is an example of how the World Water Forum promotes policies that benefit the business industry even at the expense of people’s health.

The 5th World Water Forum Does Not Really Reflect the Diverse Views on Water

The World Water Forums claim that the policy recommendations are the consensus of the international water community. On the surface, the 5^th Forum appears to be an inclusive and democratic event. The 5^th Forum will hold 100 sessions on a wide range of topics related to water. A number of regional, political and thematic processes were held over the last three years in order to include as many regions, levels of governments and sectors as possible.

However, although the sessions include important topics such as the right to water, climate change and preserving natural ecosystems, the forum still promotes private sector involvement as a solution to water problems. There are few sessions where the impacts of the commodification of water and PPPs can be evaluated. Few sessions examine Public-Public Partnerships which keep water in public hands. Although the Council supports the right to water, they believe that the private sector has a role in securing this right. Their definition differs drastically from NGOs, activists and governments who oppose selling water as a commodity because they believe that water belongs to everyone. Based on the session descriptions, the 5^th Forum will follow in the footsteps of past forums and promote private sector involvement with few sessions examining the harmful impacts. For these reasons, the World Water Council needs to be dismantled and the 5^th Forum should be the last.

We Must Keep Our Water Services Public

Governments everywhere face significant barriers to providing water including aging infrastructure and lack of financial resources. Corporations like Suez and Veolia use seemingly democratic international events such as the World Water Forum to persuade governments to transfer water services to them. Yet past cases have shown that privatization and Public-Private Partnerships are not the solution.

It is important that we are vocal about the harmful policies of the World Water Council and the 5^th World Water Forum. Emails, phone calls and petitions can have significant impacts. The 4^th Forum was originally going to be held in Montreal but protests against the proposal rerouted the forum to Mexico. Protests against PPPs and privatization in many cases have ensured that water remains in public hands. If enough people express opposition to the World Water Council and Forum, we can make sure that water is protected as a human right, part of the global commons and a public service. We need to call upon our governments, the UN and other participants of the forum to launch a truly open, transparent and legitimate Global Forum on Water. (An Open Call to the Global Water Justice Movement)

This paper is based on my M.A. thesis, Networks of Power: A Feminist Political Ecology Analysis of the World Water Council (2008). There are many other problematic issues about the World Water Council that are excluded here for the sake of brevity and simplicity. Thank you to Yumi Kotani, Ken Ogasawara and Matthew Lymburner for their comments on earlier drafts.

Brendan O’Neill, editor of the British online journal spiked, has a problem with how Marx is being used.  However, his complaint is not that an important figure of intellectual history is treated so shabbily.  He complains that most commentary invoking Marx relates the current crisis to the ‘inevitable’ collapse of capitalism that Marx foresaw.  O’Neill writes that it is a fallacy that Marx considered the collapse of capitalism to be a necessary outcome of ‘progress.’  He claims this belief is a fallacy based on a ‘misreading’ of the first part of the Communist Manifesto.  To interpret Marx this way is alleged to be an attempt to turn him into a ‘prophet.’  O’Neill claims that “[t]hroughout his more profound works, Marx never talked about the inevitable collapse of capitalism.”  However, this simply is not true, and to deny the teleology of Marx is to seriously misunderstand the inherited thought with which Marx was grappling.  More seriously, however, to deny Marx had a belief in historical necessity is to miss why he is largely inappropriate as a means to understanding the current crisis.

O’Neill appears to have grabbed onto Marx’s well-known assertion that “men make their own history.”  Although, instead of this quote he  selects and misrepresents an obscure reference from The Holy Family, a Marx-Engels work critiquing the Young Hegelians.  O’Neill’s claim requires one to overlook numerous statements from Marx about the “natural laws of capitalist production.”  In the preface to the 1867 German edition of Capital, Marx refers to capitalist societies “working with iron necessity towards inevitable results.”  Marx considered himself a scientist, and his predictions were those of a scientist - in the same way that Einstein made predictions based on the theory of general relativity.  The reality is that, as with all great thinkers, Marx’s thought was full of aporias and paradoxes.  For Marx, there was an on-going tension between his realization that society is the product of nondetermined human action and his desire to discover the laws of history and society.  Cornelius Castoriadis calls this the ‘antinomy of Marx‘, and it reflects the paradox of the Enlightenment.  Enlightenment thinkers wanted to both articulate the rational policies of a society that is in tune with nature and celebrate the free individual.  However, if history is governed by rational laws, then human agency is meaningless.

O’Neill asks if those currently name-dropping Marx have read Chapter 32 of Capital.  This is a puzzling question, given that it is precisely the chapter in which Marx offers one of his most widely quoted phrases about the inevitability of capitalism’s collapse: “The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.”  This knell comes out of the capitalist mode of production and it is coming “with the inexorability of a law of Nature.”  The laws of historical motion are akin to gravity in their necessity. As surely as the river flows to the sea, history flows toward industrial communism.  This was the outcome of historical materialism.  Marx focused on the mode of production because he saw it as the intersection of society and the material and, therefore, as the essential component for understanding society scientifically.

This does not mean there is no anti-teleological element to Marx.  There absolutely is, after all he did write, “Men make their own history.”  Especially in his early writings, Marx appears to be wrestling with this insight, and the conflicting belief that there are laws of history and society that can be discovered, explained and used to make predictions.  One attempt to resolve this antinomy is found in the proviso to his famous line quoted above: “but they do not make it as they please.”  The conflict can be seen in his description of the laws of capitalist society as both ‘natural’ and ‘immanent.’  Castoriadis cites the on-going battle between these two incompatible lines of thought as one of the reasons Marx failed to finish the ambitious project he set about in writing Capital.  Unfortunately, in Marx’s most important works, the search for the laws of society and history tended to win out over his realization that we make our own societies and own history.

It is precisely Marx’s realization that our societies and histories are the product of conscious and creative people that renders his teleological analysis largely irrelevant in the context of the current crisis.  Marx’s rationalist materialist political economy led him to claim that financial instruments like those at play in the current situation are “the perfect fetish.”  They are hollow; a once-removed appropriation of surplus value.  The current crisis is, from a Marxist perspective, a fiction.  It may be a fiction that has some real consequences, but it ultimately remains a fiction.  It has no roots in the material and, therefore, it is not real.  The crisis and collapse of capitalism as foreseen by Marx is a necessity of the system of production.  It is a crisis from within the nuts and bolts of capitalist-controlled industry.  The predicted crisis grows out of his metaphysical belief that labour is the source of value.  According to Marx, the accumulatory process that drives the capitalist involves both a financial and a material accumulation.  The financial has to become the material in the hands of the “functioning capitalist.”  This requires ever growing amounts of labour and draws upon technological progress.  This progress provokes increasing centralization of production and capital: “One capitalist always kills many.”  Proletarianization and centralization result in “the economizing of all means of production by their use as means of production of combined, socialized labor, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world-market. …  Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. Thus integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist….”  Well, you know the rest.  Is this what is happening?  No.  You would be hard pressed to find anyone who claims that labour is becoming increasingly ’socialized.’

This does not mean a Marxian materialist analysis has nothing to say about the current crisis.  Marx recognized well before other theorists that capitalism is not a smoothly operating system.  He certainly knew that capitalists were capable of turning crises to their own advantage.  However, he still regarded such crises as secondary to the primary operation of productive capitalist accumulation.  Marx’s analysis was rooted in the heavily competitive cotton mills of newly industrialising Britain.  The reality of contemporary capitalism is well removed from those heady days of full liability, low entry costs, frequent bankruptcies, rapidly expanding demand, and a large quantity of available labour - turning man, woman and child into wage-slaves.  Where Marx once saw a distinction between productive capital and finance capital with value only created and accumulated through the utilisation of labour in production, a modern analysis makes it clear that such a distinction is impossible.

Consider just one corporation as an example.  Caterpillar is as ‘productive’ a corporation as one could imagine.  Their products are utilised by the primary industries.  They make use of smoke belching factories. They employ workers that are organised into assembly lines within those factories.  Yet, one of its most profitable business segments is Cat Financial.  At just 7% of revenue and sales, it generates 15% of profits.  Most of its lending is to its dealers and customers so that they can buy Cat built machinery.  The ‘productive’ aspect of Caterpillar is intimately dependent upon the ‘financial’ aspect.  How are we supposed to separate the financial from the so-called ‘real’?  The answer: we can’t.

If Marx’s analysis of the laws of capitalist economy cannot help us understand the current crisis, then might his acknowledgment that we are responsible for our societies and histories serve us better?  The first thing we would conclude is that this crisis emerged, not because of any inevitable historical necessity, but because of immanent decisions made by those who have political economic power.  The situation emerges from the actions of particular peoples with their own subjective desires and capabilities.  This is not the same as saying it was planned and implemented.  However, both policy and business choices were made that have contributed to the crisis.  There will be capitalists who benefit from the crisis and it is not beyond belief to imagine that conscious actions were taken to provoke a situation in which they would be able to differentially accumulate - that is, accumulate relative to other capitalists.  In fact, before Naomi Klein was talking about the “Shock Doctrine” or “Disaster Capitalism,” Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler demonstrated that the other side of capitalist expansion is ‘accumulation through crisis.’  This also means that, apart from a challenge to the system of capitalism as a whole, all capitalist crises are merely a crisis for one subset of capital.  For others, such crises present an opportunity.

Most importantly, an immanent perspective on history and society make a necessity of struggle.  The current crisis is not the inevitable collapse of capitalism, as there will be no inevitable demise written into the code of capitalism.  If we wish to proceed beyond the capitalist system, we will have to imagine alternatives and work toward them.

Nationalism and nation in the Quebec context

Quebec nationalism awakens in the 1960s with the Quiet Revolution (Gellner in Smith, 36). Former French-Canadians living within the borders of the province of Quebec, by considering themselves Quebeckers, wanted to break the subordination status imposed upon them by the English-Canadians. They proudly affirmed their specific culture and language (Ferretti, 69) and took control of the economy of the province through the creation of a Quebec welfare state. The government of Quebec became more than a mere government; it became equivalent to a modern interventionist state (Shöpflin, 299). The rallying cry of the newly born nation, “Maîtres chez nous,” prompted by Jean Lesage and his Liberal Party, perfectly illustrates what Jan Penrose identifies as the three components of the nation: the people, the territory that these people occupy, and a mystical bond between the people and the place which merge the two other components into an “immutable whole” (Penrose 1994, 163).

A nation cannot be disassociated from nationalism. Indeed, the latter invents the former by making people with similar cultural traits who live in a similar place believe that these similarities are the most basic social bond that unites people (Gellner in Anderson, 6; Gellner, 3; Penrose 2002, 279). Moreover, nationalism develops the need for a representational state-like structure, a leadership with some degree of sovereignty who can assure the well-being of the nation (Gellner, 6). The nation and nationalism are invented, or, as Benedict Anderson prefers, imagined, because it is impossible for all members of a nation to know all the other members as well as the whole territory they belong to (Anderson, 6). However, this does not mean that the nation does not exist. Nationalism, on the contrary, “is one of the most powerful forces in the world,…the most widespread and popular ideology and movement” (Smith, 37).

The specificity of a nation defines its particular identity, an identity that stands apart from other national identities. Hardt and Negri define national identity as “a cultural, integrating identity, founded on a biological continuity of blood relations, a spatial continuity of territory, and linguistic commonality” (Hardt and Negri, 95). Although the essay will later show that Quebec national identity is not based on blood relations anymore, this description is accurate. One must remember that identity is always based on exclusion. It creates an “us” and an “Other”, separating between qualified and unqualified bodies (Manning, xv). In the Quebec case, Canada is the “significant ‘Other’” who constantly plots against nationalist projects in Quebec (Juteau 2002b, 444).

The next section will analyze the two components of national identity and the need of a state apparatus to protect this nation, bearing in mind the influence of the Other on the (re)definition of national identity.

The territory

The territory, for the nationalists, is much more than a mere piece of land. Indeed, it is a homeland, the home the people recognize as theirs and to which they are deeply emotionally attached. The territory’s longevity renders it natural to the eye of the people. Thus, even though the current borders of the Quebec territory were only achieved in 1927, the territory of Quebec came into being as soon as the first French settlers dwelled in New France. This territory, even if it has been greatly modified, was meant to nurture the Quebec nation. The territory becomes natural, given, intrinsically and spiritually connected to the people.  This territory, however, is not only perceived as “time immemorial” (Smith in Penrose 2002, 281), it is also perceived as the guarantor of the nation’s history and future. Protecting and taking care of the land is therefore respecting and caring for the ancestors, while guaranteeing a thriving future for future generations to fulfill their dreams (Penrose 2002, 281, Salée 1995b, 263). In other words, it means securing the perpetuation of the nation (Salée 1995b, 263). Salée summarizes this idea:

Dans l’imaginaire collectif québécois, les limites frontalières du pays réel ne font aucun doute….Le territoire du Québec est un, indivisible et inaliénable. Patrie des ancêtres, sol d’une histoire à nulle autre pareille et source de promesses de lendemains prospères, il se pose en quelque sorte comme référent immuable et incorruptible de l’identité québécoise dans le temps et l’espace. (Salée 1995b, 263)

There is little doubt over the symbiotic relationship through time and space between the territory and the people, according to nationalists. It also is clear in the mind of nationalists that the control of their territory is essential. Indeed, whereas in the past, French Canadians would be subjected to the economic domination of American and English-Canadian interests (Ferreti, 80), by taking control of their territory through the Quebec state structure (Quebec 1997, 2), Quebecers could finally control their lives (Penrose 2002). Canada represents the major threat, thus becoming the dominant Other because it refuses to recognize the territory of the province as Quebec’s national territory (Winter 2007). Without such territorial control, the Quebec nation would disappear, and so would the people (Winter 2007). The people are therefore vital to the protection of their territory.

They, however, are not only deeply emotionally involved with their territory, they also are attached to the other members of the nation, even though they will never know every one of them (Anderson, 7).

The “distinct” people

Quebec nationalists demand the recognition of their distinct status. The people, in every nation, are represented as a harmonious and homogenous group, sharing a certain common culture, language and set of practices who act with one voice, one will (Hardt and Negri, 103; Manning, xv; Hetcher, 23). Anderson speaks of a horizontal comradeship that unites all the members of the nation (Anderson, 7), a comradeship reinforced when the nation is attacked. The people would not necessarily kill but would be ready to die for the nation (Salée 1995b, 263; Anderson, 7). Being a member of the nation, for the people, is the most important belonging there can be (Malouuf, 19, Hetcher, 94). They feel a sincere love for each other, because they assure each other of the existence of a nation (Gellner, 11). To even mildly nationalists, it is essential to preserve the nation, language, and political institutions that outlive them-their culture (Manning, xv; Gellner 1997). As Arjun Appadurai underlines, the people may have short lives, but the nation has a long history (Appadurai, 163).  Moreover, sharing this national identity is so important that any other kind of identity one can have-class, being part of a club, etc.-is subordinated to the national identity. In this hierarchy of identity, the national identity dominates the other identities and leads the people (Malouuf, 19).

The people of the Quebec nation only recognized themselves as Quebecers in the 1960s. However, the roots of the Quebec nation, for the Quebec state and its people, can be found all throughout history since the establishment of settlers in New France. The  national identity did not stay the same over the years. It has evolved to complement the changing reality. One can identify three main changes to Quebec national identity, all of them occurring in response to the Other’s actions. Butler points out that identity cannot be thought outside or beyond power relations (Butler, 30)

In the 1960s, at the awakening of the Quebec nation, national identity was more ethnically defined than it is today (Juteau 2002b, 443). Indeed, only French Canadians who shared a same history and who shared the dream of achieving modernity as well as political sovereignty were included (Juteau 2002b, 443).

After the defeat of the referendum in 1980, the national identity strives towards including non-Francophones in its definition. This is a result of the adoption of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms by Canada, which placed emphasis on the rights of minorities. Indeed, Quebeckers did not want to be perceived as antidemocratic and ethnocentrist (Beauchemin 2002, 263-4). Moreover, because of the lowering birth rate of former French-Canadians and the boost of the economy, the need for immigrants increased (Beauchemin 2002, 165).  The majority tried to assimilate them, which failed as the 1995 referendum showed (Juteau 2002b, 447). Since then, the Quebec national identity is constantly debated. However, most would agree to say that nationalism in the Quebec context is much more civic, that is to say based on liberal democratic values, even though it holds on to its historical culture and the French language (Taylor, 37; Winter,  482).

The national identity of the people has changed, however, the state structure remains.

The Quebec state

The state is an integral part of the nationalist’s “dream of being free” (Anderson, 7). The attachment to the nation and its identity compels the people to proclaim the existence of their nation because its survival depends on it. Anderson believes that “the gage and emblem of this freedom is the sovereign state” (Anderson, 7). Penrose adds some nuance to this argument when she explains that state sovereignty can take different forms. Therefore, state sovereignty would not necessarily mean the creation of a new nation-state with a seat at the United Nations. It implies a state structure, or its equivalent, with enough autonomy to follow the people’s will to keep the nation alive (Penrose 2002). This second explanation seems more accurate in the Quebec case since not all nationalists, even among the separatists, have the same view of what would be the best way to assure the survival of the nation (Laponce, 192; Winter, 495). Erin Manning acknowledges the importance of sovereignty:

This language of the nation is characterized, alternately, by a desire to naturalize a cohesive sense of identity and territory through official cultural and political texts that depict the nation as a harmonious entity, and by the lawful enforcement of the discourse of state sovereignty as the guarantor of liberty, equality, and fraternity. (Erin Manning, xv)

The people have faith in the Quebec state structure, and strongly believe that the state will enhance the people’s well-being.

National identity remains the most important reference in terms of identity. Even if national identity is always vaguely defined and it constantly adjusts itself to the reality in order to include more people-the more people, the stronger the nation (Schöpflin, 302) - it still is a very powerful and positive force for the people. It constructs deep emotional links between the people and the safe place. It also generates a strong attachment to the state, and a hope in it as it is the guarantor of the nation’s security.  However, national identity is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, much love resides among those who belong. On the other hand, exclusionary violence can be exerted over the Other, those who do not belong. Indeed, national identity creates a standardization of an overarching identity, which creates many borders and categorizations. The next section will identify the pitfalls of national identity.

Pitfalls of national identity

The distinctiveness of the nation is embedded in the exclusion of the Other, and arises from the existence of shared culture, language and practices that differs from the Other’s. (Hetcher, 23). The dominant Other, throughout Quebec’s history, has been Canada. However, as it will be shown, the scope of exclusion is much wider than one would initially think. The limits of national identity have been organized into three main groups- selective history, limits to membership, restrictive definition of identity-that will be analyzed individually.

Selective history

Ernest Renan, in 1882, proclaimed that a selective history is essential in order to forge a solid nation which will survive across the ages.

Or l’essence d’une nation est que tous les individus aient beaucoup de choses en commun, et aussi que tous aient oublié bien des choses. Aucun citoyen français ne sait s’il est burgonde, alain, taïfale, visigoth ; tout citoyen français doit avoir oublié la Saint-Barthélemy, les massacres du Midi au XIII e siècle. (Renan, 353)

On the one hand, he lauds the glorification of major historical events that creates the nation. On the other, he promotes the censorship of non-glorious events, even though they are at the heart of nation-building. Quebecers are proud of the Quiet Revolution, a major historical event during which Quebec made its entrée into modernity. This period coincided with the birth of the Quebec nation, the affirmation of the Quebec province as the homeland for Quebecers, and the dawn of the welfare-and employer-state (Ferretti, 77). Yet, some authors, such as Daniel Latouche and Ralph Güntzel, are more skeptical about the extent of the “revolution” (Latouche 1974; Güntzel 2001). They deconstruct the original myth by showing how the government did not significantly become more responsible towards its people and how many workers were facing problems with the employer-state (Latouche 1974; Güntzel 2001). Moreover, the period preceding the Quiet Revolution, during which le petit peuple québécois was under the yoke of the Catholic Church and the industrial sector of its economy was under the control of foreigners-Americans or English-Canadians-is depicted as a dark age during which Quebecers became backwards (Mathieu 2002). However, most forget that it is during those years that national identity developpped in Quebec. Indeed, people living in Quebec began to envision the province as their homeland, largely as a result of the Catholic Church refusing to allow conversion to Protestantism (Hossay, 189). Moreover, it is because of the commonality of the Catholic religion that many Irish supported the French-Canadians in their various struggles towards greater state sovereignty (Hossay, 163).

A nation’s history is always based on lack of memory (oubli) and romanticism. It distorts the reality, which entails that many historical actors, other than the main “we” and “them” are forgotten or their role becomes minimal. One can think of the Aboriginal people, the Irish and black communities as potent examples.

Limits to membership

The notion of nation, as demonstrated earlier, is inherently connected to the notion of territory. But the territory is determined by borders, natural or manmade. This means, therefore, that there always is a demarcation between those who are on the territory-and who should belong to the nation-and those who do not belong (Manning 2003).

The most obvious limit to the membership of nation is the Other. The Other, that is to say “the rest of Canada”, is also represented as a homogenous group who oppresses the Quebec nation. The Other is therefore excluded from any form of membership. The irony here is that without the Other, there would be no “us”. Indeed, the Other is an integral part of who the “we” is since the “we” is more often than not defined in terms of opposition to the most threatening Other (Winter, 483). The two cultures are not insular; they influenced and partly defined each other.

In spite of this clear, “natural” territorial and cultural demarcation between the “we” and the Other, one can easily detect the (normal) “abnormalities” to a such clear-cut model.

First, there are the ones who could belong but do not because they live outside the borders of Quebec. This is the case of the French-Canadians outside Quebec who are refused membership for purely territorial reasons, although they share a close history, culture and language as the Quebecers’ (Taylor 2000).

Second, there are some who live within the borders of Quebec but do not feel any attachment to the Quebec nation-this does not mean, however, that they do not want to live within the territory of Quebec, but they identify themselves with another nation, Canadian or Aboriginal. The nation, through the redefinition of national identity, constantly tries to include all of those who live on the territory within the nation so that no others will exit from the territory (Penrose 2002, 279). However, it is clear that some others within remain: most English-speaking Quebecers identify themselves primarily to the Canadian nation, most Aboriginal people with their respective nation. The Quebec state has tried to integrate them, and, facing their resistance, they used “pressure release valves” which appeased them-or satisfied the majority of the people. Thus, in the 2007 Consultation document of the Commission sur les pratiques d’accommodements reliées aux différences culturelles, the co-chairs of the commission, Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor clarify the mandate of the commission:

…To avoid any ambiguity [surrounding the mandate of the commission], we wish to specify that, even if our deliberations led us to re-examine Québec society’s integration model, the English-speaking minority’s particular status in Québec need not be called into question. Rights and prerogatives, e.g. the right to public services in the English language guaranteed by the Canadian Constitution must be respected. Furthermore, the National Assembly has already recognized that “there exists a Québec English-speaking community that enjoys long-established rights.” Similarly, we are not contemplating reconsidering in any way whatsoever the political and legal status of the aboriginal peoples. Once again, the Québec National Assembly has recognized the existence of the 11 nations living within Québec’s borders and their specific rights. (Quebec 2007, 3-4)

The social tensions that still occur between the minorities and the majorities, those related to the growing overt Aboriginal dissidence for instance, can and are easily discarded for the sake of the “smoothness” of national identity because those minorities do not represent a threat to the majority (Woehrling, 195).

National identity attempts to create a black and white world, which does not match with reality. Exposed in this paper are just a few examples of how reality overtakes ideologies. These phenomena, however, are not particular to the Quebec case. Indeed, all constructions of a national identity create similar problems. Canada, for example, also uses the “pressure release valves” in order to refute the need of a Quebec nation as protector of the French language. For instance, Canada recognizes French-Canadians as people from one of the two founding nations and promotes multiculturalism in order to preempt Quebec nationalism (Mathieu 2002; Winter 2007). The national identity limits the definition of identity and what the members of a nation can want and do.

Restrictive identity

The notion of national identity is restrictive in the sense that identity is defined in territorial and singular terms.. If it does accept, to some extent, other forms of belonging, it is clear that national identity will always take precedence over any other identity.

Men find themselves members of different groups at the same time. With the growth of the complexity of civilization, the number of groups of which men find themselves a part generally increases. These groups are not fixed. They have changing limits, and they are changing importance. Within these pluralistic, and sometimes conflicting, kinds of group-consciousness there is generally one which is recognized by men as the supreme and most important, to which therefore, in the case of conflict of group-loyalties, he owes supreme loyalty. He identifies himself with the groups and its existence, frequently not only for the span of his life, but for the continuity of his existence beyond his span. The feeling of solidarity between the individual and the group may go, at certain time, as far as complete submergence of the individual in the group (Kohn in Hetcher, 94-5)

However, growing numbers of diasporas challenge the supremacy of the homogenizing definition of national identity. Indeed, they belong to multiple nations. Choosing between one or the other is impossible. Still, this either/or choice is imposed upon them. Either they fully belong or they do not belong (Malouuf, 44). But diasporas do not face this problem alone. One could think of all the “frontiers” people, who, for a reason or another, share contradictory belongings to Canada and Quebec (Malouuf, 44-5). When he or she does not choose one identity over the other-and risk being rejected by the one he doesn’t choose-, he or she is often rejected by all of his national identities (Malouuf, 44-6). This causes a deep, unsolvable dilemma.

The restrictiveness of national identity is most evident with diasporas. Nevertheless, this does not mean that the people, who belong to the same nation, necessarily have much in common, or face the same reality as the other members of the nation. National identity creates a mould with some of the nation’s characteristics, as if they were inborn (Malouuf, 31). However, Butler inquires as to what extent identity is a normative ideal rather than a descriptive feature of experience (Butler, 16). Regarding gender, Butler shows how no one is born a woman but rather becomes one (Butler, 33). People are compelled to correspond to a unique and territorial definition of national identity which has previously been determined. Yet every person is composed of many belongings, many of them having nothing to do with a territory or a nation (Malouuf, 23-5). Each person constitutes a multitude that the nation successfully turns into an anonymous member of a greater, synthetic, homogenous people (Hardt and Negri, 103).

National identity, on the one hand, creates love between those who recognize themselves in it. On the other hand, however, it creates much exclusionary violence, outside as well as within. The differences within a nation cannot be ignored anymore. It seems more and more like national identity, because it is imposed upon the people rather than coming from them, is irrelevant. The Quebec state is slowly transforming national identity towards a more inclusive, pluralistic, civic, or anti-nationalist, nationalism.

The civic nation as the new ideal

The civic nation is one that is based more on territory than on ethnic terms. The member becomes a citizen, with certain rights that he can expect to be respected (Juteau 2002a). For a long time, Quebec was depicted as racist because it did not, like Canada, base the definition of its nation on liberal values such as democracy, pluralism, equality, individualism, and a market-based economy (Winter, 482). However, the Quebec nation has changed significantly in recent years, and it is clearly a much more inclusive nation (Winter, 482). The new political ethic of the nation is based on human rights, equality and democracy (Taylor, 41). This does not mean, however, that the French language and the history of the Quebec nation are put aside. On the contrary, they remain central to the new definition of its national identity (Taylor, 41). This road of ‘interculturalism’ has been adopted by the Quebec state and the different political parties (Cook, 24; Gagnon and Iacovino, 2004). The Commission sur les pratiques d’accommodements reliées aux différences culturelles, launched by the Parti Libéral Québécois is based on this principle. Bill 195, the “Law on Quebec identity” presented to the Quebec National Assembly by Pauline Marois, leader of the Parti Québécois, explicitly leans towards a more civic definition of the nation, one closer to Canada’s definition of the nation (Cook, 24).

Even though this civic nation seems more inclusive, within it lies an inherent problem: it still reproduces a national identity. But national identity, as we have seen earlier, is intrinsically based on exclusion. Appadurai reflects the new type of exclusion engendered from modern nations:

[The leaders of modern nations] rested their ideas of their new nations on the very edges of the paradox that modern nations were intended to be somehow open, universal, and emancipatory by virtue of their special commitment to citizenly virtue but that their nations were nonetheless, in some essential way, different from and even better than other nations. (Appadurai, 162)

Kropotkin’s criticism of the state becomes very useful. He observed that under the Third Republic in France the essence of the monarchical order remained; he concludes that trying to work within a system that existed historically and had a life of its own-the state apparatus-would only result in the cooptation, voluntary or not, of those Republicans.

Sincere Republicans nourished the illusion that the State organisation could be utilised to operate a change in a republican sense; and here is the result. When they ought to have destroyed the old organisation, destroyed the State, and constructed a new organisation by beginning at the very basis of society…they thought to utilise “the organisation that already existed.” And for not having understood that you cannot make an historical institution go in any direction you would have it, that it must go its own way, they were swallowed up by the institution. (Kropotkin 1947, 42 - emphasis added)

Applied to national identity, this means that no matter how a nation is transformed, as long as it is, humanity will be divided, the violence will continue. Why try to maintain this façade of unity? Why not try to go “beyond” the ideal of a single territorial allegiance, of a single national identity? Could the nation not be this spiritual horizontal comradeship? Whose interests does it serve?

Whose interests?

According to Hardt and Negri, the nation is just “another turn of the screw”, another way for the sovereign-the bourgeoisie-to fulfill its own selfish interests (Hardt and Negri, 102). Through the spirituality between the different components of the nation, the elite was and still is able to exercise a totalizing power (Hardt and Negri, 101). This means that the people are controlled, sometimes with consent, through biopolitics: the new political, bureaucratic and capitalist elite, with the help of the intelligentsia were able to convince the bulk of the population to follow them in their quest for modernity (Juteau 2002a, 203; Hardt and Negri, 109). In the case of the Quebec nation, feeding their revolution by the real frustration felt by the urban population, the capitalist bourgeoisie, unhappy with its inferior status compared to that of the Anglophone capitalist elite and the intelligentsia, pursue their own goal (Ferretti 1999). The bourgeois nationalism (Anderson 1991) was able to create and define a new identity based on entrepreneurial successes. What Quebecer is not proud of Hydro-Québec, the Cirque du Soleil, Bombardier (Arpin, 264-8)? The territory is perceived as “natural” by the people, but really, it is a great source of wealth that the elite are not ready to share with, for instance, Aboriginal people (Salée 1995b, 265). Most do not realize this bourgeois nationalism. And those who do are incapacitated by the lack of will of the population.

For example, in the early 1970s, two of the three dominant unions in Quebec were denouncing the state that was only defending the interests of the capitalist class (Güntzel, 155). In 1972, the CEQ (Centrale de l’enseignement du Québec) adopted a manifesto in which they denounced the modern-capitalist-society as “an exploitive society where all the dominant classes, and their servile servant, the state, exploit men’s work and the needs of the consumers in order to increase their profits and their power” (Güntzel, 155, translated from French). However, most workers, trusting the welfare-state, were not interested by the politicization of their unions (Güntzel, 156).

The totalizing power of the sovereign has shown its effect. Anderson’s horizontal comradeship looks more like a pyramidal structure dominated by the hegemony of the bourgeoisie (Güntzel, 157).

Conclusion

Nations and nationalism, however imagined, are the most powerful source of identity today. They bond a people to a specific territory as well as to each other. This bond is often described as spiritual or even God-given. The state supervises as well as insures the survival of the nation and constantly ignites nationalist consciousness in the people. The national identity links all these elements together into what appears to be an immutable whole. One must not forget, however, that nationalism is not natural. It has been constructed in response to power relations that are being downplayed. Thus, the traditionally ethnically-defined national identity of the Quebec nation has moved toward being more open, rights-based, and civic.

Nevertheless, such openness is never fully realized. Indeed, the identity itself is based on the rejection or the negation of “others”, and, in Quebec’s case, in opposition to Canada, the dominant Other. Although it is clear that the reality does not match this clear-cut national identity-even as it is changing-, states persist in preserving these overarching concepts. Indeed, the elite, who control the state-in Quebec’s as well as any other case-gains much power from doing so.

Because states continue to ground their power on exclusionary identities, they therefore encourage and engender constant violence, whether overt or covert. This is why we must challenge the geography of nation-states. Identities are not fixed nor are they singularly defined. Instead of trying to divide humanity on these imagined nations, it will achieve much more, and will be much more secure if the principal of mutual aid as defined by Peter Kropotkin was applied.

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Mejuan, 2008.
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• Periodizing our Current Moment: Work-Well-Fare As a New Mode of Social Regulation
  (view paper)
  Matthew Lymburner, Political Economy
• From Disabled to Dispossessed: CPP Disability Benefits and the Decline of Social Citizenship Rights in Canada
  (view paper)
  Mary Rita Holland, Public Policy
• Gazing Back Into the Closet: Theorizing about Queer Women in the Workplace
  (view abstract)
  Lesley Vaage, Canadian Studies
• Resisting and Reinforcing the ‘Entrepreneurial City’: Labour’s Contradictory Role in the Upcoming 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver
  (view abstract)
  Mathew Nelson, Political Science
• Discussant: Berrak Kabasakal, Political Economy

Transcript: Commentary from the Discussant

None Available.

Introduction

According to the Social Union Framework Agreement (SUFA), the Government of Canada is committed to working toward strengthening programs and services designed to protect and promote the well-being of Canadians. In pursuit of this objective, the framework concludes that “the first priorities should be children in poverty and persons with disabilities” (SUFA 1999). While much attention has been directed toward the former through attempts to eradicate child poverty and debate over a universal child care system, the latter group has remained on the margins of public policy discussions. Canadians with debilitating health conditions who are incapable of employment yet who fail to meet the rigid requirements of CPPD suffer even greater social exclusion than the unfortunate individuals who do qualify for benefits. Little follow-up on the health and economic status of failed applicants has been done, leaving one to conclude that public sympathy and state support are not forthcoming. Women also find themselves in a disproportionately precarious position as they tend to rely on CPPD to a greater degree than men yet have more difficulty qualifying for the program. Such problems highlight the perils of “the traditional model of worker-citizenship, where the welfare state [is] organized on an occupational basis and where the full social citizen [is] assumed to be a full-time, full-year, paid employed male” (Vosko 2002: 185). Existing literature on CPPD addresses the need to provide disabled Canadians with equal citizenship through social security (Prince 2005, 2003; Dunn 2006) yet to date little analysis has been done on the productivity agenda at the heart of this issue - and the incompatibility of neo-liberal policymaking and social citizenship rights, more broadly.

The Canada Pension Plan was established in 1966 after a decade of political debate. The purpose of the CPP as outlined in a 1964 White Paper was to “make reasonable minimum levels of income available at normal retirement ages, and to people who become disabled, and to the dependents of people who die” (Torjman 2002: 6). Specifically, the CPP consisted primarily of universal coverage for Canadians over the age of 70, means- tested benefits for individuals between 65 and 69, modest payments to spouses and dependents of deceased contributors, and universal disability coverage. For the purposes of this paper, only the latter component - disability benefits - will be discussed in further detail.

From its inception in 1966, CPPD has been the largest, long-term income security program for disabled Canadians, paying benefits to approximately 280 000 adults in 2002 (Government of Canada, 2003). CPPD offers disability coverage to Canadians who are not covered by private insurance plans. Unlike private insurers, CPPD does not exclude individuals who are deemed ‘at risk’ of leaving work due to health problems and requires no medical screening. Eligibility is assessed according to two main criteria - whether or not the applicant contributed to the plan for the minimum period and whether or not the applicant fits CPPD’s definition of ‘disabled’. The contribution period has been revised several times due to both fiscal pressure and public counter-pressure.

Date/Period	Minimum duration of CPP contributions
Prior to 1986	5 of the last 10 years
1986-1997	2 of the last 5 years OR 5 of the last 10 years
1997-2007	4 of the last 6 years OR any 4 years
Late 2007	If contributed 25 years or more, 3 of the last 6 years If contributed less than 25 years, 4 of the last 6 years

The definition component of CPPD eligibility criteria is equally problematic yet has been passed over by recent reforms. A disability must be considered ‘severe and prolonged’ in order for an individual to qualify for benefits. CPPD legislation defines ‘severe’ as “a mental or physical disability that regularly stops you from doing any type of work (full-time, part-time or seasonal).” A ‘prolonged’ disability is one that is “likely to be long term, or is likely to result in your death” (Service Canada).

Applicants who are unhappy with the results of their case may appeal for reconsideration at three different levels. The first level involves a written request for reconsideration which is reviewed by a member of HRSD staff who is unfamiliar with the original decision. Appellants usually provide additional medical evidence to support their case. The second level involves a hearing before the Review Tribunal which is comprised of a lawyer, a member of the medical profession, and a layperson. Finally, the third level of appeal - made to the Pension Appeals Board (PAB) - consists of a hearing presided over by a panel of three judges. A snapshot of the numbers of CPPD applicants involved in the appeal process in 1998-99 show that the number of first level appeals is substantial (22 452). The vast majority - 72 percent - of appellants were denied at the first level. Second and third level appeals are far less substantial in this period, at 9 607 and 3 967, respectively. HRSD is also entitled to appeal the decisions rendered at the second and third level. Moreover, applicants who succeed in qualifying for CPPD may be reassessed and lose their benefits if they are considered to have rehabilitated sufficiently to return to work.

Evolution of CPPD - From Accessibility to Sustainability

The first CPPD payments were made in 1970 and caseloads grew consistently until the mid-1990s due to the increase in eligible applicants and general awareness of the benefits (Torjman 2002). The history of CPPD can be summed up by a series of legislative changes as the government struggled with the task of adhering to the principles of ensuring income security for disabled Canadians while regulating eligibility to control costs. As Torjman argues, quantitative data seems to support the hypothesis that the increase in CPPD caseloads corresponded to the relaxed requirements for contributions in 1987 (see Figure 1). A similar attempt to make disability benefits more accessible in 1992 removed a time limit on applications. Yet, as Torjman argues, other forces led to the spike in CPPD claimants prior to the mid-1990s, including “improved information about the program and its benefits,” higher levels of unemployment among older workers, as well as increased incidence of referrals from provincial social assistance programs and private disability insurers (Torjman 2002: 21). The increase can also be partly explained by the context of “the growing acceptance of conditions - such as stress, chronic fatigue and environmental hypersensitivities - as ‘disabilities’” (Torjman 2002: 27). Clearly, critiques of CPPD that focus on ‘moral hazard’ oversimplify the relationship between workers and the labour market and neglect important soci-political factors.

The period 1995-96 marked a watershed for CPPD - caseloads peaked and subsequent reforms brought about a steady decline in the number of beneficiaries (see Figure 1). Improved economic conditions and a decrease in applicants may be partly responsible for the shift. Yet a stricter interpretation of eligibility criteria dramatically reduced access to CPPD. Guidelines introduced in 1995 no longer allow adjudicators to be influenced by socio-economic factors and require a strict adherence to ‘objective medical evidence.’ According to Torjman, “the tighter medical interpretation of disability appears to exclude many potential claimants with conditions that are not verifiable or quantifiable in a laboratory” (Torjman 2002: 31). Attempts to reign in CPPD expenditures proved effective as the approval rate (expressed as a proportion of the total number of initial decisions) fell from 55.7% in 1990-91 to 38.3% by 2000-2001 (Kerr 2002: 6).

In 1997, Liberal Finance Minister Paul Martin initiated substantial reforms to the CPP, citing a lack of long-term sustainability. Despite the fact that disability expenditures had been decreasing as a percentage of CPP expenditures since 1993-94, (Prince 2003: 73) disability benefits were scaled back as part of the broader reform strategy under Bill C-2. HRDC was careful to convey the message that cuts to CPPD should not be perceived as a lack of compassion for disabled Canadians. Yet, as Prince argues, “these cuts demonstrated that rights conferred by a social insurance program are not an immutable social contract between governments and individuals but could be changed by governments” (Prince 2003: 72). In sum, Bill C-2 tightened eligibility requirements, limited the amount of benefits conferred to eligible applicants, and effectively undermined the social citizenship status of disabled Canadians.

Policy Implications of Villani v Canada (2001)

While the pension reforms were well-supported and ultimately considered a success, resultant hardships for disabled Canadians - who were now deemed ineligible for benefits - became increasingly apparent. A Federal Court ruling in the case of Giuseppe Villani seemed to provide an opening for CPPD reform. Villani was born in Italy and received a grade 5 education before his family emigrated to Canada in 1955. He eventually found a permanent, full-time job at Rothman’s tobacco company. Villani applied for CPPD at the age of 56 due to chronic pain in his knee, shoulders and back, numbness in his leg, and hearing and vision impairments. His application was denied on the basis that his level of disability did not meet the definition of ‘severe’ as outlined in the legislation. Villani appealed the decision at the first two levels and finally to the PAB but was denied each time. In their interpretation of Villani’s situation, PAB argued that: “While one acknowledges immediately that suitable sedentary work with relief times to walk around is not easy to find, the test is not ‘Is the work available?’ but rather, ‘If it were there, could he do it?’ In my opinion the answer is yes” (Federal Court of Appeal - Villani v. Canada 2001).

The Federal Court of Appeal ruled in favour of Villani on August 3, 2001. The judge questioned the severity requirement of CPPD eligibility and deemed it to be unfair and unrealistic. Moreover, he criticized a number of PAB decisions on the basis that they illustrated a “decidedly ungenerous version of the statutory definition of a ‘severe’ disability” which have the effect of “subverting the benevolent purposes of the legislation” (Villani v. Canada 2001). Specifically, the judge argued that CPPD adjudicators used an oversimplified, unrealistic definition of disability that was based on an incomplete depiction of circumstances. The PAB decision in the Villani case rested on idealized assumptions about Villani’s employability and the broader labour market conditions he faced. The judge argued that “the hypothetical occupations which a decision-maker must consider cannot be divorced from the particular circumstances of the applicant, such as age, education level, language proficiency and past work and life experience”(Villani v. Canada 2001: 14). Many appeals invoking the language of Villani have been undertaken since this landmark decision, with mixed success.

Along with problems illustrated through the Villani decision, the accessibility of CPPD is open to criticism for a number of reasons. A House of Commons Standing Committee reported that the evaluation of applicants was conducted in a seemingly arbitrary manner. The committee questioned the practice of CPPD adjudicators (who are normally nurses) of interpreting data provided by physicians and contradicting the physician’s assessment of whether or not an applicant should be considered disabled. Also problematic is the fact that the adjudicators can formulate such a conclusion “without ever having met the applicant.” The Subcommittee also found a “lack of clear statistical data on reasons for rejecting benefit applications and on the economic consequences of such rejections” (House of Commons 2005).

Michael J. Prince, the most prolific analyst of CPPD, recommends two key changes to enhance the accessibility of the program: first, a return to the pre-1998 eligibility criteria pertaining to contributory period; secondly, a revision of the definition of a ‘severe and prolonged’ disability in keeping with the findings of the Villani decision (Prince, 2003: 2). Greater flexibility in the eligibility criteria would ensure recognition of “the episodic and degenerative nature of many disabilities as well as the challenges of finding and keeping employment when living with a disability” (Prince, 2003: 2). While it is readily acknowledged that disabled Canadians face high levels of poverty, according to Prince, less attention is paid to the issues of “inclusion, citizenship and dignity” (Prince 2005: 4). He argues that the discourse on disability in Canada reflects an outdated conception “of disability as a personal tragedy and bio-medical phenomenon” which posits the burden of care on family members. Rather, the focus should shift to addressing “attitudinal, institutional and environmental factors” and prioritizing “equality of rights and full citizenship” for disabled Canadians (Prince 2005: 8). While Prince’s social citizenship paradigm provides a more comprehensive lens for analyzing disability policy - and CPPD, in particular - it is nevertheless premised on a model wherein the unique experiences and problems of women are overlooked.

Disabled Women in a ‘Male-Worker’ Paradigm

The number of women receiving CPPD has risen steadily - from 31.6% of the percentage of recipients in 1990 to 47.6% in 2001 (Kerr 2002: 4). Interpretations of this trend look to the fact that women were disproportionately affected by changes to the contribution period. Women tend to engage in non-standard forms of employment to a greater degree than men and maintain a more fluid attachment to the labour market (Vosko 2000). Therefore, shorter time periods for contributions effectively provide greater access to CPPD for many women.

Changes in eligibility criteria introduced in 1987 and 1993 pertaining to the contributory period may have made it easier for women to qualify for CPPD (Campolieti 2001). However, socio-economic factors such as rising levels of female labour market participation and growth in the service sector and part-time work may be just as significant. In fact, Campolieti’s findings on the sensitivity of women’s employment rates to loosened CPPD eligibility were inconclusive (Campolieti 2001: 191), suggesting that socio-economic factors offer a better interpretation of the rapid increase of women as CPPD beneficiaries after 1987.

A report by the Status of Women Canada found that the 1997-98 changes to CPPD negatively affected women to a greater degree than men for a number of reasons. The new contributory requirements (4 of the last 6 years) made it more difficult for women who “move in and out of the work force” while having children to qualify (Doe and Kimpson 1999: 4). The nature of women’s work differs from men’s and, due to the fact that their domestic and volunteer activities are unpaid, women who remain outside the standard employment relationship have lower pensionable incomes and limited access to private, work-based insurance plans. As a result, women who do not have a substantial history of full-time work have fewer options for income replacement if they become disabled and receive lower levels of CPPD benefits. Retirement benefits paid at age 65 are also scaled back according to the duration of CPPD payments; “the larger the gap between age 65 and the age at which the CPP disability benefit was first paid, the greater the retirement benefit reduction resulting from this rule change” (Doe and Kimpson 1999: 5). The authors of the report argue that disabled women rely on CPPD from an earlier age than men, and therefore see their pensions reduced to a greater extent when they reach retirement age (Doe and Kimpson 1999: 5).

The nature of women’s disabilities also differs from men’s. The Status of Women Report found that “women tend to be more prone to cyclical and fluctuating illness that [create] difficulty in sustaining employment and basic life activities” (Doe and Kimpson 1999: vi). The most common type of disabilities resulting in CPPD benefits are mental disorders (63 171 in 2000) and diseases of the musculoskeletal system and connective tissue (79 946 in 2000). These categories saw substantial growth prior to 1998, as did the number of female CPPD beneficiaries (Kerr 2002: 5). Women tend to suffer from less ‘visible’ types of impairments than men and their respective reasons for permanently exiting the labour force differ accordingly. Diseases such as arthritis, multiple sclerosis, chronic fatique syndrome, and unipolar depression “are more frequent in women, and are difficult to diagnose or are believed to be primarily ‘psychological’ as opposed to organic” (Doe and Kimpson 1999: vi).

Current attempts to improve the accessibility of CPPD offer greater hope to male applicants than female due to the gender bias inherent in Canadian disability policy. The Villani decision holds some promise that one’s eligibility for the benefits will be adjudicated in a more reasonable manner, taking ‘real world’ circumstances into consideration. Yet the ‘real world’ circumstances that are deemed relevant are factors such as the applicant’s age, level of education, job experience and training, and regional employment rates. For example, an individual with a Grade 6 education working in a factory who loses a leg in a work-related injury is no longer capable of working at the age of 57. The individual resides in an area where unemployment is high and, after exhausting Workman’s Compensation Benefits, applies for CPPD. While the individual’s injury is undoubtedly serious, the strict interpretation of eligibility is not met as it is possible that a person with only one leg is capable of working at another job. Yet after considering the fact that the individual would have to undergo substantial training to qualify for a job with relatively few physical requirements, and would have to move to find such a job, CPPD adjudicators could be convinced that they should keep in mind the barriers to future employment when rendering their decision. Such an individual is most likely male.

The Villani decision marks an important step in making CPPD more accessible yet it also reinforces the normative model of the standard employment relationship which is both antiquated and gendered. Women are more likely to work part-time, to have high levels of education, and to have transferrable skills such as clerical experience that open up a greater number of potential jobs. As such, they have a more difficult task in proving their eligibility even with the loop hole provided by Villani. Moreover, ‘real world’ circumstances that do apply to women - such as caring for children, domestic work that limits their capacity for full-time employment, and their relative financial insecurity - are missing from the analysis.

Women who qualify for CPPD must restrict their public visibility so as to avoid being seen as ‘well’ on a good day, and thus risk losing their benefits. As a result, many women confine themselves to the domestic sphere, “a space primarily occupied by women” wherein “economic, social and political power, and consequently their social well-being, is reduced” (Chouinard and Crooks 2005: 22). CPPD recipients are at risk of depression due to the social exclusion they face and the stigma associated with subsisting on government payments. Entrenched ideas about one’s duty to work are reflected in CPPD legislation and in society as a whole. Many women receiving CPPD describe themselves as “useless and non-contributing” which “shows how pervasive societal values and attitudes around productivity and self-sufficiency are as the mark of a “good” citizen” (Chouinard and Crooks 2005: 27). The traditional model of worker-citizen equates men who work full-time with the ideal of a contributing member of society. As women’s domestic work continues to be devalued, they fall short of achieving full citizenship status and, ultimately, full citizenship rights. Clearly, this is an insurmountable problem for women with disabilities incapable of labour market participation.

The Clash of Neo-liberalism and Social Citizenship

As Jane Jenson argues, “citizenship is never simply a synonym for nationality” (Jenson, 1997: 627). Many scholars of the welfare state focus on the goal of enhancing social citizenship as its primary objective. T.H. Marshall (1950) is credited with the first comprehensive study of the link between social welfare and citizenship rights. The rapid industrialization of post-war Britain and the social calamities that accompanied the period gave rise to the belief that the state had a unique role to play as overseer of social stability. The state and market shared a common objective; “Marshall’s work claimed that it was the extension of citizenship rights (and the limits on states and markets thereby implied) that made capitalism and its markets workable and sustainable” (Jenson 1997: 630). Marshall’s idea that shared ‘citizenship rights’ would allow a society to transcend ethnic and class differences offers hope to scholars who argue that the welfare state can and should be enhanced rather than scaled back. The argument that income inequality translates into social inequality and, therefore, that generous social policies narrow the gap in social rights as well as income is firmly entrenched in leftist social policy analysis.

Gøsta Esping-Andersen is arguably the founder of this trend as he argues that, at its inception, the welfare state’s “promise was not merely social policy to alleviate social ills and redistribute basic risks, but an effort to rewrite the social contract between government and the citizenry” (Esping-Andersen 1999). Esping-Andersen has inspired a great deal of scholarly work that seeks to revise social policy in order to improve rights, or invokes rights to improve social policy. While the coupling of social policy and citizenship rights is useful in legitimizing and supporting calls for greater investment in the Canadian welfare state, the marriage is a complicated one. As Siltanen argues, “Esping-Andersen’s work into the analytical frame of policy analysis has encouraged a conceptual fusion of social policy and social rights that over-generalizes the connection between them” (Siltanen, 2002: 403). Distinguishing between a guaranteed income and the more abstract guarantee of full and equal citizenship is vital in the context of analyzing the government’s role in supporting disabled Canadians. Yet, despite the problems inherent in Esping-Andersen’s approach, it is still useful to begin with the premise that Canada’s ability to ensure social rights for disabled Canadians can be measured in terms of the accessibility of income support through CPPD.

According to Jenson, the individual forms the fundamental basis of the Canadian citizenship regime (Jenson, 1997: 634). Yet collectivism, in the form of a commitment to social welfare, was heralded as part of the Canadian nation-building project following Confederation. Federalism was considered viable only if citizens could see common bonds and forge a common identity. As Jenson and others have argued, the welfare state was established because of the need to redress the inequalities inherent in capitalism but also because of its potential to unify a diverse collection of regions and people. The mythology of the ‘social Canadian’ became firmly embedded and fostered a distinct, pan-Canadianism that centered on “belonging to a certain type of society, one in which a concern for the quality of the collective experience provided a counterpart to the emphasis on individual and market freedom that reigned in the US” (White 2003: 58).

Yet tensions between individual and collective interests remained and have become most noticeable in recent decades with the challenge of neo-liberalism in the realm of public policy. The Canadian government is increasingly fraught with contradictions as it maintains that Canadians are bound together by their commitment to the common good (in the name of federalism) while favoring unbridled individualism (in the name of prosperity). A clear winner is emerging, according to Brodie, as the government has “progressively abandoned the social covenant upon which the postwar social citizenship regime was based” (Brodie 2002: 378).

Contemporary debates on the future of the Canadian welfare state grapple with the ‘Third Way’ proposed by renowned sociologist, Anthony Gibbens (1998). For those weary of the traditional class-based framework of public policy analysis, the Third Way seemed to offer hope of compromise and a way to put the acrimony between left and right behind. In order to achieve this objective, White argues, “Third Way thinking seeks to shift the focus to relations between individuals and communities, to social rights balanced by social responsibilities, and to collaborative relations between the public, private and voluntary sectors” (White 2003: 53). The Third Way became popular among welfare state scholars at approximately the same moment in time that neo-liberalism came to dominate politics. While The Third Way is by no means synonymous with neo-liberalism, they have become mutually reinforcing concepts in the context of Canadian welfare state development. The most important distinction is that The Third Way is a social theory while neo-liberalism provides a normative, economic model of society. Yet both have influenced public policymaking in Canada and the outcome of their application is similar - and can be summarized by the emphasis on individual responsibility and productivity.

Neo-liberal policymakers and politicians use Third Way discourse to suggest that structural differences are anachronistic in order to unabashedly shift the focus from income distribution and social welfare to debt reduction and economic prosperity. In the Canadian context, the focus on ‘citizenship rights’ diminished along with social spending over recent decades. According to Siltanen, “taking the place of the social rights-bearing citizen” is “one who is re-familialized, individualized and marketized” (Siltanen 2002: 396). The reaffirmation of the primacy of the individual in Canadian society has “delegitimized group-based claims-making on the state in the name of citizen equality” (Brodie 2002: 378). In other words, the right of the taxpayer to the full proceeds of their labour is now considered just as valid as the right of single mothers to social assistance or the right of a disabled person to CPPD benefits. By relinquishing the task of prioritizing the well-being of its most vulnerable citizens, the Canadian government has effectively withdrawn from the practice of ensuring social citizenship rights through the welfare state.

While many scholars have discussed the growth of ‘social risks’ - or poverty, unemployment, isolation and inequality - produced by neo-liberal Canadian policies, little attention “has been devoted to the implications of withering of social citizenship rights and associated social policies for the ongoing generation of social solidarities and collective identities” (Brodie 2002: 378). The dream of fostering a pan-Canadian identity seems to share the fate of the welfare state on which it was premised. As the government whittled away social spending through the introduction of the Canada Health and Social Transfer (CHST) in 1995, they assured Canadians that “the progressive erosion of their social citizenship rights represented only short-term pain for long-term gain” (Brodie 2002: 388). Now that unprecedented surpluses have replaced the deficit, it is not difficult to see their bluff. As Brodie argues, the neo-liberal principles that have taken hold “give the federal government the paradoxical task of building a broad-based social consensus around a new vision of Canadian society which gives government itself only a minor role” (Brodie 2002: 389). The new ‘vision’ is a Canada in which entitlements are replaced with ‘earned rights’ and one’s value is determined by the market.

Conclusion

The fact that social citizenship rights are tied to one’s ‘productivity’ in Canada has garnered some scrutiny of late, yet mainly in the context of social assistance and child care policy which maintain the core objective of ensuring the labour force attachment of women. Yet women who are neither well enough to work or unwell enough to qualify for CPPD find themselves languishing in an economic and social underclass. As Jane Jenson (2001) has pointed out, “the notion has taken hold that virtually all citizens have a responsibility to work.” Moreover, as White argues, the relationship between the state and market has been inverted as “the labour market is no longer seen as a producer of risks, but rather as the solution to the health and social risks associated with poverty and exclusion”(White 2003: 71). It is in the context of disability benefits that this notion is most troubling. Disabled Canadians continue to suffer from discrimination and face “attitudes that stress charity rather than equal rights and citizenship” (Dunn 2006: 413). Unfortunately, the restrictive nature of CPPD eligibility perpetuates such a perspective as well as a gender-biased policy framework. Without an ideological shift toward the socio-democratic emphasis on citizen rights over market success, disabled Canadians - particularly women - will continue to endure marginalization on the basis of their lack of labour market productivity.

References

Brodie, J. (2002) “Citizenship and Solidarity: Reflections on the Canadian Way,” Citizenship Studies, 6, 2002.

Chouinard, V. and Crooks, V.A. (2005) “‘Because they have all the power and I have none’: state restructuring of income and employment supports and disabled women’s lives in Ontario, Canada,” Disability & Society, 20, pp. 19-32.

Doe, T. and Kimpson, S. (1999) “Enabling Income: CPP Disability Benefits and Women with Disabilities” (Research Directorate, Status of Women Canada).

Dunn, P.A. (2006) “Canadians With Disabilities” in A. Westhues (Ed), Canadian Social Policy: issues and perspectives, 4^th Edition (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier University Press).

Esping-Andersen, G. (1999) Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Federal Court of Canada (2001) Villani v. Canada (Attorney General) Federal Court of Appeal Division. FCJ, No. 1217. Available at http://www.http/decisions.fct-cf.gc.ca/fct/2001

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Assistance and Single Mothers in Wisconsin and Ontario,” in Sylvia Bashevkin (Ed), Women’s Work is Never Done: Comparative Studies in Caregiving, Employment, and Social Policy Reform (New York and London: Routledge)

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As Vancouver prepares for the upcoming Winter Olympics in 2010, the bid process has dominated urban discourse with its aim to transform Vancouver into a ‘world-class,’ competitive global-city. This essay will use the Olympic Games as an empirical case study to examine the active role of labour in processes of reinforcing and resisting the building of ‘entrepreneurial’ cities. Following Tufts (2004), it will argue that the contradictory roles that labour plays in both reproducing economic scales such as city-regions, and in reinforcing urban hierarchies of class, race and gender, are rarely explored.

Labour geographers have given workers with conflicting interests, greater ‘agency’ in reproducing the social, economic and political landscape of capitalism. They have also theorized new opportunities that arise for union intervention at urban and regional scales. Labour is an active economic agent(s) in processes shaping contemporary Vancouver. An analysis of the pro-Olympic stance of the British Columbia and Yukon Territory Building and Trades Construction Council (BCYT-BCTC), and the 2007 civic strike by the BC Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), can help demonstrate how different unions support and oppose the Games for a variety of reasons ranging from job promises, to employment equity, and future organizing opportunities.

Fear, copyright and a side order of mind-numbing “art”
Royal, 2008
Spraypaint on concrete

But first, some background. This paper emerged out of a policy seminar last spring, and my intent was to both directly and indirectly grapple with the literature seeking to periodize modern capitalism. Concrete and relatively short periods or epochs are valuable heuristically, but I felt that they tend to take on a life of their own. This paper, then, in abstract terms, is an attempt to reconcile my apprehensiveness. I was especially attracted to the works of Regulation School thinkers such as Bob Jessop, Alain Lipietz and David Harvey – specifically the twin concepts of regime of accumulation and mode of regulation.

This theory in simplest form posits that every regime of stable capital accumulation requires a set of norms, customs, laws and regulations to both legitimate and enable it. Crises in capitalism push these two out of synch, and both must change until a new cohesion can be found – leading to a new “period”. The first portion of my paper outlines the transition from one period to another - Fordism to Post-Fordism – focusing specifically on the detrimental effects for organized labor. But a major question I had, perhaps over-optimistically framed, revolved around whether or not Post-Fordism is, or ever was, actually stable. If it were actually in crisis, what might emerge to replace it? And what might this mean for social struggles, specifically for laborers that had been so adversely affected by Post-Fordism?

Before I try to answer that question, I should note here what work-well-fare isn’t. My paper and my presentation deal specifically with the United States. Although I would point to a few recent promising incidents around the world – the end of the John Howard regime in Australia, a subtle shift in Japanese politics away from the intense nationalism and neoliberal reforms of the Koizumi days – this is currently not a shift affecting all of the so-called ‘developed’ nations. Work-well-fare is a concept with contextually specific applicability, not a theory.

Moreover, I would actually argue against the idea that work-well-fare is something that currently exists in the United States in terms of tangible policy frameworks or organized lobbying capacities, though I think both are slowly emerging. Mostly, work-well-fare is a discursive tendency that certain social actors can seize upon to reclaim a segment of social power long-held by certain capital interests.

And this is what this is really about. I won’t give a genealogy of the transition from Fordism to Post-Fordism, for I’m sure they are known to many of you in all too real terms. Suffice to say, as David Harvey has convincingly demonstrated, that despite the trend towards economism in social discourse dictating otherwise, the class war is alive and well, whether we like it or not. This transition was part of a strategy both conscious and unconscious by a minority of elites to restore bourgeois class power as dominant, and redistribute the fruit of that power – wealth – from the working and middle classes to a select group of economic overlords.

In the best language of neoliberalism, all of the changes that made Post-Fordism so different from its predecessor depended on choices made by real people, not on abstractions like ‘globalization’ or on a fatalistic path dependency barring future actions. If choices got us to where we are now, then choices can get us somewhere better – in terms of wage and tax burden inequality, state social service provision and budgetary prioritization, and collective bargaining agreement regimes, among many more.
In criticism of Margaret Thatcher, there are always alternatives and possibilities and realizing this is the first step in achieving them.

And this is what work-well-fare is: a realization. I think the realization that there are alternatives to economism is slowly and collectively happening across the United States. A growing disjuncture between the massive wealth accumulated in the United States and the highly uneven distribution and redistribution of this wealth has exacerbated social tensions to the point that powerful people – even the gatekeepers of capitalism so to speak - are beginning to question our current regime. As regulation theory might predict, the social regulation and the regime simply do not match up. Today, work remains the dominant social value in America, and as this idea is diffused into the psyches of a new generation of workers, and more deeply into the older generation, it is likely to remain so for some while. However, notions of ‘work’ and accompanying sub-values of competitiveness, efficiency, and productivity, are increasingly being linked to social concerns such as healthy, educated, and reasonably wealthy citizenry. To quote Mitt Romney, speaking at the California Republican debate on Jan. 30th, “Education, healthcare, economic development - they’re all tied together”.

Now, you may say that this is not necessarily new, and I agree. Bill Clinton, for example, was keen in utilizing this rhetoric during his presidency as a way of managing his political identity, and did pass some significant legislation such as the Family and Medical Leave Act (1993) and an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (1993). Still, I argue that much more has changed than a half-hearted political will to improve the life of constituents. Factors such as the composition of congress, recession, and mismatched rhetoric and reality for most Americans are making more impactful legislation and a discourse more conducive to the left increasingly possible.

Despite work-well-fare being a mainly discursive tendency, materially, we have already begun to see strategic investments in social services work to boost the competitiveness of capital. Yet alongside this, more recently we have seen an increasing concern placed on the vibrancy of communities, families and individuals beyond their immediate market functions. Thus, we have seen minimum wage legislation back on the table again – as recently as two weeks ago Hillary Clinton claimed she would provide a minimum wage of $9.50 if elected. And living wage campaigns are gaining momentum nationwide with some significant success.

Let me offer some evidence for these broad claims now using the examples of the governors of New York and California, Eliot Spitzer and Arnold Schwarzenegger. I chose these to reflect Republican and Democrat, East and West, and different capital and demographic interests. Here is a quote from Spitzer’s inaugural address:

“Today we stand in the midst of a global revolution that has transformed the way we live and the way we work…We must embrace a progressive vision of government once more – a vision that upholds the values of individuality and community; of entrepreneurship and opportunity; of responsibility and fairness. No one any longer believes in government as a heavy hand that can cure all our ills, but rather we see it as a lean and responsive force that can make possible the pursuit of prosperity and opportunity for all – by softening life’s blows, leveling its playing field and making possible the pursuit of happiness that is our god given right.”

Here we see Spitzer uphold the interests of both capital and laborer, although the order of his words is telling – individual before community, entrepreneurship before opportunity, responsibility before fairness. As if the matter had already been settled, he sets the tone for government to operate as a mediator, or manager, of social life, yet a manager that at least on the surface has concern for all employees.

In California, Governor Schwarzenegger is not so eloquent regarding his overall plan for the state, yet he too seems to be towing a similar line. The California state legislature approved another minimum wage increase in August of 2006 that will reach $8.00 in two years (DIR, 2006), as well as massive increases in education spending, but in the mind of Schwarzenegger, these all serve the instrumental purpose of improving competitiveness. That they also do benefit working people is emblematic of an uneven fusion between economic competitiveness and social sustainability; of workfare and welfare.

What makes this rhetoric and these policy changes more than just temporary, is the unity around the notion that the Post-Fordist regime of capital accumulation is in crisis. Even capitalists such as Klaus Schwab are increasingly worried about the future, arguing that “we need to devise a way to address the social impact of globalization, which is neither the mechanical expansion of welfare programs nor the fatalistic acceptance that the divide will grow wider…”. Lou Dobbs captures this sentiment in a much more current and culturally accurate way: “No one believes in democracy and free enterprise more than I do, and capitalism. But if we allow unfettered capitalism…” to reign free, then a crisis will be the least of our worries. (Feb. 9th, 2008).

This cursory discourse analysis demonstrates that even finance capitalists at the helm of the World Economic Forum and reactionary nationalists, though they do not buy into work-well-fare as I would hope to see it come to fruition, are concerned about what unchecked Post-Fordist capitalism will result in. Everywhere you look in America, and nowhere is this clearer than in the recent primary campaigns, people are looking for social and political unity and reconnection with one another, and with an America that has long been dormant.

My paper goes on to describe some additional transformations that I argue are significant in renewing concern for increasing class balance. If work-well-fare is a far from ideal compromise to rejig American political negotiation, changing geographies of capitalism and shifting identity politics signify opportunities to push the interests of labor even more.

Geographically, the spatial fix of work-well-fare is not significantly different from that of the Post-Fordist era. The restructuring of the role of the national state and the bifurcation of social relations remain staple features in the landscape of contemporary capitalism. However, what first appeared as ‘scale relativization’, which Bob Jessop defines as “intense competition among different economic and political spaces to become the new anchorage point of accumulation around which the remaining scale levels (however many, however identified) can be organized in order to produce a suitable degree of structured coherence”), I argue, is actually ‘scale stasis’ – the countervailing balance between multiple scales, forming a multi-structured scalar coherence. The decline of a single dominant scale does not necessarily signify chaos. After all, humans have always lived on multiple scales simultaneously despite perception to the otherwise. Instead, the rise of multiple scales operating together represents the increased dynamism of social life that new technologies make possible.

This dynamism means new possibilities for organization, for communication, for the ability to shift discourse and for new politics. And as the final segment of my paper describes – possibilities for union renewal. The ability for online communities operating on the virtual scale to affect tangible policy outcomes at the state or federal level represents huge possibilities, as does the ability to share strategies, ideas and other informational resources. Scale stasis, just like the dominance of any single scale, means the potential opening of space for capital interests to attempt to capture the reigns of power. This is always a threat that labor must always content with. Yet it also signifies opportunity, and it is this opportunity that makes the potential for work-well-fare to emerge as a new period of capitalism something that we can be optimistic about.

I think that the social regulation of identity is changing as well. The social vacuum left by the ultra-liberal 80s and 90s has led to a yearning for community, but on terms that flow from the liberal past. The explosion of online communities (e.g.: Facebook, MySpace, Second Life, Amazon, Youtube) that integrate the ability to self-represent and express ‘individuality’ with the collective regulating gaze of social peers, employers and the state is emblematic of this. One interesting example of this is the Facebook group “Rock the Vote”, which has over 31,000 members. Only 1500 people have made “wall posts”, and there are only a few thousand discussion board posts, many contributed by the same people no doubt. Still, people who might otherwise not participate in a social movement have the ability to do so in ways that do not come into conflict with other aspects of their identity. This strengthening of communities, despite their virtual character or their triviality for broader social struggle is a necessary precondition for progressive social change. Just like the shifting terrain of social relations presents opportunity for renewed class compromise, the way people view themselves in relation to society also presents opportunities: Opportunities for collective action, and ultimately for the joining of both the militant and complacent particularisms of disparate communities.

In conclusion, work-well-fare is not the next stage in an inevitable trajectory of neoliberal capitalism. Nor, except for some of the recent developments I have discussed, is it a “reality” in the United States, in the sense that it is a system of concrete policies, processes and established discourses. Above all, it is a potentiality – one of many alternatives to a life of increased income inequality, higher tax burden on the poorest, declining state social services, and a belligerent discourse aimed at crushing society itself. It is up to us all to realize this potential.

Twelve minutes is not long to cut across so many aspects of American social life, so let me finish with something quite current – though still far from an endorsement! Barack Obama perhaps signifies this tendency best. In a Texas rally on Feb. 19th, he stated “I believe in the free market…we don’t believe in government doing what we can do for ourselves. But when CEO’s make more in a day than we make in a year…then something has to change”. In a speech on the eve of the Potomac primaries in Wisconsin, amongst phrases outlining a plan of mutual reciprocity for education policy, he threw in the conspicuous phrase “there’s a moment in the life of every generation when its spirit has to come through if we are to make our mark on history. And this is our moment.” If his presidency lives up to his campaign, the spirit of the generation that he was hinting at, and its politics, albeit in a very different social and economic configuration, may be closer than we think.

• Reading Global Genders: Mapping gender-based struggles in the global geographies of local marginality
  (view abstract)
  Michael A. Lithgow, Mass Communication
• Travelling third class: regulating the transport of farm animals in Canada
  (view abstract)
  Michelle Barrett, Political Economy
• National Identity Examined: A Study of the Quebec Nation
  (view abstract | view paper)
  Rachel Ariey-Jouglard, Political Science
• A Prosperous Uncertainty: The Canada Border Services Agency, risk management, and the not-so new political imagination of spatially-bound identity
  (view abstract)
  Christopher Alderson, Political Economy
• Discussant: Benjamin Christensen, Sociology

Transcript: Comments from the Discussant.

What unifies these papers-in my opinion, is that they each are describing competing discourse over a particular issue.

Each paper is describing some type of discursive battle that attempts to gain the power and authority to describe a particular phenomenon. Each paper describes a series of tensions and contradictions which produce struggles and resistance to established relations and practices.

When I use the word “discourse”, I am trying to depict discourse as being illustrative of series of social practices. By “social practices”, I mean a continuous series of interconnected networks of economic, political and cultural activities. These social practices belong to a dialectical relationship with meaning-making (or semiosis). In other words, different social groups will use different symbols (language, text) to portray their position as somehow being morally or rationally superior to their opposition. Example: Leaders of the livestock transportation industy basing their position on “sound” science.

I find it useful to conceptualize discursive battles as an arena of competing arguments. Those discourses which become the most salient and dominant in any given social environment, can be understood as reflecting the success of one social group over another, in terms of establishing their paradigmatic views as being more legitimate than the views of their opposition.

For a discourse which holds a position of domination over others, it is important that they continuously reproduce lines of argument which attempt to maintain their position of domination. As different lines of opposition develop, so must the arguments of those in a position of power. It is an ever-ending process of reformulating new forms of meaning-making. Example: the changing meaning of Quebec Nationalism or national security.

Furthermore, each discourse/position will attempt to base their argument in conceptions of common sense. And to conceal, ignore, and romanticize various facts which support their position. Example: Quebec romantizing their history.

Presentations

What these papers have done, to a certain extent, is ask what groups/institutions are producing a particular line of discourse and why-and what oppositional voices are they trying to silence? And why?

It is only by examining these tensions, contradictions and struggles that we can begin to understand how societies are transformed. To quote Wally Clement on the topic of political economy: “Establishments seek to conceal the powers and assumptions that keep them in place. Political economy’s task is to analytically reveal these” (2001: 406). So applaud the presenters for their attempts to deconstruct these various discursive webs.

Questions

I want to apologize first, since my questions for the presenters encompass larger epistemological questions about political economy in general. But hopefully these will ignite some more specific questions from the audience.

Upon demystifying particular lines of discourse and exposing a set of conflicting forces, using what criteria does the graduate student take a position?

Are we always supposed to take the position of the “oppressed”? Whether it be the welfare of livestock, or pools of vulnerable female labourers. Furthermore, by taking a particular position, are we in anyway transforming the processes of conflict embodied in our realm of analysis? Or, by taking a position (of the “little guy”), are we simply attempting to redistribute power from those in a position of power to those without power?

Or perhaps, is it more the job of the grad student to demystify and unravel opposing forces which are seemingly natural and based in rational ideals of common sense.

Whatever the case, I would ask the presenters to be more reflective as to why they are taking the position they are, and to be more reflective in illuminating their assumptions and exploring how their ontological lens influences they way in which they present their findings. Doing so will only give your research more power and veracity.

A public lecture by Fuyuki Kurasawa, given on March 28, 2008 at the Institute of Political Economy, Carleton University.

How is visuality — understood here as the mutual constitution of the visual and the social (W. J. T. Mitchell) — implicated in the mediated construction of instances of distant suffering in various parts of the world, and what are the effects of such implications? After a brief history of the visual representation of humanitarian crises by Euro-American civil society institutions, the presentation turns to a consideration of the perils and prospects of humanitarian visuality. In particular, I turn to an inescapable aporia of this visual economy, the simultaneous production and negation of the otherness of vulnerable subjects. Finally, the presentation discusses certain strategies for a critical visuality, notably a defence of the image’s interpretive ambiguity as well as practices of phenomenological reintensification and structuralist expansion of the image.

Three key concepts are worth keeping in mind:

1. Visual economy: The distribution and circulation of relations of power that constitute and structure the socio-visual field.
2. Distant suffering: Instances of mass suffering and extreme situational and structural violence that are perpetrated outside the North Atlantic region and which are represented visually via the media.
3. Humanitarian visuality: The set of visual conventions that are consistently reproduced in images of humanitarian crises over time.

I approach this research through the epistemological lens articulated by critical feminist theorists such as Sandra Haraway, Joan Tronto, and Janel Curry. Complimenting this relational conception of knowledge production, I will draw on the conceptual toolbox offered by Deborah Stone in attempting to examine the meanings and ideas that shape political processes. Theories around boundary tensions, as articulated by Stone, as well as in the work of Thomas Gieryn, have been important analytical tools in my research, and indicate to me a clear link between my research and the theme of the conference.

In presenting my material I propose to outline my theoretical framework briefly, and focus the majority of my talk on the empirical aspect of my research. Over a period of two months I conducted interviews, based on a qualitative research design, with people whose ideas influence policy and regulation on animal welfare. I drew my participants from a variety of sectors including provincial and federal government agencies, animal industry groups, research agencies, trucking industry groups, animal advocacy groups, truckers, and inspectors. My presentation will highlight what I believe to be the important implications of my findings, and offer some questions for future research.

Using a standpoint theoretical framework, this research examined moments of struggle in response to gender marginalization in the city of Montreal over a 12 month period, focusing on media accounts of the struggles authored by participants (i.e. in alternative and citizen’s media). What emerged was the disturbing commonality of state ’sanctioned’ violence against women as a priority issue. Within a context of globalization’s documented dependence on pools of vulnerable and unorganized labour, often primarily made up of women, important questions are raised concerning tensions and contradictions around the relationships between gender, the role of the nation-state, and citizenship.

The complete paper is now online: click here.

Robert Oppenheimer and Gen. Leslie Groves lead a group of reporters to visit ground zero at Trinity Site on Sept. 11. 1945
By Pat Thompson. 2006
Ink on braille paper, 20 x 20

Even if today new immigrants from Algeria do not hold the same high expectations about France that their fathers did, the destiny of many Algerians once on French territory is still marked by “darkness”. In October and November 2005, one such instance of “darkness” marked the lives of first, second, and third immigrants from Algeria and beyond: the emeutes in the Parisian banlieues. The emeutes started on October 27, 2005 in Clichy-sous-Bois, a Northern Parisian banlieue, with the death of two young men; during the following three weeks, the diverse instances of violence, such as burning of cars, destruction of schools, police stations, and stores, and interactions with the police forces, spread all over France. Such moments of vulnerability for the immigrant populations in France pose a series of questions which will be considered in this paper. What is the role of the national media in advancing the interests of different diasporic groups at times of intense discrimination or injustice abroad? and What is the relation between those who left and those who stayed and how is this relation connected with the history of immigration of a particular national community? One way to answer these questions and the approach I will take in this essay is to look at discourses constructed by the mass media of the country of emigration at moments when the diasporic communities are “in danger” and to account for the role of these discourses in weakening or strengthening the ties between the diaspora and the national community. This paper looks particularly at the Algerian case, analyzing the narratives constructed by the French media during the 2005 emeutes and the responses formulated by Algerian newspapers, engaged in a dialogic relation with the French media. By exploring the discourses in the French and Algerian press on the causes, actors, and development of the emeutes, I hope to shed some light on the ways in which Algeria (represented in this paper by the national media) responds to the needs and protects the rights of the Algerians in France.

To answer the previous questions, I will identify and analyze the main narratives and themes found in two sets of newspaper articles. Firstly, I chose four French newspapers based on their popularity and their diversity of political orientations: Le Monde (right), Le Figaro, Liberation and le Nouvel Observateur. Secondly, I looked at the Algerian daily newspapers El Watan, El Moudjahid, and Le Quotidien d’Oran, the top three Algerian publications. The focus will be on articles from El Watan, because it offers the most extensive coverage of the emeutes, with the first article being published on October 31, 2005. El Moudjahid offers a very modest series of articles which remain at the level of descriptive reporting. I encountered reference to Le Quotidien d’Oran in several French newspapers but the archives of the Algerian publication available online do not cover the year 2005. For both the Algerian and the French newspapers, I selected articles starting with October 27 and ending with November 30, dates which coincide with the beginning of the emeutes and with their gradual ending.

The Algerian Diaspora in France: emigrants, immigrants, and French citizens

Every nation experiences immigration differently based on particular historical, social, economic, and cultural encounters between the nation of origin and the host nation. Furthermore, a nation establishes different relations with the various populations of immigrants it receives; thus, there is no immigrant experience which resembles another, at the group and even at the individual level. Looking at the “destiny of the immigrants,” Emmanuel Todd argues that “des groupes semblables sur le plan des structures anthropologiques, Pakistanais et Algériens, Jamaïcains et Martiniquais, ont, dans des sociétés d’accueil distinctes,… , des destines divergents” (Todd, 1994, p. 12) Mireille Rosello introduces the concept of “performative encounter” which is defined as a moment of intersection between two individuals or two groups from different cultures whose past has been marked by violent national and international conflicts but who manage to create “an unknown protocol to replace the script” (Rosello, 2005, p. 1-2). From this perspective, every interaction between France and Algeria could create new dialogues and new forms of communication which do not correspond with the general narrative developed historically between a colonizer and a former colonized nation. At the same time, “the naming of an ethnic group is usually based on such a homeland, and its members will often continue to be linked to this ancestral location even after centuries living in diaspora” (Karim, 2004, p. 6). This connection with the ancestral land and with the history of that land can sometimes prevent the Algerians to be engaged in “performative encounters” with the French.

The history of the relations between France and Algeria is marked by colonialism, by the memory of the Algerian War, and by a conflictual process of Algerian immigration to France. Charles-Robert Ageron describes the decade of 1830 as “a time of unrestricted colonization, in fact of anarchy, [when] a flight of human vultures swooped on the country [Algeria], trafficking in real estates in the city, grabbing hold of land and cutting down the woods” (Ageron, 1991, p. 24). The destructive forces of French colonialism which occupied Algeria for more than one hundred and thirty years acted as erasers of “autonomous regions of social, political, and economic difference” (Silverstein, 2004, p. 45). The cultural and political infrastructure of the country ceased to exist, being replaced with artificial bodies of power, with policies extending the legislation of the metropole, and with economies which favored the French. All these new structures eliminated the Algerian out of Algeria, transforming the North African country into l’Algérie francaise. On November 1, 1954, the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) “proclaimed the start of the revolutionary struggle for the liquidation of the colonial system, the abandonment of all relics of reformism, and national independence through the restoration of the Algerian state” (Ageron, 1991, p. 108). This “revolutionary struggle” evolved into one of the most tragic wars in recent history, which ended with the Evian Agreement in 1962, leaving behind a bitter memory of the past which the French tried to ignore and the Algerians to ignite. This disjunction in the way French and Algerians interpret the same past makes “performative encounters” rather difficult to take place.

The memories of colonialism and of the Algerian war represent a powerful narrative in the larger discourse of Algerian immigration to France. Todd Shepard describes the moment of decolonization or better said the moment when decolonization was “invented” as a point in time which “allowed the French to forget that Algeria had been an integral part of France since the 1830s and to escape many of the larger implications of that shared past” (Shepard, 2006, p. 2). However, the presence of Algerian immigrants on the French soil was a constant reminder of this “shared past”. The arrival of the largest waves of Algerian immigrants is related to the need for manual labor in France, especially during the period called “les trente glorieuses”. Before decolonization, the Algerian workers came to France with short-term contracts which guaranteed their return to their country of origins. According to Michel Wieviorka, “although such workers were socially integrated in terms of labor relationships, they were politically and culturally excluded” (Wieviorka, 2002, p. 132). In the mid-1960s, the condition of the Algerian immigrants and their relation to France changes, when the French society faced the end of “noria,” described by Abdelmalek Sayad as the image of the immigration process constructed in the French imaginary as “a perpetual process of replenishment that brings into France - and removes from France - men who are always new and always identical” (Sayad, 1999, p. 30). Moreover, the politics of “regroupement familial” which developed in the 1970s brought permanence to immigration through the arrival of women and children.

Sayad highlights a consistent theoretical error in the sociologies of Algerian immigration to France, the lack of the dimension of emigration and departure from Algeria. Singled out as an immigrant, the Algerian on French territory has been historically and theoretically disconnected from Algeria. The author states, “rather than devoting our efforts to explaining the situation of emigrants purely and simply in terms of the history of their stay in France, we must take as our object the relationship between the emigrants’ system of dispositions and the set of mechanisms to which they are subjected by the very fact of their emigration” (Sayad, 1999, p. 29). Therefore, according to Sayad, the formation of an Algerian diaspora in France must constantly be measured to the relation the Algerian immigrants develop and maintain with the homeland. Such a view of diasporas has been recently contested by scholars such as Asu Aksoy and Kevin Robins, who define their “fundamental problem with diasporic cultural studies” in terms of the permanent connection with the “mentality of imagined communities, cultures and identities - which is grounded essentially in the national mentality” (Aksoy and Robins, 2003, p. 92). Even if Aksoy and Robins argue that “certain new developments in the migration… cannot be made sense of within this diasporic cultural frame” (ibid), the case of Algerian immigrants in France cannot be understood outside the emigration/immigration dialectic and without considering the role of national memory. Therefore, I argue that the Algerian diaspora experiences its relation to France through both a national and transnational perspective.

In order to prove the strong liaison between emigration and immigration and the effects of this connection on Algerians both in France and Algeria, Sayad constructed a genealogy of immigration formed by three ages. The three ages of immigration, presented through the dual lens of emigration/immigration, “correspond to phases that can be distinguished within processes of transformation internal to… communities that produce emigrants” (Sayad, 1999, p. 32). The first age of immigration, “an orderly emigration,” developed as a way to allow the small rural communities in Algeria to survive supported by the financial gains of the migrant workers. The immigrant, always male, married, and middle aged, was chosen by his community and invested with a very precise mission, limited in time and objectives. The “good” emigrant was that who “succeeded in remaining the authentic peasant he once was,” without being influenced by the life in the urban environment (Sayad, 1999, p. 34). Therefore, the first age of immigration produces the least changes in the structure of the homeland.

The second and third ages of immigration represent the spaces of transformation of the Algerian social landscape. The second age, “the loss of control,” embodies the first moments of rupture from the community of origins, while the immigrant becomes the element of disintegration. This new phase is characterized by a strong process of “depeasantification” of both the laborer in France and of the village in Algeria and brings to life a new type of peasant who replaces “the good peasant,” “the peasantless peasant” (Sayad, 1999, p. 41). During the second age, more and more men of different ages and social positions leave for France, changing the demographics of departure. Moreover, the money gained in France are no longer returned to the villages of origins, resulting in the degradation of rural communities in Algeria. This process of degradation produces “a major exodus of rural populations, [which] transferred potential emigrants to France to towns within Algeria itself” (Sayad, 1999, p. 41). The third age of immigration, “an Algerian ‘colony’ in France,” represents the continuation of the previous phase, accentuating to an extreme some of its traits. Sayad points out the permanent structure of the Algerian immigration to France, due to the fact that “every new wave of emigrants that came to France found an established community made up of earlier emigrants into which it could incorporate itself” (Sayad, 1999, p. 57). The permanence of the new waves of immigration creates a “little country” (Algeria) within France, reproducing social and professional structures from home. However, according to Sayad, the Algerians in France are “torn between two times, between two countries, and between two conditions,” unable to find a true home either in France or Algeria (Sayad, 1999, p. 58).

As the homeland but also as a country of emigration, Algeria cannot act as a space of identity for those who left for France, mainly due to the nature of the “break” between the immigrant and the nation, historically grounded in the memories of colonization. Using Mieke Bal’s theory of “trauma recall,” Patricia Lorcin argues that “in the Franco-Algerian context it is the collective experience of trauma that left its mark on both nations: the trauma of colonial experience as well as the trauma of decolonization” (Lorcin, 2006, p. xxi). Through media, governmental policies, and official discourses, the Algerian diaspora is constantly reminded by the trauma of the Franco-Algerian past and by the problematic position of the immigrant community in the social and cultural French context. The Algerian immigrant is never allowed to forget his marginal position and his duty to assimilate to the new society, leaving behind any identitary markings. However, “an immigrant brings a lot of baggage with him. That suitcase tied together with string is only the tip of the iceberg. The rest is in his head, his heart, his glance, and his memory” (Ben Jelloun, 1999, p. 21). From an emigration perspective, Sayad points out the fact that “there is probably not a single family in Algeria that does not have its emigrant in France, but this does not prevent anyone from speaking of emigrants in terms of denunciation, accusation, stigmatization” (Sayad, 1999, p. 111). Emigrating to the metropole, mainly in the case of the first generation of immigrants, was perceived as an act of treason if looked at through the colonial lens of memory.

In defining the Algerian diaspora, if such a definition is required, one must not get lost in overemphasizing the transnational dimension as a creator of new subjectivities while diminishing the symbolic and material presence of the national. The optimism of Silverstein’s belief that “the creation of these infranational and transnational boundaries results in the formation of new categories of political subjectivity, of new formulations of solidarity and belonging across spatial and ethnic divides” (Silverstein, 2004, p. 239) tends to minimize the role of the national element in the identities of the diasporic individual. Even the members of second and third generations of Algerians in France, who are no longer immigrants but French citizens, are placed in the general category of immigrants, especially in moments of tension and violence, as exemplified by the 2005 Parisian emeutes. Therefore, young Algerians, who may not have even stepped on Algerian soil, thus in a way members of the transnational generation and producers of “performative encounters” become part of the popular discourse of the “immigrant problem”. The national is constantly re-inserted into their experience of France thorough media and political narratives. Such narratives were used repeatedly by the French media during the 2005 emeutes. What was the response of Algerian mainstream newspapers to these narratives and how do the homeland media discourses address the safety and the rights of the diaspora? Some possible answers will be developed in the following two sections of the paper.

Narratives of the Emeutes in the French Media

Several articles from El Watan make direct references to the ways in which the French press engaged with the events in the banlieue. Remi Yacine writes “a l’exception notable de Libération et de l’Humanité, toute la presse a fait sienne la version officielle… Les medias reprennent sans le conditionnel de rigueur ‘le prêt-a-être-diffusé’ mixé par les autorités et dénient aux jeunes la moindre affirmation” (Yacine, 2005c). One of the major complaints of El Watan regarding the coverage of the events by the French journalists was the over-use of sensationalism and simplification of the causes of the emeutes. Therefore, the readers might get the impression that “la banlieue est musulmane, et par conséquent, les émeutiers qui la composent sont tous musulmans… A écouter, lire, et voir les informations, aucune des voitures brûlées, aucun des magasins saccagés n’ont été l’oeuvre de Pierre, Paul, David ou Jacques. Les coupables sont Mouss, Kader et Momo” (Mekbel, 2005). The vilification of the French press, with the few mentioned exceptions, is not entirely grounded in reality. Generally, the French mainstream press adopted a moderate tone in the depiction of the emeutes, maybe in an attempt to impartiality required by such sensitive issues such as immigration, Islam, violence in the banlieue, and social insecurity. A series of main narratives were developed by the French press, most of them already familiar to the French audiences: the causes of the emeutes, the social and cultural problems associated with the banlieue, and the potential failure of the French model of integration.

The causes of the emeutes have been consensually agreed upon by the French media. The French public finds out from the December 29, 2005 edition of Le Monde, that “les violentes emeutes de Clichy-sous-Bois, [ont commence] dans la nuit du jeudi 27 au vendredi 29 octobre, a la suite de la mort de deux jeunes réfugiés dans un transformateur EDF pour échapper la police” (”Les violences urbaines,” 2005). Only a few articles in Le Monde mention the names of the two victims, Zyed and Bouna, names with a clear non-French and ethnic resonance and none of the consulted articles make reference to the age of the two boys. Moreover, the emphasis on the accidental death of Zyad and Bouna prevails in the majority of the articles (”Un petit Mai-68 des banlieues,” 2005; “Quatrieme nuit,” 2005). However, the highly simplified narrative presented by Le Monde becomes more refined in other publications, who inform the readers about the background of the two victims. Le Nouvel Observateur enters into the private space of Bouna’s life in order to depict his last moments - “Jeudi 27 Octobre, Bouna Traoré repasse son tee-shirt pour être beau, ce soir, dans les rues de Clichy-sous-Bois… Bouna, 15 ans, enfant d’une famille mauritanienne aime faire du vélo en équilibre sur la roué arrière. S’hydrate la peau à la Nivea après la douche. Comme son copain Zyed, 17 ans” (Askolovitch, 2005). For Michel Wieviorka, writing for le Figaro, the event presented by Le Monde as an accident becomes a drama which happened in circumstances not yet clarified (Wieviorka, 2005). No longer framed as an accident, the death of the two boys opens a series of questions which refer to the relation between the French police and the youth in the banlieues.

The linear narrative of the tragic yet accidental death of Bouna and Zyed is fragmented by the uncertainty surrounding the role of the police. Libération is one of the first newspapers to question the innocence of the French police by asking, “Alors? Poursuivis? Pas poursuivis? Et ce cambriolage… Qu’est-il devenu, ce cambriolage, qui avait d’abord justifie la poursuite par la police des deux garçons de Clichy-sous-Bois” (Schneidermann, 2005). Stéphane Beaud and Michel Pialoux define the daily experiences of many young inhabitants of the French banlieues as “une culture de provocation” which manifests itself through various factors: exclusion from the job market, inability of the education system to integrate the youth, constant harassment from the police forces which are a permanent presence on the streets of the various suburban neighborhoods (Beaud & Pialoux, 2003, p. 346-7). Resonances of this “culture de provocation” can be found in articles from Le Figaro, who reflect on the role of “des contrôles musclés, parfois racistes, de la part de forces de police qui agissent d’autant plus brutalement qu’elles sont elles-mêmes saisies par la peur” (Wieviorka, 2005). Marwan Mohammed and Laurent Muchielli interpret the encounter between the police and the youth of the banlieue in terms of territoriality, emphasizing the negative effects of the daily presence of the police and of the random identity checks on the banlieusards (Mohammed & Muchielli, 2006, p. 101).

The nuanced interpretations of the causes of the emeutes provided by some French newspapers are nevertheless rooted in the dominant-hegemonic narrative of “the immigrant problem” which prevails in France since the 1970s and which tends to reduce the immigrants of all generations to producers of the social and economic crisis of the French society. Silverstein traces the history of the narrative to the first waves of permanent immigration from various former colonies, when “these movements of people, commodities and ideas from the postcolonial periphery to metropole have been represented, within party programs and scholarly literature alike, as novel, unnatural, and potentially threatening to European host societies” (Silverstein, 2004, p. 23). Pascal Blanchard connects the present discourses on immigration in France with the incapacity of the Hexagon to escape “la matrice coloniale” and to cease imagining the immigrant as “indigènes a éduquer” (Blanchard, 2005, p. 181). Therefore, concludes Blanchard, “le constant est clair, ce sont des immigres a part, des citoyens de seconde zone, sur eux pèse une certain malédiction qui induit une relégation systématique, réelle et symbolique, aux marges de la société” (ibid.). The majority of the consulted articles reproduce this image of the immigrant, who is nameless, without a specific ethnicity, and deprived of a personal history. Therefore, for the most part, the aspects of emigration, colonization, and memory are left out from the media narratives, being replaced with discourses on violence in the banlieues, social insecurity, and inefficiency of the French government (especially Minister of Interior Nicolas Sarkozy) to put an end to the emeutes.

The banlieue, which is par excellence the space of the immigrants, has been constructed in the French imaginary as dangerous, violent, dirty, insecure, and isolated. The emeutes brought back these images, opening new debates on old themes. Le Monde reminds the Parisian readers of the net separation between “they” and “us”. Adopting the rhetoric of Sarkozy, one article defines the banlieue through the metaphor of “nette séparation entre ‘eux’ et ‘nous’; eux, ce sont les deliquants, les voyous, la racaille; par ‘nous,’ il faut comprendre les citoyens honnêtes” (”Les limites d’une politique,” 2005). The same article describes the banlieues as “lieux privilégies des incivilités, des agressions physiques et sonores, de ces grands drames et petites pollutions” (ibid.). In a chat organized by Le Monde with Eric Macé, the banlieues are described as “abandoned territories,” which function to trap large populations in urban areas which are abandoned by the public politics (Baudry & Mazzorato, 2005). For other commentators on the banlieues, the main cause of the degradation and segregation is not political but social. Therefore, “la ghettoïsation urbaine et scolaire, elles sont le fruit non d’une politique mais d’un mouvement de la société, de sa parcellisation, de l’éloignement que chacun cherche a organiser d’avec la catégorie qui lui est répute inférieure, au nom de l’angoisse du déclassement” (”Apres le choc,” 2005).

Even when the banlieues are judged based on the inefficiency of the political system and on the failure of the republican system to accommodate the immigrants, they are nonetheless depicted as negative spaces which need severe reparations in a near yet imprecise future. Very seldom can one read about positive aspects of the banlieue, as in Wieviorka’s intervention in Le Figaro, “Dans ce contexte, tout n’est pas noir : il existe aussi, dans ces ‘banlieues’ tant décriées, une vie associative, des activités culturelles, sportives, artistiques, etc.; mais tout cela est gommé sous l’effet quotidien de la disqualification médiatique et de certains événements” (Wieviorka, 2005). Several journalists, mainly in Le Figaro and Libération, approached the theme of the banlieues by asking how did the banlieues become “abandoned territories”? The answers are multiple: discrimination of the youth from the banlieue in the job market, especially in the suburbs at the North of Paris (Hugues, 2005); the feeling of exclusion from the national community (Schneidermann, 2005); the lack of respect from the part of several politicians, especially Sarkozy, who is well-known for using racist and discriminatory terms such as “racaille, voyous, Karcher” (Blecher, Durand, Laske & Wallon, 2005).

If the banlieues are “abandoned territories,” who are the banlieusards and the young émeutiers who are burning cars and destroying stores and schools? The media makes no reference to any ethnic or religious affiliations of the émeutiers and tries assiduously to disconnect the emeutes from Islam (Courage, 2005; Gabizon, 2005a). The reader cannot gather too much information on the ethnic and cultural origins of the émeutiers from the newspaper articles, since they are all placed under the label of second or third generation immigrants. Once again, the narrative comes back to the construction of the immigrant and of immigration as a problem which lacks a concrete solution. Nevertheless, the solution presented by the French government, according to Nacira Guenif-Soulamas, seems to rest with the domestication and civilizing of the immigrants. She states, “les civiliser consiste donc a les amener a se dissoudre dans la société a laquelle ils doivent appartenir… il leur faudrait lutter contre eux-mêmes pour pouvoir accéder a la qualité de citoyen” (Guenif-Soulamas, 2005, p. 203). Guenif-Soulamas refers specifically to the Muslim immigrants who are generally considered the most different in terms of cultural, religious, and social habits, thus the most difficult to control and integrate to France “une et indivisible”. Silverstein, referring specifically to the Algerian diaspora, argues that “the postcolonial production of Algerian subjectivity in France extends beyond construction, regulation, and renovation of the built environment… the French state and immigrant actors have competed and colluded for the control of the immigrant bodily practices” (Silverstein, 2004, p. 123), in an almost colonial fashion.

Therefore, the banlieusard represents for the French government the failure of a process of civilization and integration. Officially, to conform to the “equalitarian” ideology of French politics, the identity of the immigrant is not relevant since, once on French territory, everyone is supposed to become French. However, even if the majority of the newspaper articles did not reveal the ethnic background of those involved in the emeutes, the French public already knows that the immigrants who “cause” problems are mainly North African, and, more specifically, Algerian. Even if Ben Jelloun’s following statement reflects his personal experience of France two decades ago, his observations are not completely erroneous, “Anti-North African racism doesn’t bother to split hairs. It makes no distinction between Algerians, Moroccans, and Tunisians, between Arabs and Berbers, between young and old” (Ben Jelloun, 1999, p. 85).

The Dialogic Narratives of “El Watan”

For the entire period of the French riots, El Watan covered daily the events in France, developing, similarly to the French press, a series of explanatory and analytical narratives on the emeutes. If the French media did not point fingers at the Algerian diaspora in particular, what could explain the abundance of articles on the French emeutes in the Algerian newspaper El Watan? One potential answer comes from Lorcin, who states that, until June 1999, the French government did not acknowledge that a war had been fought over the decolonization of Algeria, referring to the Algerian War as “des operations de securite et de maintien de l’ordre” (Lorcin, 2006, p. xxv). Accordingly, the silence of France in terms of the colonial past and of the dramatic decolonization “meant that no dominant memory could satisfactorily emerge… Instead, there was silence” since France lacked the ability and desire to formulate a coherent narrative about its Algerian past (ibid.). At the same time, many of the post-independence immigrant politics are shaped by the memory of the Algerian war (Stora qtd. in Lorcin, 2006, p. xxvi). The memory of the colonial past and of decolonization and the bitter destiny of the first generations of Algerian immigrants to France who came with hopes for a better life haunt the daily experiences of the second and third generation Algerians. According to Olivier Masclet, the young Algerians grew up seeing their fathers humiliated, losing their dignity, and feeding from memories of the old country (Masclet, 2006, p. 115). Is the discontentment and anger of the Algerian diaspora translated by El Watan in the depictions of the emeutes? What role does memory play in the narratives constructed by El Watan?

El Watan investigates, similarly to the French press, the causes of the emeutes. Various articles in the Algerian newspaper inform the audiences about the accidental death of the two boys who were running to escape the police; however, the emphasis in the coverage of the causes rests on the ethnic origins of the victims. One article states, “à l’origine, un souffle de révolte s’était levé a Saine Saint-Denis après l’électrocution accidentelle de deux adolescents de 15 et 17 ans. Zyed Benna, un Français d’origine tunisienne de 15 ans, et Bouna Troare, un Français d’origine malienne de 17 ans” (Belabes, 2005b). Moreover, the two victims are not isolated incidents but are part of a larger pattern of violent happenings in the French banlieues which are closely connected with the abandoning of the suburbs, also called “zones sensibles” by the French authorities. Therefore, “les deux jeunes victimes de Clichy-sous-Bois s’ajoutent à la longue liste de personnes mortes dans des conditions tragiques lors de l’incendie des maisons vétustes ou elles loges. Toutes ces victimes ont en commun d’être originaires du continent africain; d’être aussi Arabo-Maghrébins” (Lofti, 2005a). The ethnicity of the victims and the connection between the two boys who died on 27 October 2005 and other tragic “accidents” in the banlieue add a dimension which was left aside from most of the French press: the connection between ethnicity, immigration, and social inequality, especially in the banlieues.

The French press offers a more moderate perspective on the causes which transformed the banlieues in “abandoned territories,” blaming both the government and the French society, but also using larger anonymous narratives such as massive unemployment, lack of integration in the educational system, or discrimination. All these narratives are used in a general manner without accompanying details of who is to blame in particular for them. For El Watan, these social and political narratives have a very precise cause: Nicolas Sarkozy. From the very beginning of the coverage of the emeutes, several journalists introduce the figure of Sarkozy as a politician who makes promises he cannot keep for the ethic groups in France. In an article entitled “25 ans de promesses et de derobades,” Malek Boutih, one of the few French politicians of ethnic origins is quoted criticizing the promises made by Sarkozy regarding the right to vote of any non-French citizen who had lived on French territory for more than five years. Boutih states, “[Sarkozy] emprunte des concepts ailleurs puis les détourne à son profit. C’est déjà le cas avec la discrimination positive et les quotas. Cela peut l’être avec le vote des étrangers. Mais son bilan ne trompe personne. Il se limite a des mots pas a des actes” (Bouzeghrane, 2005a). Azouz Begag, the Minister (of Algerian origins) in charge with equality of chances, is one of the opponents of Sarkozy’s project of affirmative action (”discrimination positive”). He states, “dans la rue, la designation noire existe, elle est socialement vivante, mais on n’a pas le droit de montrer statistiquement ce qu’elle représente dans la société. Il n’est pas honteux d’être Arabe, Kabyle, Africain” (Bouzeghrane, 2005b). Therefore, Sarkozy is constructed by the Algerian press in animosity with the interests of the various groups of immigrants, including Algerians.

Sarkozy becomes the main actor in the coverage of the emeutes in El Watan in relation to the language he used to stigmatize the banlieues. The French Minister of Interior becomes the embodiment of all the failures of the French government to accommodate the immigrant communities to the national body of France. Belabes writes in an article from early November, “les violences qui secouent depuis plus d’une semaine les banlieues parisiennes et qui s’étendent d’autres départements de France étaient prévisibles depuis le retour de Nicolas Sarkozy au ministère de l’intérieur et la multiplication des petites phrases assassines sur les banlieues” (Belabes, 2005a). These “petites phrases assassines” refer to the comments made by Sarkozy on various occasions in relations to his engagement to “clean up” the banlieues. According to him, “il fallait nettoyer les quartiers au Karcher” and punish “le racaille” (Maiche, 2005). Dominique Sopo, president of SOS Racisme believes that the strong, racist, and “politically incorrect” language used by Sarkozy represented a fuel for the emeutes (ibid.). Yacine speaks with several mediateurs from the Parisian banlieues on the rage caused by Sarkozy’s words. Nadir, mediateur in Clichy-sous-Bois, speaks with anger and disappointment, “le gouvernement a rate une belle occasion de se réconcilier avec la banlieue. En soutenant Sarkozy, Dominique de Villepin se disqualifie. Au lieu de se demarquer du pyromane, il prefere le couvrir. C’est lamentable” (Yacine, 2005a).

The Algerian journalists and commentators find Sarkozy’s words unpardonable and provocative, making the French politician responsible for the violence in the banlieues. The Algerian press is not trying to take a moderate approach; on the contrary, it takes sides with the young men and women who live in the banlieues, who are pushed to commit acts of violence by the unwillingness of the French government to treat them as citizens. Belabes points out the nature of the revolt felt by the young banlieusards, “la révolte des émigrés de seconde génération, dont l’écrasante majorité est française, n’est pas un simple effet de mode de jeunes en mal d’inspiration. Elle se nourit de ce genre d’humiliation que subissent les jeunes dans leur vie de tous les jours” (Belabes, 2005a). Moreover, the ethnical dimension of the sufferance of the immigrants comes into play in the construction of the media narratives. Belabes ends one of his articles by asking, “La France arrivera-t-elle à arrêter cette grave dérive qui tend à présenter les Maghrébins comme des êtres scongenitalement non solubles dans la République? (ibid.)

The discursive spaces which define the major gap between French and Algerian coverage of the emeutes rests in the realm of memory. The majority of the articles in El Watan link the emeutes and the situation of the immigrants and French citizens of non-European origins with the legacy of colonialism and decolonization. Similarly with the condition of the colonial subject on former colonized African territories, “l’immigre, selon les termes de Pierre Bourdieu, suscite l’embarras” (Meddi, 2005b). Furthermore, the immigration is seen as a “hot” topic in French politics due to the colonial past of France and to the constant effort to deal with the past. This failed effort is depicted in terms of the controversial law of 23 February 2005, voted by the General Assembly, which glorifies the legacy of colonialism in former colonies (ibid.). According to Meddi, the glorification of the colonial past is in great contrast with the present situation of the immigrant populations, described as “non-être social” which are products of colonization (ibid.). The social fracture which characterizes the French society, divided between the cities and their banlieues is depicted as an effect of colonialism and of the French denial of a collective memory of the past. One article states, “la fracture sociale… passé par l’établissement d’un dialogue qui a été toujours contrecarrée par les résistances d’une société française qui se refuse a admettre que son vécu d’aujourd’hui est en grande partie une séquence de son histoire et de son passé colonial” (Lofti, 2005b). For some journalists, the legacy of colonialism is most visible in the vocabulary used by Sarkozy to describe the young populations living in the banlieues, especially the term “racaille”. The readers are informed that “le mot ‘racaille’ a des relents coloniaux et je me souviens encore de l’époque ou l’on traitait couramment les Arabes de ‘bicots’, de ‘bougnoules’ ou encore de ‘ratons’, les juifs de ‘youpines’ et les Noirs de ‘nègres’” (Daouzli, 2005).

The narrative of memory which persists in the depiction of the emeutes is not generally focused on colonialism in general but it reflects specifically the concerns of the Algerians in Algeria and of the diasporas in France. In reference to the causes and developments of the emeutes and the various frames used by the French media, Ahmed Benzelikha responds, “encore une fois nous sommes rattrapés par l’histoire, représentée par ce qu’il y a de pire dans les relations franco-algériennes: la guerre, la torture, l’OAS, les ratonnades, l’état d’urgence, le racisme et une haine indicible” (Benzelikha, 2005). Benzelikha refers in his article mainly to the discourses of Jean Marie Le Pen, the leader of the extreme right French party the National Front, which are built on the damaging presence in France of “un ‘Autre’ algerien” but points out that the lepenien rhetoric spills over, being present in the “securitary populism” of Sarkozy (ibid.). Like the majority of the consulted articles, Benzelikha takes the side of the Algerian diaspora, acknowledging that “cet antialgerianisme primaire [est] induite par la présence marquée d’une nombreuse communauté algérienne ou d’origine algérienne en France, qui cristallise toutes les haines, les craintes et les dépits accumules” (ibid). As the narratives in El Watan evolve, it becomes clear that the Algerian journalists respond to the tensioned situation of the immigrant communities in France at the time of the emeutes, with a particular focus on the Algerian populations.

Conclusions

Both France and Algeria have been struggling with the memory of colonialism, adopting various strategies of collective remembering. In France, remembering has been equated with forgetting until recent times, while in Algeria, the construction of memories has been dependent on the attitude of France. Judging by the articles in El Watan, the Algerians seem comfortable with bringing back various instances of the colonial past and using them as a support for the diasporas abroad. At the same time, the usage of the colonial memories in the context of the emeutes could also be interpreted as a strategy for criticizing France at a time when the entire world is watching. Criticizing France works also as a form of empowerment for the Algerians, translated in the language of post-colonialist rhetoric, as the former colonizer state is able to criticize the metropole. Regardless of the intentions, the Algerian press fills the spaces left uncovered by the French press, especially in terms of connecting the colonial past and its legacies with the present social and cultural problems in the French society. Blaming generally unemployment, racism, and French urban development politics without creating the historical context for the current emeutes functions as a superficial depiction of the realities in the banlieues. For the most part, the French press adopted this superficial framework. By bringing in issues of memory and colonialism, El Watan offers a voice to the young men and women living in the banlieues and saves them from simplistic labels such as “delinquents” or “racaille”. If the narratives in El Watan cannot fully elucidate the relation between Algeria as a nation and the Algerian diasporas in France, they can, however, prove the existence of a certain solidarity between the Algerian public space (represented in this paper by the media) and the diasporas. The solidarity with and support for the Algerian diasporas come to life through narratives of collective memory born out of the desire to speak openly about the colonial past and its effects on those living within and outside Algeria.

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