Integration , transnationalism and development in a French - North African context

An increasing number of public policies and schemes aim to foster integration dynamics by supporting immigrant development practices. The intent of this paper is to assess the effectiveness of this correlation through a comparison between two major immigrant Berber groups in France: the Algerian Kabyles and the Moroccan Chleuhs. While Moroccan organisations have become active development actors for the benefit of their origin area, Algerian ones, though sharing similar immigration and post-immigration trajectories, do not display the same level of commitment. Contrary to their Moroccan counterparts, Algerians, for historical and geopolitical reasons, have never been able to build an organisational level between hometown networks and funding bodies, i.e. a group of NGOs bridging project holders and host country organisations. This paper concludes with an attempt to distinguish the effects of development practices according to the definition given to integration. There is little evidence that development practices improve individual integration, not even the image of immigration in the host country. However, the study shows that commitment to development projects produces and is produced by functional integration of immigrant groups. The projects build up a cohesive interdependence between migrant actors and beyond, between immigrant and host country organisations. 2 In France, the debate on the relationships between immigrant transnationalism and integration is tightly connected with codevelopment and return policies. Since the late seventies, the government has encouraged cultural preservation and long distance state control upon their expatriates 1 with the hope that it would ease the return of labour immigrants to their origin country. Nowadays, codevelopment schemes aim to level down migration pressure in sending areas or to back up temporary schemes and return policies. Associated with the sheer budget curtailing of integration policies (-40% between 2007 and 2008), this approach to codevelopment policy fosters feeling that the government pursue " development instead of integration " strategy. Conversely, at the local level, some municipalities have bet on development practices of immigrants to implement alternative integration policy. For example, the city of Paris initiated in 2008 a project co-funding scheme, the label co-development Sud, which, encourages partnerships between migrants and French private and public organisations through the implementation of development projects. This " development for integration " approach to codevelopment has been adopted by other French and European local authorities such as Milan and Catalonia (Lacroix 2009c; Mezzetti & Ferro 2008). The public debate on integration/transnationalism interactions oscillates between two stances. For some, …