"Algerian migration to France began at the end of the 19th century, but in recent years France's Algerian community has been the focus of a shifting public debate encompassing issues of unemployment, multiculturalism, Islam, and terrorism. In this historical and anthropological study, Paul A. Silverstein examines a wide range of social and cultural forms - from immigration policy, colonial governance, and urban planning to corporate advertising, sports, literary narratives, and songs - for what they reveal about postcolonial Algerian subjectivities. Investigating the connection between anti-immigrant racism and the rise of Islamist and Berberist ideologies among the "second generation" ("Beurs"), he argues that the appropriation of these cultural-political projects by Algerians in France represents a critique of notions of European or Mediterranean unity and elucidates the mechanisms by which the Algerian civil war has been transferred onto French soil."--Jacket.

Includes maps of: Paris, Showing Northern Arrondissements and Banlieues. Based on the author's thesis (Ph. D.--University of Chicago, 1998) presented under the title: Trans-politics: Islam, Berberity and the French nation-state.

Immigration politics in the New Europe -- Colonization and the production of ethnicity -- Spatializing practices: migration, domesticity, urban planning -- Islam, bodily practice, and social reproduction -- The generation of generations: Beur identity and political agency -- Beur writing and historical consciousness -- Transnational social formations in the New Europe.