This article seeks to grasp the evolution of French border management policies over a half century (1953-2004) from the vantage point of one specific activity performed by border police (PAF): the collection and use of information from border checks. This form of knowledge production represents a privileged object of analysis by which to observe the professional developments of this police department. The PAF was first an intelligence police department and then a police service dedicated to immigration control in the 1970s, before finally becoming a department in charge of the fight against migration-related crime from the 1990s. Since the 2000s, the PAF now cooperates with the European agency Frontex. In turn, the definition of administrative categories and analytical tools used by the PAF have equally followed such institutional transformations towards the criminalization of immigration and the Europeanisation of border control.
In the 1970s, French immigration policy was reoriented with the tightening of entry and residency conditions. During that same decade, parallel to actions led by activists of the Movement of Arab Workers (Mouvement des Travailleurs Arabes), Algerian authorities regularly politicized assaults against their citizens on French territory. At a time when the number of Algerian migrants authorized to enter French territory was a subject of sustained debate, finger-pointing racism was used to exert pressure on the French government. This article highlights the discursive practices and operations through which French officials of the Ministry of the Interior tried to demonstrate that such acts of violence were not due to racism. Contrarily, French officials argued that attacks were the result of cohabitation difficulties provoked by the moral traditions and lifestyles of the supposed “North African” culture.
Topic:
Crime, Migration, Race, History, Border Control, and Violence