Femmes dévoilées. Des Algériennes en France à l'heure de la décolonisation

Since the 1990's, the veil has constituted the bulk of political debates on national identity and has provided but a partial image of Muslim women. The purpose of this book is to study their presence in French Society more thoroughly by focusing on the Algerian women who came to France right after World War II. Who are these women ? Why cross the Mediterranean Sea at the worst period of repression of Algerian nationalism ? What place do they manage to find within society and what role do they play in the War of Independance that is also being conducted in the metropolis at the time ?

In-depth interviews give their sides of the story and let them answer all these questions. Through an extensive series of private and public photographs, and thanks to judicial, media, police archives and administrative records, they are discovered anew. Their memory sheds new light on History and, in turn, allows for a new reading of archives.

The shared history then only becomes too obvious, we understand what led them to take sides in a war that is too often fratricidal, to form an attachment bond with an emerging Algeria as well as to seek out a singular form of inclusiveness, far from the current debates that remain obstinately misinformed on the subject. It is only by listening, by showing patience and by carefully analysing the tools and the methods that uncover the complexity of the lives that these Algerian women lived for over fifty years, that their history can fully be written.