Hadj-Moussa.pdf

Protests and Generations Legacies and Emergences in the Middle East, North Africa and the Mediterranean Edited by Mark Muhannad Ayyash Ratiba Hadj-Moussa LEIDEN | BOSTON For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV Contents Acknowledgments ix List of Illustrations xi Notes on Contributors xii Introduction: Conceptualizing Generations and Protests Mark Muhannad Ayyash and Ratiba Hadj-Moussa 1 part 1 Forms of Protest and the Production of Generations 1 Palestinian Youth in Israel: A New Generational Style of Activism? 27 Mohammad Massalha, Ilana Kaufman and Gal Levy 2 From Student to General Struggle: The Protests against the Neoliberal Reforms in Higher Education in Contemporary Italy 55 Lorenzo Cini 3 Lawyers Mobilizing in the Tunisian Uprising: A Matter of ‘generations’? 73 Éric Gobe part 2 Genealogies of Generational Formations 4 2003: A Turning Point in the Formation of Syrian Youth 99 Matthieu Rey 5 Together, but Divided: Trajectories of a Generation of Egyptian Political Activists (From 2005 to the Revolution) 122 Chaymaa Hassabo 6 The Gezi Protests: The Making of the Next Left Generation in Turkey 143 Gökbörü Sarp Tanyildiz For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV viii Contents part 3 Memory, History and the “New Generation” 7 ‘Freedom is a Daily Practice’: The Palestinian Youth Movement and Jil Oslo 171 Sunaina Maira 8 The Double Presence of Southern Algerians: Space, Generation and Unemployment 198 Ratiba Hadj-Moussa 9 “We are not heiresses”: Generational Memory, Heritage and Inheritance in Contemporary Italian Feminism 224 Andrea Hajek 10 Echoes of Ricardo Mella: Reading Twenty-First Century Youth Protest Movements through the Lens of an Early Twentieth-Century Anarchist 245 Stephen Luis Vilaseca Index 269 For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV chapter 8 The Double Presence of Southern Algerians: Space, Generation and Unemployment* Ratiba Hadj-Moussa1 Introduction: On Monumentality and the Revolutionary Generation The ‘November Generation’ has been a recurrent theme in the official discourse that justifies Algerian national unity, as well as the nation’s political and economical orientation. The term ‘November generation’ refers to the beginnings of the War of Independence on the 1st of Novermber 1954, and includes more or less all those who participated in it.2 It has allowed the ‘revolutionary family’ to continue its work of ‘national edification’3 for almost three decades (1962–1988). Although it underwent a gradual disappearance during the 1990s, this genealogical and teleological construction of the nation continues to shape the modes of discourse of monumental history, which has been the dominant form of thinking and acting in Algeria, in spite of opposition from different quarters, and despite the great suffering and conflicts caused by the country’s Civil War (1991–2002). Our analysis begins from the notions of monumentality and monumental history – used interchangeably here – because they are determinant in all post-independence discourses on social and political struggles. Drawing from * I would like to thank Karine Côté-Boucher and Johan Giry for their in-depth comments on the first drafts of this article. Thanks to Mark Ayyash for his acute reading and comments on the first and last drafts, to Rana Sukarieh for her help with creating Map 8.1, and to Jonathan Adjemian for his editorial work and remarks. This article has benefited from the Support of the Social Sciences Research Council of Canada (435-2013-1104). 1 With assistance from Samir Larabi. 2 Up until 1988, this discourse came from one sole source, the single-party regime. The institution of multipartyism and the right of association liberated other voices (1989). But this new liberty paradoxically allowed a further spread of the idea of the ‘November generation,’ and enhanced its sacred status. For example, the plethora of publications on the War of Liberation reinforced the idea of the ‘November generation.’ 3 All expressions were heavly used during the 1970s and the 1980s. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi �0.��63/97890043445�8_0�0 For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV The Double Presence of Southern Algerians 199 Nietzsche’s conception of monumental history as developed in his Untimely Meditations (1993 [1874]),4 we understand monumental history as the process through which the past is petrified into past moments, which resist the forces of ‘life’ and render the present inadequate. Indeed, if in the Algerian context the “unity of the nation is the red line,” as the Algerian Prime minister recently put it (aps, 2016), “its revolution” and those who carried it out are its horizon line, its present and its past. Monumentality colonizes the newness of actions and freezes them. In this chapter we use the example of the movement of the unemployed, one of the new social and political struggles, to analyze how monumentality functions in the relation of one generation to another, and how these become actualized in the context of their production, that is to say of the socio-historical phases that have followed the period of independence, focusing particularly on the last two decades in the 2000s. First, we explore how the revolution and the so-called November generation have occupied the social fabric and made expression of free thought highly difficult. Second, we analyze how the Saharan segment of the movement of the unemployed has taken a corporatist demand (the demand for employment), and transformed it into a political demand that laterally dismantles the architecture of the November generation and its monumental construction. This ‘in fact’ should not, however, be interpreted as a conscious practice, or at any rate not as a thought-through and developed strategy, but rather as a series of acts that sometimes respond to contingencies, and sometimes are supported by a renewed reading of the history of the struggle for independence. The ‘November generation’ owes its perennial existence to the National Liberation Front (Front de libération nationale –fln), the party that dominated the political scene for three decades (1962–1988). The fln was the connecting thread, if not the organic element, in the elaboration of genealogic continuity. Its mass organizations, such as the Union nationale de la jeunesse algérienne (National Union of Algerian Youth) and the Organisation nationale des moudjahidines (National Organization of the Mujaheddin) amplified its rhetoric by continuously reviving the spirit of the ‘revolutionary family.’ The November generation’s specificity lies in its seemingly homogeneous and almost untouchable character, with a symbolism firmly established to counter any criticism 4 For Nietzsche, monumental history also has a positive version. This is exemplified by the actions of creative men who know to take up the past and make renewed use it. Instead of imitating the past, they make of it something other, something alive. Nietzsche posits this creative aspect of ‘life’ in opposition to the crushing version of monumental history or the nostalgic version of ‘antiquary history’ (1993 [1874], 217). For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV 200 Hadj-Moussa that might tarnish the image of the Revolution. It has indeed been slow to put the history of the War of Liberation and its actors into perspective and has done so with difficulty, along with the conscious and sustained repression of the memory of certain important figures of Algerian nationalism. The November generation is inescapable, not only because of the monumentality that is its foundation, but also because of how permeable Algerian social fabric is to its imaginary universe. The fight for freedom was a slow and extremely violent process which had profound consequences for society. The construction of monumentality is thus also anchored in deeply rooted local memories, and has by no means been an evil process consciously concocted by an elite. To understand the ways in which the rise of Algerian monumental history and its paradoxical manifestations have been possible, we can usefully draw on Jean-Nöel Ferrié’s theorization (2004) of what he called ‘solidarity without consensus,’ which is based on agreement by individuals on the form but not on the content of the subject under debate, and which limits deliberation within the constraints of the shared reference (in his case, Islam). Following Ferrié’s approach, an Algerian may oppose the content (how such or such an event took place), but not the form – that is, the framework of the revolution and the generation that carried it out. In the case of the ‘November generation,’ the one that started the war and led to victory, connections remain very significant and ‘real.’ To give only one example of the weight of this generation, in the April 2014 presidential elections three out of the six candidates were children of chouhada (martyrs), and one was a former mujahed.5 This generation continues to mark the present by putting it in a specular relation with the past, one which takes two forms. On the one hand, in its official version it justifies political actors’ actions and reinstates the past as the framework for political decisions, while mobilizing the past positively as a mirror that reflects a present apprenhended as its logical continuation. On the other hand, in its popular ‘lay’ version, which at present is often critical, the past represents tangible proof that can lay bare the political perversions of the present, in which the past and the purity of the revolutionary epic are subjected to hidden manipulation. In both cases, the past – i.e. the November generation – remains the reference point. 5 Four out of the six candidates directly belonged to the ‘revolutionary family,’ either as participants in the war or those ‘having rights’ (ayants droit) according to the formula applied to the children of the chouhada. The November generation refers exclusively to those who participated in the war or sacrificed their life. The powerful organizations of those ‘having rights’ include, among others, the National Organization of the Children of the Chouhada (onec) and the National Organization of the Children of the Mujaheddin. For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV The Double Presence of Southern Algerians 201 In a sort of temporal inversion, but while still keeping the reference to the past, the November generation is invested with the capacity to judge presentday actions, favouring retention over emancipation or projection into a ‘time still to come,’ hence its teleological and monumental function. This apprehension of the past has profound implications for territorial space, which was at the centre of the ferocious fight against the colonizer and which, after liberation, became ‘shrunken,’ as it was centralized, homogeneous and hierarchized – in a word, a Jacobin space. Turning Point: The Emergence of the ‘Unemployed Generation’ This model of historical reference continued to play out until the end of the 1980s, when it was fractured during the massive riots in October 1988, where for the first time the horrified Algerian people saw ‘their army’ kill ‘their children.’6 Until the early 1980s, divisions within the political elites had not gone beyond their own circle. The slogan ‘by and for the people’ began to lose its hold as identity claims (e.g. Amazighity or Berberity) and large social inequalities came to light in a country that still defined itself as socialist, egalitarian, and the standard bearer of the ‘November Revolution.’ The Civil War (1991–2002) widened the fracture, as these two events and the bloodshed involved confirmed a subjective rupture which became increasingly apparent when contrasted to the reverse linear construction involved in reference to the November generation. What effects did this ordering of generations and their temporality have on the emergence of protest movements? We subscribe to the argument that monumentality is not merely a process of ‘simple domination,’ to use Luc Boltanski’s expression (2009) – a raw and direct imposition – but is rather something that actors integrate and incorporate into their discourse. It establishes filiation while at the same time integrating contradictory statements and, like most ideologies, it imposes totality. However, believing in the November generation or being unable to deny it entirely does not imply the absence of parallel or even contradictory discourses. Acknowledging these discourses opens the possibility of breaking with old ways of thinking and being, and 6 In fact, there was a precedent to October 1988 – on June 19, 1965, the day of the ‘redressement révolutionnaire,’ the coup d’état where President Ahmed Ben Bella was deposed by the army, the tanks of the ‘Popular National Army’ were deployed in the streets to disperse opponents of the coup. For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV 202 Hadj-Moussa creating new ones which will constitute the present generation. But in this case, what characteristics do these latter have, and how are they shaped? In what follows, we will address these questions by considering the recent movement of the unemployed in Algeria, aiming to understand how an emerging generation constructs its relation to the past and to monumentality, and the expressive modes that position it in relation to the November generation. Through the number and energy of its members, and the activities that it has chosen to emphasize, this movement establishes temporal and spatial parameters that let it claim to be the ‘spokesperson of a generation in formation.’ Its interest to us, but also the difficulty it poses, is that it is a forming and emerging force. It has the characteristics of a ‘split habitus’ (‘habitus clivé’ Mauger 2009): that is to say, it evolves both from within a structure, which Mauger calls ‘genetic,’ and outside of it, in a ‘plural action’ (Lahire 2001) which supersedes the former. How will this movement, which started ‘just like that’ (an activist7) and reacted ‘tit for tat with the police’ (idem), be able to construct its own temporality by opposing or imitating temporalities constructed by other generations, in this case by and in the projection of the ‘November generation’? It seems that the movement of the unemployed, despite its recent creation, is an example of an attempt to cut loose and to open the way for new things, but it also exemplifies the difficulty of disaffiliating from the past. Born in the wake of the revolutionary circumstances of the 2011 Arab Spring but preceding it in its initial form, this movement is not linked to any political party,8 and defines itself as a movement fighting for fundamental rights, especially the right to work. As if to echo the uprising that took place in the peripheral South Central regions of neighbouring Tunisia at the outset of the revolution there, this movement started in the South, from where it spread to the rest of Algerian territory. Our decision to explore the movement through its southern ‘section’ is justified, on the one hand, because it involved new protests with specific modalities, particularly non-affiliation with political parties. On the other hand, the movement is fairly recent and remains largely undocumented in comparison to other protest groups in Algeria, for instance the Amazigh (Berber) movement, which has received substantial attention. And 7 R. Hadj-Moussa met activists from this movement in the spring and summer of 2014. For anonymity reasons, few names will be used with the exception of those that are already public. 8 The movement was supported by the National Autonomous Union of Public Administration Personnel (Syndicat national autonome des personnels de l’administration publique – snapap) but it distanced itself from it later. The Algerian League of Human Rights, in particular its section in the city of Toughourt and its first leader, Yacine Zaid, were the main support and backing of this movement. For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV The Double Presence of Southern Algerians 203 although initially guided by regional leaders, the movement nonetheless has involved many wilayat (administrative region; sing. wilaya) in the country. Since the movement’s main preoccupation has been employment, we will first of all focus on the latter contextualization on a national scale in relation to public policies, particularly those specifically related to jobs and unemployment. Then, secondly, we will identify how the movement itself is a site of the emergence and creation of a generation, and how local space – here the Sahara – becomes an inescapable element in the mobilisation of actors and a site of the redefinition of monumentality. This emphasis on space helps to identify the unique articulation between generations, and contributes to revisiting the way that a generation is conceptualized by including space. Public Policy and Unemployment Algeria’s socialist path and its economic policy choices, based on heavy industry with gas and oil as its main products, have long coloured its public policies. The State was a large employer, leaving little legroom for private industry. After 1994, when Algeria was required to follow the neo-liberal guidelines of the Structural Adjustment Plan (sap) imposed by the major international monetary organizations, the State did not withdraw from the social sector, and has continued to address the imbalances that resulted from these policies. Even though the largest and most viable public corporations were sold to foreign corporations, and that layoffs affected “320,000 workers in three years”– that is, 8% of the active population (Safar Zitoun 2010, 54 and 64)9 – the State’s presence remained ‘palpable’ in vital social sectors such as healthcare, education and housing. However, as Madani Safar Zitoun shows, it is difficult to reconstruct the implementation of social protections, not only due to the “tendency towards an opaque system,”10 but also due to the syncretism that gives the State the ability to undo harm done elsewhere by imposing levies and using part of 9 10 These numbers can be revised upwards, as the General Labour Inspectorate (Inspection générale du travail) recorded 514,000 job losses between 1994 and 1998. (In Mohammed Saib Musette, “Jeunesse et politiques publiques en Algérie*…” ( nd)). External studies on the impact of the pas after 1994 are not available, due either to their being confidential or extremely technical and thus difficult to use (Safar Zitoun 2010, 55). The level of State disengagement is still a subject of debate. While most authors agree that there has been disengagement, some analyze its devastating effects on ‘households’ and buying power, whereas others approach it from different angles by examining State actions towards target groups such as “the poor,” “youth,” etc. Musette notes a profound mutation in the “structure of the employed” (ibid.). For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV 204 Hadj-Moussa its oil revenues to cover the gaps or insufficiencies of social programmes. In a flurry of State interventions, numerous programs targeted general employment (e.g. labour-intensive public utility work (tup-himo)) or specifically youth employment, with the creation of the National Agency for Support to Youth Employment (ansej) in 199611 and the National Micro-Credit Agency (angem) in 2004, both directly reporting to the President’s Office. But these efforts to put safeguards into place to avoid large social disparities clashed with the informalization of economic activities, paradoxically encouraged by the social policies that were implemented (Safar Zitoun 2010, 65). The level of informal economic activity grew exponentially, whereas job programs bore fruit for only a small number of young programme recipients. Badly structured, these programs, which had no upstream or downstream follow-up, gave precedence to the financial dimension – i.e. relation with a bank – as the sole link between recipients and the whole system, and failed in encouraging innovative initiatives or at least in having a more humane dimension. As described by Nacer Abbaci (2010) in his article on the implementation of employment policies and its workings in a small Algerian town, successful individuals were those who were persistent and systematically used family resources, felt to be “inexhaustible capital” (118), to counter the precariousness of their employment and the uncertainty in which they found themselves for an indeterminate time. Furthermore, permanent job security was scarce when compared to demand and to the goals of the employment programmes themselves. Between 1990 and 1994, 3.3% of young people were hired at the end of their pre-employment contracts, and only 2% between 1994 and 1999, with most permanent jobs being in administration rather than in the economic sector (Abbaci 2010, 97). These observations are corroborated by Safar Zitoun’s conclusions, which took into account the support mechanisms in the fight against poverty and unemployment. According to him, between 2000 and 2006 “the ‘social safety net’ had a real effect on reducing poverty” (Safar Zitoun 2010, 84), but this reduction did not result in the creation of “true jobs by the economy” but rather an intensive development of unemployment reduction programmes (ibid, 85), which itself became a major social and political issue. The statistics we present in this chapter are approximate due to technical and methodological weaknesses in data gathering,12 but they nonetheless 11 12 The Youth Employment Plan (Plan emploi jeune – pej) was the first employment assistance plan, created in 1988. Figures from the Statistics National Office (Office national des statistiques – ons) are incomplete and problematic. As well, the survey techniques used do not accurately show the disparities between wilayas in terms of unemployment. For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV The Double Presence of Southern Algerians 205 indicate the seriousness of the problem. Employment is at present dominated by the private sector, which in 2011 provided 60% of jobs as against 40% in the public sector, a reversal of the situation in 1989 when 54% were in the public sector (Musette 2013, 4). This reversal was accompanied by an informalization of the economy and of employment, estimated at 40% in 2011. Temporary work was estimated at 79.5% (ibid, 4; Musette 2014) in the private sector, and accompanied by a rather high rate of precarious employment, all the more so as union affiliation is almost non-existent and social assistance benefits are absent, which lifts the curtain on another aspect of the reality of employment in Algeria. In fact, having a job is no longer a source of socio-political stability and integration, as had been the case in the past. The segment of the population that was and is most affected by precarious employment are recent entrants to the job market. Unemployment in the officially defined ‘youth’ bracket, i.e. those between 16 and 24 years old, was 24% in total, 19.1% for young men and 38% for young women (ibid, 4). According to an imf report, unemployment among young people will probably increase more than among the general labour force due to the lack of employment ‘flexibility’ (fmi 2012). The Rise of a Movement During the decade of terrorism (1991–2002), these extremely high numbers led to few reactions among the unemployed and the general population, who were paralyzed by terrorism and forced into silence by a State that viewed their demands as a threat to national sovereignty. However, many voices rose up after the end of terrorism (e.g., Amazigh demands,13 the formation and consolidation of independent unions, Human Rights associations, etc.), and among these were the unemployed, who formed a committee on February 6, 2011. Although initiated by ‘youth’ in the South, shortly thereafter it was named the “National Committee for the Defense of the Rights of the Unemployed” (Comité national pour la défense des droits des chômeurs – cnddc) to avoid any hints of regionalism, and included representatives from thirteen wilayat. In addition to its primary focus on work, the cnddc proposed the introduction of an employment policy based on the renewed engagement of public authorities, restoring measures that had allowed municipalities to create their own companies. Its platform of demands, although very category-specific – i.e. ‘corporatist’ – remained strongly open to other political and social struggles. Furthermore, in contrast to Tunisia and Morocco’s committees of the unemployed, which 13 In fact, Amazigh demands have been continuously voiced. For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV 206 Hadj-Moussa were comprised solely of diploma-holders, the cnddc included those with and without degrees. Since its inception it has operated illegally, sometimes ‘tolerated,’ sometimes controlled, and often suppressed. From the outset, the committee wanted to differentiate itself from State structures and chose to not seek accreditation because “for them [the committee’s founders], if you are accredited you are integrated into the system,” as we were told by an unemployed activist. However, after many debates and several years of seeing its actions and activities getting lost in the here and now, the cnddc is torn today between becoming accredited or being independent because, as one the Southern activists stated, “the country is governed by individuals [individual interests,] and not incarnated in the State.” This rejection of authority is quite significant for our argument about monumentality, because it relates to what Algerians call ‘system,’ i.e. those who govern and constantly instrumentalize the ‘November generation.’ The ‘system’ refers to a government structure, but also to a group of people who share the same ‘generational habitus’ (Mauger 2009), who benefit from the same material conditions and share the same imaginary, which feeds off of the liberation war and the ‘November generation.’ While the principal demand of the unemployed is for work, other types of demands are more central because they better account for the formation of the ‘unemployed generation’ of unemployed and offer opportunities of developing new forms of protest. On a strictly practical plan, however, the Committee of the Unemployed should not be ignored because it has allowed a new voice to have greater freedom and to be heard. Hence, the demands of the unemployed for a ‘decent’ job are absolutely crucial, as they are supported by an indescribable precariousness and high unemployment among working-age people marginalized by the Algerian economy. That said, it seems less valuable to treat the issue of generations head-on through the generational specificity represented by the Committee of the Unemployed and its anchoring in the history of struggle in contemporary Algeria, than to approach it laterally by examining a group of unemployed activists from southern Algeria. This means that the analysis of generational emergence requires that we are attentive to the geography and space of its inception. To take the Committee of the Unemployed by one of its sections helps identify its complex composition while offering a better understsnding of the stakes that characterize it. This generational category has had to deal not only with the general demands of the movement of the unemployed but also with unequal relations between peripheral regions and the centre, and the differing relations of regions to the revolution (seen as an exemplary struggle), its history, and the For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV The Double Presence of Southern Algerians 207 history of post-independance protest movements. Hence, the ‘question of generations’ can be treated more deeply by means of a cross-sectional approach, which relies on the various angles, particualry on space. Our own perspective was shifted in this direction in light of the historical specificities of the South and by our ‘witnessing’ an ongoing groundswell in Algerian society, which social scientists have treated with some difficulty under the heading of ‘youth,’ largely failing to consider the dynamic relationships that these people have built with their ecological milieu, which makes them a generation rather than merely a group sharing the same age bracket. To shed light on this generation in formation (we will discuss its status as emergent later on), we must bring together the often heterogeneous elements that define a scale of generations in time or over a short time span, and in relation to space. To our knowledge, research on generations, which is dominated by references to time and temporality, has not developed the notion of space. The case under study here forces us to reflect on the relation between space and the formation of generations. Here space, around which diverse affiliations are expressed, does not designate ‘location’ as defined by Karl Mannheim (1964), which refers to a specific positioning of individuals vis-à-vis certain past or contemporary phenomena and events. An emphasis on space seems somewhat unorthodox in light of the predominance that Mannheim and many others after him (e.g., Mauger 2009) give to temporality – as if the relation between spatiality, or the lived environment, and the acquisition of a positionality and subjectivity could remain separate from the identification of an individual or a group, and their qualification. The experience of space and the subjective attachements it encourages can indeed be regarded as equally formative as the experience of time. An exception to this tendancy is Abdelmalek Sayad (1994), who deconstructs the concept of generation as it has been applied to Maghrebin émigrés in France, and who sees it as already visible in the country of origin. He does not think through this reference to space directly in relation to generations themselves, however, but rather through a critique of the notion of integration, which refers to degrees of inclusion (or its lack) among immigrants in the host society, and categorizes generations according to sequence (first, second, etc.). For Sayad, the integration that the immigrant, an outsider in French society, undertakes is already present in the space and time in which the idea of immigrating appears in his mind. To properly understand the relation to space that Sayad proposes, as someone critical of the idea of integration as intrinsic to and underlying the notion of generation, it is important to note that for him the category of generation is “performative” (1994, 167) and involves power. In other words, when he explores the sociological criteria that define For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV 208 Hadj-Moussa the generation, the author shows how this category becomes an imposition whose justification is based (or comes back to) the space of origin. From this approach we retain the idea that generation has a performative function in Austin’s sense – i.e. as a language act that has a relation to authority – and, especially, the idea that place of origin is a significant marker in the process of ‘generating a generation’ (Sayad), even though it is temporality that dominates most analyses of generations of immigrants. Moreover, space and the projection that it allows inform individuals’ experiences. The line of analysis followed by Henri Lefebvre in his book “The Production of Space” (1974), and the complexity he sees there, can illuminate the relation between space and generation. The triptych he proposes, distinguishes between ‘spatial practice,’ ‘the representation of space’ and ‘space of representation.’ The first pertains to the competence and performance of the actors, the second is related to relations of dominance in producing space, and finally, the third is linked to resistance, that is, “to the clandestine and underground side of social life, but also to art…” (Lefebvre 1974, 42–43, trans.). It is this third element that, we argue, permits deconstructing the monumentality of history, in particular through the strong presentation of present necessity by evoking of a space called in our case either the ‘South’ or the ‘Sahara,’ which unfolds into the notion of region (mentiqat es’hara). Within the movement of the unemployed, the group comprised of the southern unemployed is clearly attached to two elements: the movement of the unemployed properly speaking, its activist projects; and the space it belongs to, the South or the Sahara. Both are structuring, but the first is also contingent. We will see later how contingency can assist the emergence of demands specific to a generation and, in the same movement, the construction of a generation. Generations and Conjunctures In Algeria, the category of ‘youth’ officially corresponds to a specific age bracket (19 to 24 years old), but it is generally accepted that a person who has not started a family is ‘young,’ even if that person is almost forty. Due to the seriousness of the issue of unemployment, and also to housing policies that make it difficult to fill the high demand for housing among people of marriagable age, Algeria is increasingly populated by ‘young’ people; and the growing figures available on this do not take women into account. The unemployed in the South share this situation, but it is aggravated by the vast inequality that For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV The Double Presence of Southern Algerians Map 8.1 209 Map of Algeria © Ratiba Hadj-Moussa, 2015. affects the region, which largely explains why the movement ‘caught on’ there rather than in other regions that also suffer inequalities. Our hypothesis is that inequality and the sense of injustice are at the heart of the movement’s viability and of the generational formation that brought it to life. But there is more to these specificities, as the sentiment of injustice is related to space and to territory, as mentioned earlier. The wide disparities between the North and the South in Algeria have begun to come to light and to be denounced by people from the southern regions, whose voices, since February 2011, have begun to resonate and even to drive demands at the national level. They have pushed the political regime to use all sorts of strategies against them, from corruption, For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV 210 Hadj-Moussa to beatings, to intimidation and even prison sentences.14 This is ‘an anomaly,’ since until 2011 the South had not been heard. On Saturday, November 1st, 2014, the 60th anniversary of the Algerian liberation war, the coordinator of the unemployed movement at that time, Madani Madani, a journalist and activist born in Ouargla, one of the large cities in the Algerian South where the unemployed movement started and around which movements across the region gathered, reported that the city did not have a sewage system in the 1990s (Abane, 2014a). In fact, because of oil revenues, there had been important and substantial infrastructure investments in the southern regions, but these mostly responded to the needs of gas and oil exploration.15 Employment was offered, but by oil companies who hired their own workers, often foreigners, and by sub-contracting companies who hired people from other regions of Algeria even for positions without special qualifications, leaving the local workforce without many jobs. For the majority of Algerian workers who worked in the sub-contracting sector, working conditions resembled “modern slavery” (Benfodil 2012) and certain cities, such as Hassi R’mel (see Map 8.1), were no-go areas. “Algeria is a rich country with poor people,” said Tahar Bellabes, one of the pioneers of the unemployed movement. Thus, beyond the demands for jobs there is the shadow of a dispute and a disagreement that runs from one end to the other of Algerian history, in particular the history of the people of the South and their relation with the North, the centre of decision-making. How can we understand the emergence of this generational spirit, and what are the central moments that made it possible? We propose to answer this question by recourse to the notions of event and domination as they have been developed by historical sociology and the sociology of critique. To do so, we will need to look back over the short term, as the movement took on its meaning within the temporal folds of recent history. Various economic and structural elements must be considered if one wants to avoid falling in the trap of seeing generations as homogeneous groups chronologically following one after another, or of thinking that the post-independence generation “has 14 15 We have witnessed this police and judiciary harrassement. To give just one example, in December 2014 thirty-two unemployed people were being tried in Aflou, with six among them receiving a one-year prison sentence. During a second revision of this article in February 2015, “nine unemployed rights activists were sentenced, in Laghouat, to sentences of six to eighteen months in jail without parole, and eight others to six-month suspended sentences” [Our translation] (Allilat 2015). The city of In Salah has only recently (2015) had some roads asphalted, despite being close to important gas plants in which the Algerian government and its partners invested 1,185 billion usd (Algérie-Focus 2011). For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV The Double Presence of Southern Algerians 211 run its course,” as President Bouteflika famously stated in a speech given in 2012, where he acknowledged that “his generation had run its course” [“jili dab edjanou”] and that the ‘shabab’ (the young) must take their place in a linear succession dictated by the sacrifices of the sacralised Algerian people.16 Such a discourse smoothes, flattens, and makes continuous the uneven road that is the life of subjects, of events, of men and women and their histories. In contrast to this continuist vision of history and generations, it is possible to see the formation of generations in the way that Williams Sewell Jr. (1990) does, by beginning from events. For Sewell Jr., who views events as the product of bifurcations provoked by the conjunction of a series of actions or characteristics proper to situations, recourse to broad frames of analysis that ignore the role of events and situations is ineffective.17 He suggests going beyond these by better integrating the notion of event, in order to treat changes through the characteristics of the phenomenon being studied, rather than through an already established framework, and to explain events through attentiveness to conjunctures. Following Sewell Jr., we can argue that the movement of the unemployed, its anchoring in the South, and the ways it has been brought to life by the ‘young’ have to do with “multiple registers of causation” (1990, 21). These registers can be essentially summarized as the impacts, starting in the 1990s, of the Structural Adjustment Plan (sap) on the parents of today’s unemployed, these parents often being unemployed or precarious workers themselves. To this economic situation can be added two major political conjunctures, the riots of October 198818 and the Civil War. 16 17 18 ‘jili tab ajnanou’ (literally: ‘the garden of my generation is ripe’ meaning that his generation must give its place to the next). “You, youth of Algeria, who have lived with the generation that freed Algeria, who have told you, ‘Oh, brothers! We cannot take it anymore.’ You must get ready for your future responsibilities. […] Time is over for my generation.” Commentators, the people, and those opposing Bouteflika’s fourth presidential term, kept repeating this broken promise during the election in April 2014 (Bouteflika, 2012). Sewell Jr. analyses Charles Tilly’s and Emmanuel Wallerstein’s work, whose methodologies he describes as ‘teleological.’ For example, Sewell shows that the counter-revolutionary revolt in Vendée is attributed by Tilly to the delay in urbanizing the communities involved, whereas according to Sewell, its reasons can be found in the local social structures which permitted the passing from the ancient regime to the revolutionary government. Altough Tilly describes these structures, he nonetheless ignores them because they remain hidden by the main factors he had previously identified (Sewell Jr. 1990, 7–8). On the importance of the 1988–1992 period, see a rare book by Myriam Ait-Aoudia (2015), which focuses on the emergence of political parties as new political players. For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV 212 Hadj-Moussa The riots, which are more important for our purposes, shattered the image of the regime’s durability and emphasized the voice of the people (the voice of the street, not the ‘sacred people’ of the dominant discourse), along with a certain idea of rule of law that Algerians had lost in the 1970s, during the glorious years of the Houari Boumediene19 presidency, which offered them comforts but forced them to remain quiet and silent. The riots in October 1988 were the start of an era of freedom, not only because they forced the regime to authorize the right of citizens to form political and labour associations and to allow the initiation of a multiparty system, which offered the hope of the democratization of Algeria, but also because it facilitated the rise of a political subject that aimed to rethink its relation to the public sphere. The fact that this experience veered off into the Civil War (1991–2002) after the cancellation of legislative elections which the Islamist party was winning should not lead us to think that October 1988 left no traces. For example, music on the Internet, of all types, shows how pivotal this moment was (Hadj-Moussa 2013). An important breach was opened, and with this came new ways of doing and thinking that remained dormant, like sleeping cells, throughout the Civil War, but were reactivated as soon as the war was brought under control.20 The second political conjuncture – the Civil War – was paradoxically a period of security in the South, especially in certain locations where gas and oil plants existed and the interests of multinational corporations were at stake. Indeed, while there were many collective massacres of civilians perpetrated in the North, no terrorist attacks were reported against the gas and oil fields, which spread across a large territory. In this decade, during which everything seemed to be drenched in blood, the arrival of satellite television, also an important event in the overall political conjuncture, occurred at the same time as the Civil War. This new form of television was a major issue in the dramatic struggle between Islamists and the regime over the public sphere. But beyond its intrumentalization by both sides, and the undeniable opening up to the world it provided after decades of state-controlled television, this new television brought media coverage of 19 20 Houari Boumediene was the second President of Algeria, who came to power in June 1965 after a coup d’état. During his presidency, Algeria adopted a policy of ‘socialisme spécifique,’ and became a champion of the Third World and hosted revolutionaries from around the world. The rate of growth during his term was 7.5% and the employment rate doubled between 1965 and 1975. Large infrastructure projects were started, particularly in heavy industry and the oil sector (Hassan 1996, 27). We do not refer here to structured activities or those deployed within an activist framework. For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV The Double Presence of Southern Algerians 213 world events, different modes of governance, and the divergent views of opposition figures. It made visible what before had been only rumour and innuendo, and permitted a dismantling of the official discourse that surreptitiously continued the acts of rebellion and defiance triggered by the riots of October 1988. We describe this as surreptitious because this dismantling following the viewing of satellite television not because of a growing awareness re/activated by organized political mobilization, but rather through the uncertain and diffuse circulation of ideas as to the meaning of justice, the rule of law, democracy, corruption, and inequality alongside the focus on entertainment that predominates in this media.21 Generations: Algeria Contested by Its South ‘The generational spirit’ of the movement of the unemployed in the South was thus constructed around and at the crossroads of three conjunctures, which themselves were articulated around a structural inequality with deep and powerful roots. The movement of the unemployed, as it was expressed in the South, led to explosive ‘political’ demands. We can initially read the point of connection between these situations and the double demands of Southern actors in terms of brute, or in Luc Boltanski’s terms (2009) ‘simple,’ domination.22 Indeed, responses to demands by the populations of the South usually came from the security forces, not the administration. “At the slightest protest, we suffer police repression. The police are our sole interlocutor. In the North of the country, you can go see a local official, but in the South it’s only the security forces,” said Tahar Bellabes.23 The security situation became more delicate after an attack by a major terrorist group on a gas site in Tinguentourine (Ain Amenas; see Map 8.1) on January 16, 2013. Still, it was in the South that the most important Algerian social movement of the last decade began, and this requires us to nuance both the idea of simple or brute domination – which according to Boltanski blocks the manifestation of 21 22 23 For more details see Hadj-Moussa (2015). Boltanski, in his work De la critique (2009), distinguishes simple or first-degree domination, which brutally impose its justifications, from more sophisticated forms of domination that are supported by a discourse of managers and experts which use ‘change’ as their ultimate justification. Simple domination is the main mode used by totalitarian (and authoritarian) regimes. R. Hadj-Moussa did three sets of interviews with activists or members of the movement of the unemployed in the spring and the summer of 2014 and in the summer of 2015. She met with activists from both the North and the South. For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV 214 Hadj-Moussa criticism by weakening its intensity or forcing it to become dormant – and the reframing of activity that it involves. There is still much left to clarify about this movement, but we can already posit that a certain anthro-political imaginary universe has begun to implode, under which the South and its population were ruled through a mode of quasicolonial domination, albeit under the cover of an ideological discourse that claimed peaceful national unity. Undoubtedly, this explains the great tension in the movement’s discourse – which we should note is supported by the local population – between on the one hand the justification of belonging to the nation, out of deep conviction and in fear of being accused of secessionism, and on the other hand a self-definition supported by a strong demand for equality, made even stronger by the idea that “Algeria’s wealth comes from its South,” as an activist said. The demand by people in the South for access to employment (a ‘right,’ according to the Algerian labour code) is thus framed by a larger geo-anthropological and ecological entity: the Sahara. Although we believe these cannot be dissociated from each other, analysis should proceed on to two different registers. The first (employment) concerns criticism related to reality, or more precisely to the confrontation between what are valued and established principles of justice (e.g. the right to work), and what exists “in the actual texture of reality” (Boltanski op. cit., 160, our trans.).24 In other words, these operations allow criticism to use evidence in order to show its compliance to and application of the ‘roadmap,’ which is to provide employment for the largest number. The unemployed used their present ‘situation,’ i.e. ‘what exists,’ to show how distant this was from ‘what ought to be.’ Like vigilantes, they caught the State in the act, and deconstructed the scaffolding of its claims of equality, often paying a high price (all types of humiliations and punishments, jailings, etc.). The second register relates to a ‘deeper malaise,’ as the whole Algerian Sahara has become concerned, not merely affected. This ‘concernement’ has happened through justifications that are not institutionalized, but belong rather to the life and lived experience, and which pertain to what ‘touches’ or ‘renders’ affective sentiments in individuals and collectivities. They are based on humiliating experiences that are difficult to thematize or to generalize, as they lack a frame of expression, or simply because they are seen by the political regime 24 This section of the article is inspired by Boltanski’s On Domination (2009), where he distinguishes between the ‘reality tests,’ and ‘existential tests.’ The first type of tests determines the difference between ‘what it is’ and ‘what ought to be.’ The second type of tests refers to realities that lack institutional forms but that allow for more radical changes. For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV The Double Presence of Southern Algerians 215 as outside of the order of things. Due to the fact they do not correspond neatly to reality or go beyond it, these justifications have a radical critical capacity. Thus, an activist met in the summer of 2014 stated: The regime makes reference [to the term] the ‘South’ (el djanoub) to better split up and divide our forces. In fact, it was the regime that created regionalism and terrorism. Just look at what is happening in Ghardaïa [a city in the South that experienced serious inter-community clashes that set the M’Zab region abalze for at least 6 months in 2013–14]. [Its rhetoric is] ‘It’s me or terrorism.’ ‘It’s me or bombs.’ Why does the regime want to free the Sahrawis [in Western Sahara], but does nothing for the Algerian Sahara? Why don’t they say that we are Sahrawis? Here we find a new scene, which brings us back to our discussion on monumental history, the ‘November generation’ and the ‘unemployed generation.’ This scene is built, on the one hand, from the historical background that led people from the South (e.g., the representative of the movement of the unemployed centred on the city of Ouargla) to remind others that the Southern population voted for a united Algeria in the referendum forced on them by France on February 27, 1962. The unemployed, and by extension the population of the South or at least the population of Ouargla, declared this date the ‘Day of National Unity’ (Youm el wahda el watanya), which has been celebrated ever since. Using a double strategy, they thus remind others of the debt that Algeria has towards the South while ostensibly celebrating a united Algeria according to official tradition. This has further significance given that the city of Ouargla, where Algerians protesting in favour of Algerian unity were killed by French bullets, is now the point around which discontent and opposition gather. In terms of strategy, there is no doubt that the invocation of the war of national liberation, and by association the ‘November generation,’ situates the movement in the same wake as the elites in power who use this reference; but the movement has also built, in a new manner, the foundations of a generation, a population, and a region. At this point it will be useful to return to the idea of solidarity without consensus as presented by Ferrié, mentioned above, which rests on the constraint exercised by reference (to revolution, the November generation, etc.), but which attributes a great flexibility to social actors. From the angle of the emergence of a generation, represented by the unemployed from the South, the retrospective appropriation of the date of February 27, 1962 institutes a new group while ensuring continuity and recalling the South’s earlier sacrifices For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV 216 Hadj-Moussa for the unification of Algeria. November 1st, 1954, the day when the Algerian revolution started, now has as its counterpart February 27, 1962, the day when the nation was united, a date that is certainly anchored in continuity but at the same time transforms and shifts the terms of reference by conferring new positions to emerging actors.25 This new scene is thus constructed, on the one hand, on an argument about participation in the liberation war (the inter-community clashes in winter and spring 2014 in M’Zab showed the centrality of this argument), and on the other on an anthropological reality that often goes unnoticed and draws inspiration from the model of a civilized person face-to-face with a boorish and almost barbarian ignoramus, which embodies the administrative practices and the ordinary beliefs of people from the North that make Southerners feel humiliated and ignored. Rejection of this dominant model is expressed on various registers, both by activists and by citizens. Thus, in a letter sent to the ‘High Authorities’26 on November 26, 2014, asking them to censor some research by an Algerian anthropologist they felt had betrayed them, the “sheikhs, women and the young people of Djanet” (a city deep in the Algerian South, see Map 8.1) were aiming at more than the disapproval they perceived coming from the researcher. We take the liberty of quoting the letter as it was published, since it gives a remarkable example of the sentiments and perceptions of people who feel marginalized in their own country, and also echoes the demands of the movements in the South. In this country, it is reasonable to send the condemned and the sanctioned among us to the Sahara; to give the opportunity to a person beginning their professional career to use us as subjects to acquire skills; to send those that are near retirement here so that they will have a better pension. Even police officers and doctors ask that their period of service in the South be reduced; and there are pilots who refuse to come South. Furthermore, those who obtain high positions in the State say [of us]: ‘they can even taste yogurt!’…and others accused the Touareg of being accomplices in the Tiguentourine operation even before the investigation had been started. An official at the University of Constantine [East North] stated it will not let people from the South enrol until they show negative test results for Ebola and aids, since it is us and the Africans [Sub-saharan migrants] who carry such diseases! All this is followed by a long list of offences… 25 26 Our reading of the consequences of the appropriateion of the events is inspired by Sewell and his suggestion for developing sociology of events (Sewell Jr. 1990, 23–24). With “a carbon copy to national and international media.” For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV The Double Presence of Southern Algerians 217 To these sentiments of rejection and humiliation, a relatively recent but significant event can be added, which informs the discourse and strategies of the unemployed in the South even though in the actors’ discourse itself it often remains a presupposition. It is understandable that actors are careful in what they say, since when seen from the point of view of the Algerian State something unprecedented has taken place, namely the creation a local citizen and civic movement initiated by a group of young men called “the Movement of Southern Children for Justice” (Mouvement des enfants du Sud pour la justice – mesj). This movement began in Ouargla in 2004, following the merger of the platforms of the movement based in Ouargla and the citizens’ movement in Labiodh Sidi Cheikh, another city in the central South and the administrative centre for the wilaya of El Bayadh (see Map 8.1), which was created in 2001 following riots in the region barely one year after the official end of the Civil War. In September 2003, a visit by President Bouteflika to the wilaya of El Bayadh led to further riots and to anger among residents and associations, who tried to prevent him from meeting the local dignitaries who they did not consider their representatives. They asked, in vain, to be allowed to speak to the President in order to present their platform of demands, which “contain[ed] a series of cultural, political and economic demands. Substantially, the drafters of the platform demand[ed] a better distribution of national wealth and a real administrative division to allow for the founding of a federation in the South” (Benseba 2003, our italics). In this platform, the federalist option, which they expressed here for the first time, had as its corollary a demand for justice clearly enunciated as a political demand. After its creation, the Movement of Southern Children for Justice was quickly and violently repressed. Already geographically isolated, its members were accused of being separatists and terrorists. They were harassed, jailed, tortured and summarily tried. Some members were pushed to armed violence following the sanctions, humiliation and torture that were applied on them and their families. The local population felt that the State was unduly criminalizing the movement’s actions by calling its members terrorists.27 27 In February 2014, citizens protested even in Djanet [see Map 8.1] demanding that the State stops its attacks on the movement led by Abdessalam Tarmoune, the brother of Taïb Tarmoune, one of the leaders of the “Movement of Southern Children for Justice.” “We want the anp [Armée nationale populaire] to stop bombing Tassili and to enter in talks with Abdessalam Tarmoune and his men in the Movement of Southern Children for justice,” states its communiqué. The protestors justified their demands with the following arguments: “We fear that the youth will take to the maquis [remote regions, historically the base for armed opposition],” they claim. “We advocate a federal option for the State, and we demand social justice and the fair distribution of wealth in Algeria,” assures Ahmed Arbi, spokesperson for the citizen movement in Labiodh Sidi Cheik (El Bayedh). For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV 218 Hadj-Moussa If it seems then that the activist and civic version of the Movement of Southern Children for Justice was decapitated, its armed version was both combatted and maintained by the State (see note 29), in what appears to be one of its strategies to curb actions by the unemployed. But this neutralization of the leadership was not totally successful, as the unemployed movement, while making ‘social’ demands, in the words of one of its leaders, shows some affinities with the mesj’s political demands. Between 2004 and 2011, mesj supporters and the ‘youth,’ as an activist told us, “led a continuous struggle (moustamira). We were like a school out on the street. We taught people what peaceful struggle is, the principles of pacifism. The street was instructive (mounaoura – which also means enlightening). And then there were issues on which everyone agreed.” The Saharan actors of the movement of the unemployed and those who shared the same conditions supported this dual demand. However, this demand differentiated them from other members of their generation in other regions of Algeria, and gave them a unique perspective, where their learning on the street – “We started with the street, we had the street” – which all members shared, was strongly associated with their ‘assassiyat el djanoub,’ their ‘southern sensibility.’ To avoid their actions being systematically transformed into political demands, they limited their claims to their ‘social’ dimension, hoping in this way to avoid the accusations of ‘terrorism’ and ‘violation of State security’ that brought some members of the movement under martial law (Section 40 of the military penal code). They knew that “the one who will say that [his actions are] for the South, that one will be burnt,” “he will be assassinated” (activists). In its present state, the movement of the unemployed gathers together the suffering and the inequality endured by the Southern population, and demonstrates its organizational capacity by drawing on two orientations that come into tension – on one side non-violence, an opposition to armed violence which has proven to be fruitless, and on the other the street violence and riots that were its mode of operation in the past. The choice of the ‘pacifist way’ results from their experiences in action and their confrontations with the police: “we fought on the street…but we learned that our protests, our actions had to be peaceful. When the police beat us up, we did not respond. That is how we could defeat them,” as an activist said. This path is fed by social demands “The [mesj’s] members received an amnesty in 2008 according to the National Reconciliation Charter [implemented in 2005]. The members of the msj (sic) laid down their weapons, on the sole condition that the State take up their platform of demands, for the most part social and political. But the State did not keep its promises. The msj members were stabbed on the back” – these views are heard from Ouargla to El Bayedh. (Abane, 2014b [Our translation]). For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV The Double Presence of Southern Algerians 219 for a ‘decent job,’ which must be accompanied by ‘human development’ and policies of ‘professional training,’ which have been crossed out with a “red line as far as the children of the South are concerned.” On the other side, ‘the movement’s illegality’ prevents it from positioning itself as a sustainable interlocutor with the authorities, and has recently pushed it to consider civil disobedience strategies. If this choice is confirmed in the future, the movement will find itself caught up in ‘politics,’ which will push it back into its initial insurgent radicalization.28 With its dual nature, social and political, the movement is trying to redefine the contours of a reality that has long been taken for granted and accepted as such, with no possibility for change. The shift these demands initiated represents an extraordinary opening, whose effects are double-edged: it can open towards the further deployment of domination, or towards the possibility of an acknowledgment of harm suffered in the past. The movement and the generation that sustains it are currently at this juncture. Work for Dignity: Generations in Equality Another tension is superimposed onto this, as demands for decent work lead to a search for dignity and justice: this is why the mesj rose up in 2004, allowing, by default, an echo of the uprising and the referendum on February 27, 1962 to resonate through the movement of the unemployed. Indeed, as Rainer Forst (2013) shows while defending a political approach to justice, a call for justice never stops with the distribution of goods but first and foremost has to do with power (34). In the Algerian authoritarian context, the call for justice exemplifies the pertinence of this ‘political shift.’ It allows both an insistence on relational and contextual dimensions while producing a discourse 28 A comparison with the movement of the unemployed in Tunisia and Morocco would be useful on this point. The fact that the Algerian movement is not only comprised of degree-holders gives it a more ‘radical’ character, as non-degree-holders, “who are more numerous in the structure, have nothing to lose. They are more radical. They are more determined in their action. They are not afraid of physical confrontations. They suffer greater hardship than degree-holders, who say ‘I have a degree’ and thus are covered by pre-employment policies,” in the words of an activist. This concurs with observations by Asef Bayat (2008, 100) who notes that the unemployed movement was the most radical of the protest movements at the start of the Iranian Revolution. Furthermore, in the present case, members of the Committee who get a job do not cut ties with the movement and continue to provide financial support. This continuity makes it possible to limit state manipulation and to reduce co-opting of the newly employed, as has been the case in Morocco (see Emperador Badimon 2013). For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV 220 Hadj-Moussa of justification, and a call for the necessity of an ethical dimension. In fact, its discursive, i.e. normative dimension (e.g. the right to work) is not sufficient. It is intertwined with an ethical dimension that finds its meaning within anthropological discourse, among others, on the humanity of human beings – here all Algerians – and their unconditional equality with their fellow humans. This can be a way to read the use of the word ‘dignity’ (el karama) chanted by protesters throughout the Arab world, and is strongly suggested in demands for a ‘decent job.’ As Forst states, “to possess human dignity means being an equal member in the realm of subjects and authorities of justification, an attribute, I would add, that does not depend on the active exercise of capacity of justification, which would exclude infants or disabled persons” (2013, 101). Two types of protests have cut across the South of Algeria, led by two generations that overlapped in a condensed temporality during a very short period – between 2004 and 2011 – and whose issues were the fair distribution of wealth and the ability to decide. The forms of protest used by the Southern segment of the movement of the unemployed, on which we have more information (the history of the mesj still remains to be written), cover a wide range of practices that all seem to differentiate them from the generation that took the reins of power after independence, and involve a different perception of ‘the November generation.’ In fact, although the recent movement is still in the shadow of that generation, it has shifted its centre by renaming the main square of Ouargla ‘sahat el Ouhda el wataniya’ (the Square of the Nation Unity), and by adding an event, February 27, 1962, taken from the fringes of monumental history. In doing so, it has revealed one of the pieces missing from the truth. This event reminds everyone that Algeria owes much to the South, although History is still silent on it. The Algerian political regime was not fooled. Its attempts to weaken the impact of the movement of the unemployed by all means possible shows the importance of the issues at play, which go beyond economic demands: the Saharan element in the movement of the unemployed breaks the continuity of generations posed by monumental history, problematizing it and tending to rearrange the historical and geographical pieces essential to its creation. Conclusion The movement of the unemployed as it has formed in the South of Algeria presents a generation whose ‘unity’ (Mannheim) is built on overt class differences and on an outsider relationship to political decision-making. Although employment is its main leitmotif, the movement frames itself within demands For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV The Double Presence of Southern Algerians 221 for justice that surpass it. The movement formed and constituted itself in relation to history by picking certain historical events. Thus February 27, 1962 constitutes the founding and federating event of union with the rest of Algeria, and in two respects: in a regional crystallization that gathers ‘hassassiyat el djanoub’ (Southern sensibilities), and in the celebration of the unified nation, which was for long the missing event in the writing of Algerian history. Furthermore, while being formed the movement declared its attachment to the Sahara, which complicated its emergence within the Algerian authoritarian context, where unity is the dominant form of national acknowledgement. This is a political complexity, as identity demands have always been the cause of bitter battles and are considered unacceptable in a centralized political system, as demonstrated by the Amazigh (Berber) struggle. It is also an economic complexity, as the Sahara is Algeria’s ‘wealth,’29 in particular for the elites who, according to popular criticism, became its exclusive owners. In terms of protest, the movement’s actors, as members of one sole generation, the adopted a sort of “split habitus” (Mauger 2009, 117), which draws inspiration from the liberation struggle, while at the same time displacing it and adding innovation, since the history of contemporary protests continues to be very patchy, or even absent – “we must know the history of the region, its labour history and the history of rights,” says an activist. This is a needed innovation but also a default choice. In fact, the lack of transmission of the movement as it has been expressed in the South continues to be its major stumbling block. Lastly, this political transmission is not the only element that should be put into question, as a better understanding of the ins and outs of the movement will also require studying issues of family lineage, and other forms of expression such as literature, poetry and music. References Abane, Meziane, “L’Histoire Secrète du Mouvement des Enfants du Sud,” El Watan, 28 March 2014a. Accessed March 28, 2014. http://www.elwatan.com/actualite/l-histoire -secrete-du-mouvement-des-enfants-du-sud-28-03-2014-250892_109.php. Abane, Meziane. “60 ans après la Révolution. L’Algérie est Libre, les Algériens pas Encore,” El Watan, 31 October 2014b. Accessed October 31, 2014. http://www.elwatan .com/actualite/l-algerie-est-libre-les-algeriens-pas-encore-31-10-2014-276118_109 .php. 29 One of the Southern activists summarizes the reality of the relation between South and North this way: “People in the North say: ‘the cow is home with you but the milk is with us.’” For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV 222 Hadj-Moussa Abbaci, Nacer. “Traitement du Chômage en Algérie. Des Politiques Publiques d’Aide à l’Emploi aux Solidarities Familiales,” in L’État Face aux Débordement du Social au Maghreb. Formation, Travail et Protection Sociale, edited by Myriam Catusse, Blandine Desmetrau and Éric Verdier, 95–127. Aix-en-Provence & Paris: iremam & Karthala, 2010. Aït-Aoudia, Myriam. L’experience démocratique en Algérie (1988–1992). Apprentissage politique et changement de régime. Paris: les Presses de Sciences Po. 2015. Algérie-Focus. “Développement des champs gaziers du sud d’In Salah en Algérie.” AlgérieFocus, April 12, 2011. Accessed May 4, 2016. http://www.algerie-focus.com/2011/04/ developpement-des-champs-gaziers-du-sud-d%E2%80%99in-salah-en-algerie/. Alilat, Yazid. “Laghouat: Neuf Militants des Droits des Chômeurs Condamnés,” Le Quotidien D’Oran, 13 February 2015. Accessed February 15, 2015. http://www.lequotidien -oran.com/index.php?news=5209662. aps (Algerie Presse Service), Wikalet el Anba’ el Djazaïria. “L’Unité nationale est une ‘ligne rouge’.” April 16, 2016. http://www.aps.dz/algerie/40514-l-unit%C3%A9 -nationale-est-une-ligne-rouge. Bayat, Asef. “Workless Revolutionaries. The Unemployed Movement in Revolutionary Iran,” in Subalterns and Social Protest. History from Below in the Middle East and North Africa, edited by Stephanie Cronin, 91–115. London& New York: Routledge, 2008. Benfodil, Mustapha. “Les Chômeurs ‘Professionnels’ au Pays du Gaz.” Algeria Watch. September 22, 2012. Accessed October 29, 2014. http://www.algeriawatch.org/fr/ article/eco/soc/scorpions_bidonville_hassi_rmel.htm. Benseba, Nadir. “En visite à Labiodh Sidi Cheikh, Bouteflika provoque l’émeute,” Algeria Watch, September 10, 2003. Accessed December 11, 2014. http://www.algeria-watch .org/fr/article/pol/revolte/bouteflika_emeute.htm. Boltanski, Luc. De la critique. Précis de Sociologie de l’Emancipation. Paris: Gallimard, 2009. Bouteflika, Abdelaziz. Public speech broadcast on Algérie Direct. May 9, 2012. Accessed July 16, 2014. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbWkQHi1XuE. Emperador Badimon, Montserrat. “Does Unemployment Spark Collective Contentious Action? Evidence from a Moroccan Social Movement.” Journal of Contemporary African Studies 31, 2 (2013): 194–212. Ferrié, Jean-Noël. Le Régime de la Civilité en Égypte. Public et Réislamisation. Paris: cnrs Éditions, 2004. fmi (Fonds monétaire international). Questions Choisies. Algérie. Rapport 12/22, 2012. Accessed February 7, 2015. http://www.imf.org/external/french/pubs/ft/scr/2012/ cr1222f.pdf. Forst, Rainer. Justification and Critique: Towards a Critical Theory of Politics. Cambridge, uk & Malden, ma: Polity Press, 2013. Hadj-Moussa, Ratiba. 2013. “L’Émeute dans le Maghreb. La Révolte sans Qualité,” L’Homme et la Société, 187–188 (2013): 39–62. For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV The Double Presence of Southern Algerians 223 Hadj-Moussa, Ratiba. La Télévision par Satellite au Maghreb et ses Publics. Espaces de Résistance, Espaces Critiques. Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 2015. Hassan. Algérie. Histoire d’un Naufrage. Paris: Seuil, 1996. Huyssen, Andreas. “Monumental Seduction.” New German Critique, 69 (1996): 181–200. Lahire, Bernard. L’Homme Pluriel. Le Ressort de l’Action. Paris: Hachette Littérature, 2001. Lefebvre, Henri. La Production de l’Espace. Paris: Anthropos, 1974. Mannheim, Karl. Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Routledge & Kegan and Paul, 1964. Mauger, Gérard. “Générations et Rapports de Générations.” Δα ́ιμων. Revista Internacional de Filosofía, 46 (2009): 109–126. Musette, Mohammed Saib. “Jeunesse et Politiques Publiques en Algérie*: D’une Préoccupation Socio-Educative à une Prise en Charge en Termes d’Emploi,” in Contribution à la Construction des Savoirs dans les Politiques d’Inclusion Sociale et de la Jeunesse (13). Consultation pour le Conseil intergouvernemental du Programme MOST, Nd. Accessed June 2, 2014. https://www.google.com/search?q=Contributio n+%C3%A0+la+construction+des+savoirs+dans+les+politiques+d%E2%80%99in clusion+sociale+et+de+la+jeunesse&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8. Musette, Mohammed Saib. “Le Marché du Travail en Algérie: une Vision Nouvelle?” fce – Journées de l’Entreprise Algérienne: Emploi, Formation et Employabilité, October 29, 2013, Algiers: 1–11. Nietzsche, Friedrich. De l’Utilité de l’Inconvénient de l’Histoire pour la Vie: Deuxième Considération Inactuelle, edited by Jean Lacoste et Jacques Le Rider. Paris: Robert Laffont, 1993 [1874]. Safar Zitoun, Madani. “La Protection Sociale en Algérie. Évolution, Fonctionnement et Tendances Actuelles,” in L’État Face aux Débordements du Social au Maghreb. Formation, Travail et Protection Sociale, edited by Myriam Catusse, Blandine Desmetrau and Éric Verdier, 53–93. Aix-en-Provence & Paris: iremam & Karthala, 2010. Sayad, Abdelmalek. “Le Mode de Génération des Générations ‘Immigrées’.” L’Homme et la Société 11–12 (1994): 155–174. Sewell Jr., William. “Three Temporalities: Toward an Eventful Sociology.” Presented at a conference on “The Historic Turn in the Human Sciences,” University of Michigan, October 1990. Accessed February 3, 2011. http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/ handle/2027.42/51215/448.pdf?sequence=1. For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV