ABSTRACT
The French of Algeria, commonly known as the pieds-noirs,2 constitute a unique group of migrants. They are the descendants of the settler population who came to Algeria from various European countries (mainly France, Malta, Italy, and Spain), beginning in 1830 in search of economic and social opportunities. Approximately half of these settlers migrated from France. In 1962, at the moment of Algerian independence, unstable conditions prompted most of the one million French Algerians living in this territory to migrate to metropolitan France. Their trajectory has made this population both internal migrants and double exiles with multicultural identities and heritage (Baussant 2012, 88). They are also heirs to a complicated and painful colonial past.
