ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Algerian citizens' relationship with the Algerian State a decade after the gradual return to peace but with discontent still seething, exacerbated by the repercussions of the 'Arab Spring'. The aim of the chapter is to show that in Algeria today, the people's relationship with the State in the logic of expectation and distribution and logic that reveals a debt of the State towards society, and inability to redeem it. It presents the results of research carried during the summer of 2012 in a neighbourhood of Oran, where it grasps the particular significance of rehousing operations in progress. In Algeria, the issue of debt is closely connected to that of oil-rent. The oil-rent registers the State as a debtor: everybody is aware of the gap between the prosperity of the State and the poverty of a good part of the population, the wealth of the State apparently misappropriated by 'the leaders', who have left it unproductive.
