Unheard Voices

This book is the first comprehensive study of cinematic representations of Muslim women from the Maghreb (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia) who migrated to France during the decades preceding and following the end of French colonial rule. In it, I seek to make audible voices that are generally – though not always accurately – regarded as those of a generation of migrants silenced under the weight of poverty, illiteracy, Islamic tradition, and majority ethnic Islamophobia. Drawing on fieldwork in audiovisual archives and research institutions in France, my study brings together a diverse corpus of over 60 films released in France between 1979 and 2014. Among these, four main categories or types of film may be distinguished: documentaries, short fictional films, feature-length fictional films, and téléfilms (i.e. feature-length fictional films that are made for television). Given the general invisibility of firstgeneration women from the Maghreb in the public spotlight, compared with the much greater visibility of their children and grandchildren, it is remarkable that women of this generation are represented in such a wide-ranging corpus of films (co)produced in France.

Media coverage relating to people of Maghrebi origin in France over the past 30 years has tended to focus on supposed cultural and religious differences between them and the majority ethnic population. Younger generations of Maghrebi-French people, raised in France by immigrant parents, have generally been to the fore. Recurrent topics include social unrest and violence in the socioeconomically disadvantaged urban areas commonly known as the banlieues, as well as debates relating to the integration – or lack thereof – of this population and the perceived threat of communautarisme (ethnic and/or religious separatism). As Alec Hargreaves has noted, ‘[d]uring the 1980s and 1990s, politicians and public opinion were obsessed with what was widely portrayed as a serious threat to French national identity and social cohesion arising from the settlement of minorities originating in predominantly Islamic countries, mainly former French colonies in North and West Africa’ (2007, 3). Subjects that have dominated media coverage include the headscarf affairs of 1989, 1994, and 2003–04 (Bowen, 2007; Dayan-Herzbrun, 2000; Hargreaves, 2007, 111–20), and other debates relating to social exclusion and the integration of minority ethnic populations, particularly youth of Maghrebi descent.