Citizenship in Algeria Today: Representations and Their Implementation in Practice

This research project constitutes a continuation of a previous project conducted within CRASC under the supervision of the same principal investigator, entitled: Research on the Approach to and Practice of Citizenship: The Algerian Case (History – Culture and Society).

While the initial project enabled us to engage with the issue in a preliminary manner, it could not, of course, exhaust the broader problematique of citizenship in Algeria. Further dimensions of the question therefore required sustained scholarly investigation.

The rationale advanced here is essentially identical to that outlined in the earlier project, in which we noted that: “The issue of citizenship asserted itself forcefully within Algerian society during French colonisation, which profoundly altered traditional communal bonds (social, ethnic and religious). With the emergence of the national movement and subsequently the War of National Liberation, citizenship became closely intertwined with the claim to nationality. Following independence in 1962, it merged with egalitarian and socialist aspirations, and later, in the wake of the October 1988 events, with the democratic credo accompanying political liberalisation.”

Subjected to the pressures of these successive forces (communitarian identitarianism, nationalism, egalitarianism, and subsequently liberalism), citizenship appears to have struggled to emerge with a clearly defined status. Yet it remains central to the challenges facing contemporary Algeria, particularly regarding the relationship between the state and society, and the joint positioning of both within an increasingly interconnected world, where the effects of globalisation are ever more tangible.

For this reason, we deemed it necessary to address these issues through a series of guiding questions, including:

In the first project, we proposed an initial theoretical and historical framework and examined the role of the school (through the function of the teacher) and civil society (through the associative movement).

An axis devoted to the variables of citizenship through the case of Algerians in France and their descendants could not, regrettably, be completed due to health-related circumstances affecting Anissa Bouayad; we hope to revisit this component in due course.

Through this second project, we propose to broaden the scope of the problematique to other sectors of social life. We shall examine representations and practical implementations of citizenship through investigations into the media, political parties, religious discourse, educational institutions (curricula and textbooks), environmental issues (increasingly addressed by associative movements and public authorities), and finally the perception and enactment of electoral participation—among university students as well as within the wider society, through selected local case studies.

Our approach will address both discursive constructions of citizenship and ongoing social practices, encompassing public institutions and civil society alike, theoretical referents, and the relationship to civic engagement and political practice.

We therefore seek to further deepen this inquiry into citizenship with a view to producing analytical insights and, perhaps more importantly, generating new lines of questioning.