International Migration in Algeria in the Contemporary Period

The migration question has always occupied a central position in anthropological research in Western Europe. Studies on Algerian immigration have been conducted primarily in the receiving countries. The theoretical frameworks underpinning migration studies concerning Algerian populations were shaped by anthropological and sociological research in response to the need for a more precise understanding and greater conceptual control of migration, through the mastery of methodologies and the selection of the paradigms associated with it.

Today, in Algeria, the traditional migration pattern has undergone profound transformation. Algerians no longer supply migrants — at least officially — as they once did; nevertheless, new departures continue to be recorded on a regular basis.

Algerian migration is no longer exclusively labour migration.

Algeria stands at a turning point in its social history as a country formerly characterised by the export of labour; the presence of foreign workers within Algeria invites an exploration of the idea of Algeria as a destination country for migrants. Candidates for migration to Western European countries use Algeria as a transit point; yet all forms of durable immigration have historically begun in this manner.

Examining these new and recent dimensions of what is commonly referred to as the clandestine migration of young Algerians and Africans to Europe, through new paradigms — particularly cultural, economic and geostrategic paradigms — may shed light on our own cultural and anthropological transformations as a society of departure and potentially of reception.

We hope, through sociological, anthropological and cultural approaches to migration — whether concerning the departure of Algerians or the arrival of foreigners in Algeria — to grasp the major cultural and anthropological changes currently taking place in contemporary Algeria. Europeans themselves began to develop a consciousness of their own identities through the presence of foreigners in Europe and in relation to them.