Session 6 – UPF

"Migration policies in France. Between metropolitan France and the colonies, France as a case study" 

Thursday, 28 May 2026| 15:00–17:00 | UPF, Ciutadella Campus, Room: Calsamiglia

Speaker: Eric Savarese (Université de Montpellier – CEPEL)

Chair: Demetra Santagati (EuroMedMig, GRITIM-UPF)

Synopsis

Migration policies in France are part of a long history. Indeed, while the right of asylum was invented during the French Revolution, France became, since the end of the 19th century, a country of immigration. Under these conditions, it’s possible to explain how migration policies are chosen, from which public action instruments they are made, and how France has been able to experiment, for 150 years, all immigration policies. But migration policies do not concern only metropolitan France. They also concern colonial Algeria: with the colonization beginning in 1830, and the dynamics of the settler colony, Algeria was progressively populated by French People, but also with Spanish, Italians and Maltese. Organized for the purpose of territorial occupation, this migration policy reflects the logic of colonial governance, for which demography is the main science of government.

Bio

 

Eric Savarese is a professor of political science at the University of Montpellier. His research focuses on the question of citizenship, considered in the colonial (especially Algerian) and postcolonial contexts. Algerian independence left to the emergence of new groups of individuals (« pieds-noirs », « harkis », repatriates, former soldiers), and influenced migration policies and the politics of memory. His current research focuses on the governance of colonial Algeria through demography, viewed from the perspective of the production of ethnic statistics in the former settler colony.