Immigration museum reopens to tell ‘shared story’

How did immigrants shape French society? This is essentially the question that the immigration museum sets out to answer, which is reopening its doors in Paris after three years of closure, completely redesigned around this “common history”. To better show the gradual infusion of immigration into all spheres of society, the permanent exhibition will follow a chronological sequence, based on eleven major dates, from 1685 to the present day.

“Immigration is an integral part of the History of France, of a common history. On each of these dates, we will ask (…) the place that foreigners had and the way in which they made French History”, reminds AFP of Constance Rivière, general manager of the Palais de la Porte Dorée, which houses the national museum of the history of immigration. An approach justified by the fact that“today, one in three French people is an immigrant, child of an immigrant or grandchild of an immigrant”she continues.

“We wanted to render this story in its complexity, with the story of the people who are already there”French, and that “of those who arrive, therefore the migrants”, emphasizes historian Marianne Amar, one of the museum’s scientific curators. For “weaving these two stories together” who do not advance in a way “parallel” but “together”.

“Not a textbook”

Immigration today is therefore just as much about this boat loaded with bundles of African fabrics and resting on empty bottles, a work by the Cameroonian artist Barthélémy Toguo representing the risky crossings of the Mediterranean, as these doctors and nurses foreigners photographed in French hospitals during the Covid-19 crisis.

The visit starts in 1685, year of the Black Code, symbol of the colonial era but also that of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the exile of the Huguenots: a date “deliberately provocative” because the museum, “this is not a textbook”, assumes Marianne Amar. It’s a date that shows “that France is not only a country of immigration, but also a country of emigration”she continues.

The visitor then goes back through the years and the turbulence of an often thwarted History, to find the answer to this question, summarized by the executive curator of the exhibition, Emilie Gandon: “How do we become French over time?”

In 1848, France witnessed the arrival of Polish exiles while a petition was launched – and displayed in the museum – by Italian and Spanish refugees against their house arrest in the provinces. At the time, that of the first census of foreigners, the latter formed 1% of the population, against 10% today. It must be said that in the middle of the 19th century, people from Quimper or Carpentras coming to Paris were considered in artistic representations as exiles.

Fight against “prejudice”

Participation of foreigners in the war effort in 1917, independence of Algeria in 1962, consequences of decolonization, mobilizations in 1973 for the rights of foreign workers… the exhibition gives to see in maps, photos, paintings and others documents all the key events in the network leading from immigration to integration.

In the 1995 section, the year the Schengen area was created, the visitor is greeted by a series of photos by Thomas Mailaender representing the “cathedral cars”as the dockers of the port of Marseilles nicknamed them at the time, these cars with roofs overloaded with furniture and household appliances in which immigrant families took the road in the summer, especially to the Maghreb.

It is also the ephemeral era of the “France Black-White-Beur”, observes Mrs. Amar, in front of some puppets from the Guignols, including that of Zinedine Zidane in the jersey of the French football team.

Quickly, the visitor leaves the chronology to witness the immigration seen today by the artists: the photos of the camps under the Parisian ring road juxtaposed with those of the Ukrainians welcomed with open arms. And, another novelty, some demographic data from the latest studies, posted on the walls.

“Our conviction is that prejudices” are born “of a form of ignorance”believes the director of the Palace, Constance Rivière.