Algerian Migration and the Formation of the Muhacir Status in the Ottoman Empire (1830–1908)

Abstract This article examines the resettlement of Algerians fleeing French colonial rule after 1830 in the Ottoman Empire (Palestine, Syria, and Anatolia) to analyse the formation of the legal and administrative category of muhacir . It argues that the Algerian case offers a privileged vantage point for understanding how this status emerged and was gradually consolidated over the nineteenth century. Because Algerians migrated over a long time span and were not the initial targets of Ottoman resettlement policies - initially designed for migrants from Crimea, the Caucasus, and the Balkans - their progressive inclusion into muhacir entitlements makes it possible to trace how this category expanded beyond its original contexts and became a standardized instrument of migration governance. The article shows that Algerians first received assistance through discretionary measures, before being progressively incorporated into a regime of standardized rights after the Crimean War (1853-6). Under Abdülhamid II, access to these rights increasingly became conditional upon Ottoman naturalisation and the renunciation of French colonial subjecthood, revealing how migration policy, legal status, and imperial sovereignty became tightly intertwined. By following Algerian migrants across the French and Ottoman imperial spaces, this paper highlights how late Ottoman migration policy functioned not only as a tool of population management, but also as a key site for the juridical redefinition of imperial belonging in an age of colonial expansion.