A colonial genealogy of migration information campaigns: propaganda, France, and its ‘undesirable’ Algerian migrants (1947–1953)

Since the 1990s, information campaigns have emerged as an important instrument in migration governance. Many migration studies scholars have explored this instrument by shedding light on its role in symbolically maintaining and reinforcing border regimes through spreading narratives around (im)mobility. Many have also underlined information campaigns’ role in reproducing colonial logics of belonging as well as colonial spatial imaginaries when targeting migrants originating from the Global South. This paper will demonstrate how this instrument is not only a carrier of colonial logics but is a reverberation of colonial anti-migration propaganda campaigns. By investigating French government-led anti-migration propaganda campaigns targeting Algerian migrants between 1947 and 1953, this paper will demonstrate the strong colonial lineage of contemporary information campaigns. This shows that information campaigns are in themselves an instrument upholding the coloniality of migration governance. In this endeavour, I draw on the archives of the Bureaux Nord Africains, an institution created to organise and control Algerian migration in post-war France. Working along the General Government of Algeria, this institution played a key role in bringing to existence anti-Algerian migration propaganda campaigns. Beyond this, this paper participates in further foregrounding the colonial past in understanding contemporary migration governance.