Article

Journal of Social Archaeology

13(3) 310–330
The National Museum ! The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/1469605313501582
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History (Paris, France),
neo-colonialist
representations, silencing,
and re-appropriation
Sophia Labadi
University of Kent, UK

Abstract
This article focuses on the Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration (National
Museum of Immigration History – CNHI, Paris), the only national museum fully dedi-
cated to the celebration of the positive contributions of immigrants to France. Using
postcolonial theories and the notion of museum friction, it charts the conflicting pro-
cesses and decisions at play in, first, the translation of the aims and goal of the CNHI
into the museography and interpretation of the collections. Second, it analyses critically
the usages made of this heritage space, particularly its unauthorised occupation (one of
the longest unauthorised occupations of a museum in France) by illegal workers for four
months, from October 2010 to January 2011. I wrote this article from the viewpoint of
a second generation immigrant, one of the key targeted visitors of the CNHI. This
article is also based on participant observation of each aspect of this heritage space,
careful observation of its uses, and semi-structured interviews conducted with the
CNHI staff, illegal workers who occupied this heritage space, and human rights organ-
isations which supported its occupation.

Keywords
France, heritage, immigration, museums, postcolonial representation, sans-papiers

Corresponding author:
Sophia Labadi, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NZ, UK.
Email: sophialabadi@gmail.com
Labadi 311

In October 2007, the Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration (CNHI) was

officially opened. It is a highly symbolic space, the first national and publicly
funded heritage space solely dedicated to the positive (re)presentation of the history
and manifold contributions of immigrants to French society. The opening night
stirred up some controversy as it was deliberately snubbed by the then French
President Nicolas Sarkozy who refused to attend. Brice Hortefeux, the then
Minister of the Interior, was also absent, despite the fact that this heritage space
fell under its administrative and financial responsibility. These emblematic absences
reflected the official governmental opposition to the aim of this heritage: to repre-
sent positively migrants’ important contributions to France. These absences further
reflected the crystallisations of migration issues, embedded in the CNHI, around
the definition of the nation-state and who is authorised to be officially and publicly
included within it.
From the outset, it thus seems that this novel heritage space, the CNHI, was
rather avant garde as it reconsidered and reframed French official historical and
heritage narratives within a context of cultural diversity, hybridity, postmodernism
and postcolonialism, and in so doing moved away from the traditional background
of French heritage spaces as heralding white, homogenised, nationalistic and mod-
ernist positioning. From the outset, this seems a powerful space, which re-centred
the marginalised figures of immigrants, empowered them and enabled them to
become emblematic and positive public characters.
This article focuses on the CNHI as it enables, first, a reflection on the repre-
sentation of immigrants, diversity and silenced minorities within a national and
public space. It allows a reflection on how poststructural ideas of multivocality,
multiple individual identities, and postcolonial representations have been worked
on in a heritage space, traditionally constructed to strengthen national collective
and monolithic identity. This identity has usually been constructed around the
subordination of distinct ethnic values to a monolithic, homogenous and integrated
citizenry. Such a focus allows, second, for a reflection on the nation-state, on who
gets represented in heritage and public spaces as well as the different power rela-
tions at play in these narratives and representations.
From a theoretical standpoint, this article uses postcolonial theories and the
notion of ‘museum friction’: ‘to shift attention toward the ongoing complex of
social processes and transformations that are generated by and based in museums,
museological processes that can be multi-sited and ramify far beyond museum
settings’ (Kratz and Karp, 2006: 2). More specifically, this notion helps to chart
the conflicting processes and decisions at play in, first, the translation of the aims
and goal of the CNHI into the museography and interpretation of the collections.
Second, it provides a reading grid to analyse the usages made of this heritage space,
particularly its occupation by illegal workers.
This article starts by clarifying the reasons for the opening of the CNHI, and its
stated aims and goal. It then identifies problematic issues, including the lack of crit-
ical distance with the French colonial past and the silencing of immigrants. A last
section critically analyses the unauthorised four-month occupation of this space
312 Journal of Social Archaeology 13(3)

(from October 2010 to January 2011) by illegal workers as a way of fulfilling these
stated aims and goal, and of obtaining legal authorisations to remain on the French
territory. This section considers whether and how such unique occupation – the
longest of a museum in France – transformed the representation of immigrants in
this space and the associated representation of the nation-state.
One of the novel dimensions of this article is that I wrote it from the viewpoint
of a second generation immigrant, one of the key targeted visitors of the CNHI.
This article is also based on participant observation of each aspect of this heritage
space, careful observation of its uses, and semi-structured interviews conducted
with the CNHI staff, illegal workers who occupied this heritage space and
human rights organisations which supported its occupation.

Political and intellectual genesis of the CNHI

The decision by the French government to use public funding to create a national
heritage space on immigration may seem, from the outset, to be at odds with the
French tradition of universalism and attitudes towards diversity, which stress the
need for immigrants to be integrated within French society. Indeed, such a place
could be used to highlight the particularism of minorities, as further discussed later.
A convergence of events can, however, explain the strong political will to create this
heritage space. In 2002, for the first time in the history of the French Republic, the
National Front (le Front National), a far-right nationalist and xenophobic political
party, headed at that time by Jean-Marie le Pen, reached the second round of the
presidential election with 16.86 percent of votes. The themes and ideas of this party
focus on national preference, the rejection of diversity and stigmatisation of immi-
gration; it thus fundamentally contradicts the roots of the French republic, based
on fraternity and an egalitarian treatment of all. The second round of these 2002
presidential elections saw Jacques Chirac win this election with more than 80 per-
cent of votes, reflecting the wide belief that the National Front represented a grave
threat to the French model of democracy, fraternity and republican equality.
This political event caused President Chirac to decide to re-launch the reflection
on and project of a national space for the representation of the history and positive
contributions of immigration. This project was motivated by the intimate belief of
the French elites that such a space could help fight against the cultural alienation of
immigrants and their children as well as their lack of identity markers (‘déshérence
identitaire’) (Raffarin, 2003: 7). Chirac’s decision was far from being the first one:
in June 2001, the then Prime Minister Lionel Jospin requested Driss El Yazami,
(president of the non-governmental organisation Génériques) and Rémy Schwartz
(a civil servant) to present recommendations on the creation of a national centre on
the histories and cultures of immigration (El Yazami and Schwartz, 2001: 5).
This report strongly emphasised the need to create a living national heritage
space (as opposed to a stale museum) to recognise and promote publicly the posi-
tive impacts of waves and generations of immigrants on the French economy and
society. This living heritage space would aim to involve and attract both
Labadi 313

immigrants and the general public alike. The choice of Driss El Yazami as one of
its authors is rather symbolic. He was the CEO of Génériques, an NGO founded in
1987 to (re)present the history and the memory of immigration and immigrants
through publications and public exhibitions. The work of this association is part of
a wider network of intellectuals and civil society organisations who, from the 1980s
onwards, have actively published on and promoted the positive contribution of
immigrants and immigration to the history of metropolitan France, topics which
are too often silenced (e.g. Bechelloni et al., 1995; Génériques, 1990; Green, 1985;
Noirel, 1988; Ponty, 1988).
The Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration (the National Museum of
Immigration History) is a direct continuation of these previous efforts, as testified
by the participation in its reflection, conception and creation by these experts
who conducted earlier work on migration phenomena in France (Toubon, 2004).
To respect El Yazami and Schwartz’s request, a symbolic decision was made to
call this new space a ‘cité’ rather than a museum to move away from the ‘stuffed’
and dead image stereotypically associated with this concept (El Yazami and
Schwartz, 2001).
The aims of the CNHI are to conserve and present collections on the history,
arts and culture of immigration to the general public; to collect and make publicly
available documents and information on the history and cultures of immigration,
as well as on the integration of immigrants within French society; and to cooperate
with diverse organisations, including academic partners working to achieve a better
representation of the positive impacts of immigration in France. The ultimate goal,
as indicated in the March 2003 letter by Raffarin, is to strengthen social cohesion
and give immigrants some markers of identity.
A number of deliberate choices were made to fulfil these aims, including the
decision to create, first, a national heritage space (rather than a regional or local
one) and, second, to locate it in the heart of Paris (rather than to locate it in a less
important city). These highly charged symbols were supposed to be motivated by a
strong desire to change the views of the public on immigration phenomena and
immigrants, too often considered and displayed in the media and political sphere as
a ‘problem’. However, the decision to locate this new national space within the
former Palace of the Colonies reveals some unresolved conflicts in the official
consideration and representation of the French colonial past and its relations to
migration phenomena.

‘La Porte Dorée’: An ambivalent space of ‘exoticising’

As early as 2004, the choice was made to locate the CNHI in the former Palace
of the Colonies (more commonly known as the ‘Palais de la Porte Dorée’ in
reference to the name of the metro station where it is located). Built for
the 1931 International Colonial Exhibition, this palace subsequently housed a
succession of ethnographic museum collections that changed in composition,
function and title to reflect France’s position as a colonial and then former
314 Journal of Social Archaeology 13(3)

colonial power. In 2003, it closed when its collections were transferred to the new
Musée du Quai Branly.
This palace is a vast Art Déco building, a magnificent and well-conserved exam-
ple of 1930s colonial and propagandistic architecture of the French civilising mis-
sion. This is particularly true regarding the decorations of the facade of the
building, executed by Alfred Janniot, which present life-size, stereotyped stone
sculptures of the local inhabitants of the colonies, most of them naked or half-
naked, cultivating the natural goods abundant in these subjected countries, such as
coca, cotton, coffee or rubber (see Figure 1). This civilising mission is also the main
theme of the ground floor, remarkable with its 900 square meter function room,
flanked by two smaller rooms. Frescoes decorating the walls of the function room,
executed by Pierre Ducos de la Haille in 1931, highlight and celebrate the civilising
and positive roles that France played in its then colonies, as well as its positive
contributions, including freedom, justice, science or medicine (see Figure 2). The
iconography and the architecture is also an ordered and bounded representation of
Otherness from the standpoint of the French coloniser. These sculptures and fres-
coes had a clear propaganda role: to highlight the benefits of the French colonialist
mission and to hide all its negative, dark and repressive dimensions (Jarassé, 2007:
64). The theme of some of the sculptures of this building is thus to present the
French as the superior and powerful masters, whereas the former colonised people,
some of them nowadays immigrants, are presented as subaltern ‘good savages’,
close to nature and in need of civilisation. These sculptures and frescoes present an

Figure 1. Detail of a sculpture on the facade of the CNHI.

Labadi 315

Figure 2. Fresco celebrating the delivery of medical assistance by the French in its colonies.

erroneous image of the colonies as luxurious, exotic and calm places without
evoking the exactions committed in these territories by the French, as well as the
often violent domination of the local population. One can legitimately ask whether
this propagandist iconography could not be interpreted by the public as related to
the theme and content of the museum: in other words, this iconography
might emphasise the immutable separateness between westerners and native
316 Journal of Social Archaeology 13(3)

(Thomas, 1994), as well as the superiority of the French over citizens of former
colonial countries.
So why was this ambivalent space selected to house the CNHI? As early as 2004,
the project’s leaders, in particular Jacques Toubon, described the Palais de la Porte
Dorée as an ‘ideal’ location (2004: 138). During the interviews I conducted with the
staff of the CNHI, it was explained to me that hosting a heritage space on immi-
gration history in a former museum of the colonies represented a great occasion to
deconstruct the narratives, epistemology and stereotypes of the Other constructed
during colonialism through the presentation of the positive contributions of immi-
gration to France.
Immigration experts who took part in reflections and meetings for the creation
of the CNHI have reportedly questioned this choice and its pertinence. For them,
the public would come to consider immigration and colonisation as identical phe-
nomena, while in truth the history of immigration to France is a much wider and
older phenomenon than colonisation and involves a greater number of countries.
To prevent such confusion and to ensure that visitors distance themselves from the
colonialist propaganda surrounding the interior of the CNHI, they recommended
the contextualisation and interpretation of the iconography, sculptures and archi-
tecture of its building (Toubon, 2004: 40).
However, this stereotyped iconography and architecture is hardly contextualised
and deconstructed: the interpretive panels focus on ‘objective’ information,
describing the architectural and aesthetic importance of the frescoes and sculptures.
No effort has been made to deconstruct properly the narratives they suggest. This
deafening silence can be understood as a will to maintain the ideology of coloni-
alism and to use the museum as an instrument demonstrating the power of France
and its domination of these former colonies. Through this silencing, the racial
hierarchy in which French people are portrayed as superior to others is being
maintained and even reinforced. This silencing is a way of controlling the repre-
sentation of minorities and the denial of their criticism regarding traditional nar-
ratives of French history, as further developed in the following section (Duncan,
1995: 8; Whitcomb, 2003: 15). Through this silencing, meanings and categorisa-
tions created during colonial times cannot be questioned; they remain fixed, and
with them so too the power relations established during this time between the
French population and those living in former colonial countries, some of whom
are nowadays immigrants (Merriman, 2000: 302; Nederveen Pieterse, 1997). This
lack of questioning means that the audience cannot distance itself from the colo-
nialist propaganda presented on the sculptures and panels. From the standpoint of
museum friction, this silencing and absence creates a gap between the representa-
tion of self and others, which can be considered as being in complete opposition to
the original aims of the museum, presented earlier, to use the CNHI for social
cohesion. This silencing and interpretive void reflects the fact that France has not
yet accepted the loss of its colonial empire and the process of decolonisation (as
clearly reflected in a proposed article in a 2005 law, removed since, which intended
to impose the teaching and inclusion in school books of the ‘positive value of
Labadi 317

French colonialism, in particular in the Maghreb’ [Law no. 2005–158, 2005]).

This lack of a critical approach to the colonisation period makes the choice of
the former Palais des Colonies a rather polemical and ambivalent one, and runs
counter to the initial objectives of the CNHI’s founders. For Stevens, this lack of a
critical approach is due to ‘containment’: the museum directors believed the issue
of colonialism had already been widely and publicly discussed. Therefore there was
no need to discuss it again as the public supposedly possessed the intellectual
tools and framework to analyse critically the building and its architecture (2008:
235–236). However, this runs counter to the new museology which requests the
deconstruction of dominant narratives, in order to make the public aware of them
and of alternative histories (Merriman, 2000: 300–309).
The next section focuses on the actual museography and contents of this heri-
tage space to analyse how the original aims of the CNHI presented earlier have
been realised.

Permanent exhibition: From welcoming to integrating

immigrants
The permanent exhibition, entitled ‘Repères’ (Benchmarks) and organised themat-
ically, has sought to present an all-inclusive history of immigration, representing
the ‘old’ European immigration along with North African, Sub-Saharan African,
Turkish, Chinese and other contemporary immigrations. It is located upstairs from
the function room with the frescoes from 1931. This permanent exhibition clearly
centres on the general experiences of all immigrants, without any distinction, from
arrival to full integration in the host country (Fauvel, 2011: 114). A choice was
made not to distinguish any experience according to the origin of the immigrants,
silencing the different laws of the French government to favour some countries
(specifically its own colonies in the 1950s and 1960s for the vast availability of
cheap unskilled labour forces).
More precisely, the first and larger room deals with the experience of migration
and, through individual examples, details reasons for emigrating to France, the
experience of the first years in the country, and the immigrants’ relationships with
officials. Artefacts include suitcases and symbolic objects brought by immigrants,
such as cooking utensils or musical instruments. The second room deals with the
living and working conditions of immigrants. Contemporary installations have
been used in this section to convey their hardship. A series of black and white
photographs from the 1960s present the shantytowns, located on the outskirts of
French towns and cities that crammed in immigrants.
In the middle of this room, as an echo of these precarious conditions, is dis-
played ‘Climbing Down’, the 2004 installation of the contemporaneous French-
Cameroonian artist Barthélémy Toguo. This installation presents six superposed
bunk beds overloaded with cheap plastic bags to highlight, in a rather humoristic,
light and subtle manner, the crowded living spaces of some immigrants who are
deprived of any intimacy and whose belongings fit into one bag.
318 Journal of Social Archaeology 13(3)

The photographs by Thomas Mailaender entitled ‘cathedral cars’, displayed in

the following room, are another example that translates the poverty and precarious
living conditions of immigrants into an artistic and poetic language. His photo-
graphs portray the overcharged cars of immigrants who travel through the port of
Marseille on their way from France to the Maghreb, all through the summertime.
The installations of Mailaender and Toguo convey the idea that these immigrants
are not yet settled in France and seem to be living in a stage of transit, between
their country of origin and their host country. These immigrant workers, according
to these installations, are only temporarily settled in France and have kept strong
links with their country of origins. This temporality suggests that immigration is
not a problem, despite the way in which it has been presented in French media,
since many immigrants do not intend to settle in France. Besides, such a presen-
tation is a way of avoiding any serious analysis of immigrants’ lack of social,
economic and cultural rights, considered here irrelevant as they do not aim to
settle on a long-term or permanent basis in France.
The last room of the museum focuses on those instances of successful integra-
tion of immigrants and their children within French society. Such a focus on those
successful instances helps, at the same time, not only to highlight the positive
contribution of immigrants settled in France but also to glorify the French
model of integration. The French republican model of integration is a process by
which individuals subordinate their own culture and particularisms to a universally
applicable set of values (Orlando, 2003: 397). This model is very remote from, for
instance, the models of multiculturalism as developed in Canada, the USA or the
United Kingdom. However, this French model of integration has slowly been
eroding. It has been criticised by immigrants themselves, especially by the children
of immigrants from the Maghreb (all former French colonial countries), as an
exclusionary discourse and set of procedures that lead them to suffer from inequal-
ities and injustices in terms of access to housing, employment and educational
opportunities (see, for instance, the short film The French Democracy [Chan,
2005] which explains that these injustices are the roots of the 2005 urban riots,
or, more recently, Lapeyronnie and Kokoreff, 2013). Above all, this model of
integration has been attacked from within by French technocrats themselves
(Descoing, 2007), who have developed ad hoc multiculturalist approaches and
systems (Kastoryano, 2010: 90–91).
However, these shortcomings, criticisms and attacks have been silenced in the
exhibition space and interpretive panels on the integration of immigrants in French
society. This reflects the standpoint of a number of experts who took part in the
creation of this heritage space, who are convinced of the fundamental importance
of the French integration model (Fauvel, 2011: 118). Worse, this space over-
emphasises immigrants’ contributions to sport, in particular the ethnically diverse
football team who won the 1998 World Cup, composed mainly of second gener-
ation immigrants from the former French colonies, as opposed to a more balanced
representation of contributions across other areas of intellectual and artistic
endeavour. This over-emphasis on football, according to members of staff of the
Labadi 319

museum I interviewed, is a strategy carefully thought through to target young

members of the public who might lack identity markers and who might connect
more easily with football players as positive figures to emulate rather than with
intellectuals or artists. Another reason communicated to me is that football teams
at a variety of levels – national and professional, as well as local and amateur –
have been composed of a diversity of nationalities and ethnic backgrounds, con-
tributing to strengthening social cohesion and considered as a way of fighting
against ethnic communitarianism.
This narrow focus reveals the simplification of the narratives on the successful
contributions of immigrants to France through the silencing of the other contri-
butions they have made within intellectual, economic or political spheres (Dixon,
2012: 82; Leveau and Wihtol de Wenden, 2001). This can also be considered as
promoting a stereotype of all immigrant youth as being only interested in football,
or in sports more generally. These silencing and stereotyping narratives contribute
to the construction of an institutional and hegemonic image of immigrant youth as
not being intellectual, and if one pushes this stream of reflection further, as not
being able to attain ‘white collar’ professions or to belong to the intellectual elite.
From the standpoint of ‘museum friction’, this narrow focus stands in complete
contradiction to the original aims of the CNHI: to highlight the positive contribu-
tions and impacts of immigrants in France. Indeed, this focus can be understood as
strengthening the stereotypes constantly stressed in the press and by vote-catching
political parties that immigrant children are less able, intellectually speaking, than
their French counterparts, being the reason why they fail at school. This hierarchy
at play in the exhibition, between immigrants and their children on one hand and
their French counterparts on the other, is not without echoes of the colonialist
propaganda displayed on the frescoes on the ground floor of the CNHI. Whilst the
CNHI aims to combat stereotyping, in reality its simplified and hegemonic con-
struction of immigrants’ trajectories and integration within France tends, uninten-
tionally one would think and hope, to have an inverse effect. From the viewpoints
of the staff of the CNHI, however, the museum is considered as fulfilling its goal of
highlighting the positive contributions of migrants, and they emphasised sports and
football as the most visible ones. The winning of the 1998 World Cup by the
culturally and ethnically diverse French football team was followed by months
of celebrations, which can be considered by some as representing a form of
social cohesion and inclusion. Therefore, for the staff, this event fulfilled the
aims of the museum, hence its prominence within the permanent display. This
event is also very important as it is apolitical and helps to hide more conflicting
issues with immigration, which the museum is not ready to tackle (Stevens, 2008:
237–241).

Voices or deafening silencing of migrants?

Analyses of immigrants’ first person testimonies in the permanent exhibition
further confirm the very narrow focus of the CNHI and its uncritical approach
320 Journal of Social Archaeology 13(3)

to integration. First person testimonies and experiences from immigrants them-

selves present them as active agents of their lives rather than objectifying them
through presenting third person accounts of immigration (Lafont-Couturier, 2007:
43; Lonetree, 2012: 27). This direct participation and first person narration is rather
rare and original; immigrants’ voices and experiences are indeed usually silenced in
museums and other cultural heritage spaces. These first person accounts are essen-
tial for visitors to understand the multivocality of immigration experiences.
However, these subjective, first person accounts are mainly restricted to the first
room of the permanent exhibition, dealing with experiences of immigrating to
France and in particular to explanations of the objects taken by immigrants for
their new life. Thus, this section of the CNHI exhibits objects that immigrants took
away with them and which are used as symbolising their country of origins and the
life they left behind, including photos of their relatives and of their village, house-
hold objects, furniture or instruments. A donation gallery completes and echoes
this space. Specific objects donated by migrants are used as a thread to clarify
mainly their decision to emigrate and/or their professional life in France. These
first person accounts are rather peripheral to the core issues at stake for immi-
grants, including their day-to-day relations with the host country and their man-
agement of multiple markers of identity.
In the rest of the permanent exhibition space, the authoritative voice takes over
to objectify the experiences of immigrants, thus naturalising their integration and
rendering it a taken-for-granted truth (Macdonald, 2003: 3). This progressive silen-
cing of the voices of immigrants in the permanent exhibition is part of their hege-
monic representation as being only able to be integrated within the nation. This
hegemonic representation disfranchises and delegitimises alternative, hybrid iden-
tity forms developed by migrants (Stevens, 2007: 35).
Whilst the original aims of the museum were to make it a living space at the
centre of the debates on immigration and capable of strengthening social cohesion,
this narrow representation of immigrants’ trajectories in France makes this space
almost irrelevant for immigrants and their children. Through the choice of a
narrow focus on the integration model, this museum space contradicts its own
aims. A dialogical approach with first person accounts of immigrants’ multiple
identities would certainly have helped to better fulfil some of the goals of the
CNHI. This would have helped to present the mélange of cultures at the heart
of immigration, rather than promoting pure integration. Such silencing of hybrid
identities might be due to the fear of the dissolution of what is considered to be an
inalienable French cultural identity into these more multiculturalist understandings
of identity. Paradoxically, the very nature of immigrants’ identity is constituted
through hybridisation and the creation of ‘third spaces’ where individuals are able
to cross the boundaries of belonging. This concept of the ‘third space’ provides a
reading grid to better understand the ways in which the French culture has been
positively transformed and enriched by these different waves of immigrations, con-
cerning, for instance, music like rap, hip-hop and slam or new literary genres. Rap,
hip-hop and slam constitute a new vernacular which uses a diversity of references
Labadi 321

and influences from both shores of the Mediterranean Sea; they are important
identity markers even though they often present critical views of the French repub-
lican system. The representation of these musical and literary forms within the
museum space and their consequent legitimation by the CNHI would have cer-
tainly been a valuable contributor to strengthening social cohesion.
These examples from all walks of life would have been essential to provide
immigrants and second generation immigrants with inspirational strategies and
creative ideas to adapt their lives to the no-man’s land of belonging to two cultures,
and even to make it an advantage instead of a burden. Insisting on these strategies
of adaptation would have transformed the CNHI into an inspiring and truly posi-
tive space for immigrants. The choice of focusing solely on the French model of
integration and its associated silencing of the diverse lives of immigrants has unfor-
tunately had the opposite effect. From the museum’s point of view, this might have
been a strategy to avoid having to deal with the problems of the French model of
integration. Nonetheless, the official strategy developed by the museum is clear: to
promote this French model of integration as the only way to reach social cohesion
and inclusion, and to silence its shortcomings.

Lack of interactive interpretations

The CNHI was created, in part, to change views on migrants and acknowledge
their positive contributions to France, at a time of increased racism, as testified by
the popularity of the National Front (Front national). Interactive exhibits have
been widely recognised as media that provoke visitors and encourage them to
reflect on and question their own prejudices, as well as to change their frame of
mind (Hooper-Greenhill, 2004: 556–575). The lack of interactive installations or
exhibits at the CNHI is quite striking. It prevents visitors from being provoked,
challenged and questioned; at present, they are passive and unchallenged receivers
of an official narrative. Interactive installations are important as they can provoke
empathy among visitors and prompt them to understand what it means to be
emigrating from one’s country. These interactive installations are based on imagin-
ing and trying to live the experiences of other people, which is the basis of empathy.
As Ian McEwan stressed, ‘Imagining what it is like to be someone other than
yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion and it is
the beginning of morality’ (2001). At 19 Princelet Street, an immigration museum
located in London, for instance, one of the interactive installations, on display in
2005, requested visitors to choose the three objects they would take away with them
if they had to emigrate in a rush. This installation pushes visitors to understand the
hardships of emigration. The static installations in the first room of the CNHI,
however, do not make visitors understand how hard it is to have to leave one’s
home and the impossible decisions one has to make, often at very short notice.
Interactive devices can also make visitors aware of the different implicit stereo-
types they might have. One striking example was the temporary exhibition ‘Leave
to Remain’, and in particular the installation entitled ‘Standard Class Opinions’, by
322 Journal of Social Archaeology 13(3)

Margareta Kern, displayed at 19 Princelet Street in 2004–2005. This artist took

train journeys across the UK and asked random passengers on the standard class
carriages their views on asylum seekers coming to Britain. The answers are shown
alongside portrait photographs of the passengers. But while the portrait
photographs were stuck to the wall and couldn’t be moved, the opinions of the
passengers were left for the viewer to associate to each photograph, in a match-
the-comment-to-the-person game-like process. This installation provoked the audi-
ence to question their views, assumptions and stereotypes about asylum seekers,
and Others in general. In doing so, this installation helped visitors reflect on their
opinions and prejudices – including those unconscious ones – on migrants. This
installation by Margareta Kern helped to strengthen social cohesion and inclusion
as it provoked visitors, made them become aware of their own views of migrants
and in some cases made them become more tolerant. Unfortunately, no such inter-
active exhibit has been displayed at the CNHI. The public, passive, are not pressed
to reflect on their own opinions and on the prejudices they might have toward
migrants.

Occupation by illegal working migrants

The previous sections explained that the laudable aims of the CNHI were not
implemented. On the contrary, the choice of displays and interpretation stand in
opposition to these aims. It is not surprising, in these conditions, that this heritage
space mainly attracts pupils who visit it as part of compulsory school visits but has
failed to attract immigrants or their children, or to construct any special relation-
ships with them (Guerrin, 2010).
Against all odds, the CNHI became the centre of the illegal workers’ fight to
obtain their legal right to remain on French territory. On 7 October 2010, 500
illegal workers, most of them from French-speaking Africa (primarily from Mali),
occupied the CNHI. This date was symbolic as it coincided with the World Day for
Decent Work. The occupation lasted for almost four months, which is surely the
longest illegal occupation of a museum in France, but followed two sequences.
Until 8 December 2010, it was a continuous, day and night occupation with illegal
workers sleeping on the ground floor of the CNHI, in some cases just next to the
colonialist and stereotyping frescoes mentioned earlier. From 12 December until 28
January 2011, the occupation continued but was contained: the illegal workers
could only stay within two rooms, away from public and exhibition spaces. In
addition, the CNHI was closed at night so the immigrants had to leave it every
evening and come back there the next day. This was a clear attempt to make this
occupation more difficult and even to break it. An end was put to this occupation
on 28 January 2011, on the grounds, according to the official communication of the
museum, of the non-compliance of illegal workers with internal rules, of insalu-
brity, and of too many people circulating in the open spaces. In addition, ‘serious
incidents, including threats against staff’ occurring at the end of 2010 and in early
January, were also mentioned as having guided the directors’ decision to end the
Labadi 323

occupation (CNHI, 2011). The museum closed on 28 January, officially to be

reorganised, cleaned and reopened on 1 February.
This occupation was orchestrated by one of the main French trade unions, the
CGT (Confédération Générale du Travail), in collaboration with 10 other trade
unions and civil society organisations (including, for instance, the French section of
the Human Rights League, Autremonde, an association which fights against all
forms of exclusion, and the Network for Education without Borders). It corres-
ponded to a protestation against the failure of the government to implement a piece
of legislation, adopted on 8 June 2010, providing simplified and unified criteria for
the regularisation of illegal workers and the systemic delivery of receipt for regu-
larisation dossiers submitted, allowing them to work while their case was being
assessed (when the occupation started, only 58 receipts had been delivered for 1800
dossiers submitted). This occupation fits within a wider movement, started in April
2008, for the administrative regularisation of more than 6000 illegal immigrants
who have been working – some of them for at least 10 years – in the building trade
or the catering industry (Barron et al., 2011), and who all went on strike in loca-
tions across Paris. The CGT took the decision to occupy this space because, at that
time, the CNHI was under the administrative responsibility of the then Minister of
the Interior and Immigration and the Minister of Culture. This occupation was
considered as an opportunity to pressure the Minister of the Interior to speed up
the regularisation of the sans-papiers. More importantly, the CNHI was selected
for its high symbolic value as the public building that aims to recognise and pay
tribute to the positive contributions of immigrants and their children to France.
This space was also chosen for practical reasons, as the trade union was looking for
a covered space to shelter the illegal workers from the windy and rainy weather
conditions of the Parisian autumns.
This illegal occupation was highly symbolic, first, because it aimed to fulfil the
overall goal of the museum presented earlier on: to strengthen social cohesion.
Indeed, during the whole duration of the occupation, representatives of the trade
unions and association welcomed illegal workers within the space of the CNHI
(both those who occupied it and others) and prepared dossiers for their regular-
isation. Through this constructive use of the CNHI, workers were attempting to be
included legally and equally within French society, and to be able to enjoy the same
rights of movement and residency as others. Suddenly, the CNHI became a living
space through this illegal occupation tolerated by its staff for almost four months,
just as it was originally conceived but never realised.
This occupation is extremely symbolic, second, because it counterbalances the
shortcomings in the choices for the museum’s displays and interpretation materials.
As deconstructed in the previous paragraphs, the CNHI aimed to present the
positive contributions of immigrants. In effect, it silenced, mummified and stereo-
typed their trajectories, focusing on the ineluctable need and possibility for immi-
grants to become fully integrated within the French society. The occupation was
the perfect opportunity to move away from this cold historicisation and objectifi-
cation of the immigration movement, as the permanent exhibitions attempted to
324 Journal of Social Archaeology 13(3)

do, towards a memorialisation of the immigration phenomena through direct rec-

ollection of the individual trajectories of the occupying illegal workers. Ironically,
this occupation was an opportunity to reveal what the CNHI has attempted to
silence: the lack of homogenisation of immigrants’ trajectories in France who do
not all happily integrate within French society, and the charged and often trau-
matic, unequal treatment of immigrants by the French administration. It was also
an opportunity to reveal the extent of the illegal workers phenomenon, which has
never been covered in the permanent exhibition (the issue of illegal migrants being
briefly mentioned through photos of the Sangatte centre, a space for illegal
migrants managed by the Red Cross).
During the first two months when immigrants were occupying even the public
and exhibition spaces, by day and night, they interacted with both the public and
the press. They insisted on portraying themselves as ‘perfect citizens’ who had been
working (undertaking unskilled and difficult labour nobody else wanted to per-
form) and paying income tax and health insurance (in some cases for decades), but
not having been able to obtain a resident’s permit or decent working conditions
that respect French labour law, despite many attempts. During the occupation,
these migrants did not act, per se, as first person interpreters of the collections, as
they did not relate to some of the artefacts. However, during the first two months
of the occupation, they were able to interact freely with the public of the museum
and to explain their own experience. In doing so, this occupation was an oppor-
tunity to subjectify and realistically represent immigrants, allowing them to express
themselves in the first voice within the symbolic space of the CNHI. It was also an
opportunity for them to express realistically their difficulty in becoming integrated
within French society, an ambition shared by all illegal workers on strike but which
had, up to then, been denied to them. Therefore, the immigrants used the occupa-
tion as a platform to express the complexity of the trajectory of sans-papiers,
hardly represented in the permanent exhibition.
Individual reactions to this monument from the occupying illegal workers, most
of them from former French African colonies, have been revealed through some of
the interviews I have conducted with them. One might have thought they would have
been shocked and upset by the stereotyping sculptures and frescoes of semi-naked
and savage Africans, displayed on the ground floor of the CNHI. However, inter-
estingly, one of the interviewees did not relate at all to these stereotyping and racist
depictions. On the other hand, he separated himself from these frescoes and sculp-
tures because they represented a continent, Africa, which he had left and was trying
so hard not to return to by becoming a legal resident in France. This positioning
echoed the common slogan used for their claims over the two years of the vast
movement of strikes: ‘we work here, we live here, we stay here’. It was explained
to me that these sculptures and frescoes concern those people who had stayed in
Africa but not those migrants who were now working in France. Through these
detachments, this interviewee was strongly positioning himself as equal to French
people and as being as worthy of living in France as them. This stance demonstrates
an internalisation of the discourse of integration and an attempt to correspond to it.
Labadi 325

Nonetheless, other illegal immigrants on strike have established personal con-

nections with the permanent exhibit, despite all its shortcomings. This is the case
for Fousseni Sacko (Cette France-là, 2012), who arrived in France in 2006 from
Mali and has since been employed on construction sites in Paris and its surround-
ings. A representative of the illegal migrants on strike, Sacko has been one of the
most vocal and public figures of the movement. While occupying the CNHI, he
visited its permanent exhibition and found displayed there a photo of his primary
school in Mali with all the schoolchildren, him included, dating from the 1990s
when he was studying there. This school had been financed by Malian immigrants
living in France who were all ‘blue collar’ workers and who had hoped, through
financing this school, to ensure a better life for their children. This photo summar-
ises the struggle of illegal workers and some of the reasons for the occupation of the
CNHI: on the one hand, the objective recognition of immigrants’ importance in
France and elsewhere and, on the other, the rejection and silencing of the actual
and current immigrants and their often complex administrative situations. The
reconnection of Sacko with his photo and his past is a way of solving this contra-
diction and of linking his subjective and silenced present to his historicised, objec-
tified and mummified past.
Interviews I conducted with representatives of human rights associations, who
supported this occupation logistically, revealed that the public welcomed positively
this occupation and the possibilities offered to interact directly with the occupying
migrants. Ironically, during this occupation, the CNHI became the avant-garde
space it was originally designed to be. For instance, a diversity of artists partici-
pated in evening cultural events in the CNHI itself, to support this occupation and
the need for regularisation of the migrants. These different events, purposefully
organised by the different supporting associations, aimed to collect funds to sup-
port the occupation of the CNHI and the wider sans-papiers movement. These
events were popular and successful, as reported to me by representatives of civil
society organisations I interviewed.
But why was this illegal occupation tolerated for so long and what were the
reactions of the staff of the CNHI? Right from the beginning of the occupation, the
directors of the CNHI decided that it would strive to keep this public space open
for the public without discontinuation, and to respect the occupying illegal work-
ers. An agreement was reached between the CGT, the trade union organising this
illegal occupation, and the directors of the CNHI to ensure that the collections and
the building would not be damaged and that members of the public wanting to visit
the permanent collections would not be intimidated. It was also agreed between the
different parties that this exceptional situation and occupation should be ended as
soon as possible, specifically when clearer guidelines were obtained from the
Minister of the Interior on the application of the 18 June 2010 document on the
regularisation of illegal workers. Mid-November 2010, 500 illegal workers received
a receipt, proving that they had submitted a dossier for regularisation and allowing
them to work while the dossier for their regularisation was being assessed. This was
a sign for the directors of the CNHI that the negotiation was working out and they
326 Journal of Social Archaeology 13(3)

therefore asked the movement to leave the museum. However, this was a collective
and not an individual movement and therefore the strikers and the CGT continued
the strike, in an attempt to gain more receipts for dossiers submitted as the first
steps toward obtaining the right to remain on French territory. These opposite
views led to tensions between the directors of the CNHI on the one hand and the
trade union and representatives of the strikers on the other. This increasingly tense
context explains the decision to close the CNHI at night and to break its continu-
ous occupation from 12 December 2010 onward. This was an attempt to make this
occupation more difficult in the hope that it would cease sooner rather than later.
However, according to the Director of the CNHI, these new rules were difficult to
enforce because a number of illegal workers did not have a place to stay and
therefore wanted to sleep in this heritage space and, during the day, wanted to
continue occupying the public and exhibition spaces (Gruson, 2011: 19). As a
result, a joint decision was made by the directors of the CNHI and the CGT to
end the occupation peacefully and without the intervention of police on 28 January
2011. The interviews I conducted with staff of this heritage space all indicated that
this occupation lasted for so long because of the decision of the directors to have as
peaceful an occupation as possible, considered to be the best way to safeguard the
former Palace of the Colonies and the collections.
During the occupation, the staff played the role of facilitator between the
Minister of the Interior and Immigration and the representatives of the illegal
workers. The interviews I conducted revealed that the staff felt forced to play
such a negotiating role to ensure that the occupation would go smoothly and
that their mission to accommodate the public and to safeguard the collections
would not be endangered. Although this was never clearly expressed, it is difficult
not to believe, using the theory of museum friction, that some members of staff
undertook this negotiating role willingly as a perfect opportunity to fulfil the aims
of the CNHI and its overall goal of strengthening social cohesion. Indeed, this
occupation presented the perfect opportunity to overcome the shortcomings of this
heritage space, including its objectification, silencing and stereotyping of migrants.
The official press releases relating to this event reflect this optimism, particularly
the emphasis on the role of the CNHI as facilitator, and on the fact that this
occupation was not considered as conflicting with the main goal of providing
public access to the collections.
In addition, the staff played an active role in recording the occupation through
photographing the illegal migrants and their constant interactions with the CNHI;
a documentary recording the day-to-day collective and individual actions of stri-
kers was also prepared in collaboration with an association called ‘Atelier du
Bruit’. Finally, a number of contemporary artists who supported this occupation
produced artworks, some of which have subsequently been bought by the CNHI.
Whilst it could have been thought that these first person testimonies, photos and
contemporary artefacts would have constituted a new display to complement the
permanent exhibition, this was unfortunately not the case. The period of the occu-
pation has not been mentioned at all in the permanent exhibition, at least as of
Labadi 327

May 2013. The staff I interviewed all explained that it was ‘too early’ to have such
exhibits because this heritage space needed to deal with historicised and dispas-
sionate issues rather than with immediate and conflicted memories. It was felt that
the time was not right to have exhibits and interpretive panels on the occupation
and illegal migrants prepared and displayed straight away.
The illegal occupation of the CNHI presented the perfect opportunity to re-posi-
tion this space from the margin to the centre of the debate on the new forms of
migrations and their legal and human implications, and to fulfil effectively the
museum’s overall goal and aims – in reality, however, this opportunity was not
seized. The occupation was considered as an unfortunate parenthesis in the life of
this heritage institution. No change has yet been made to the permanent exhibition
spaces. Therefore the occupation only led to the temporary, short-term subjectivisa-
tion of illegal migrants and positioning of the CNHI as a key space for strengthening
social cohesion and giving migrants some markers of identity. This has created
different levels of deafening silences: first, of the stereotyping, colonialist iconog-
raphy and narratives; second, of the rich and diverse trajectories of migrants which
do not necessarily fit neatly within the universalist, French model of integration;
and, finally, of the recent usages and adoption of this public space by illegal
migrants. It is obvious that this third silencing and erasure of the occupation of
the CNHI by illegal migrants is motivated by the fear of glorifying this event, with
the associated risk of inciting more illegal uses of this space. These omissions would
tend to confirm the view expressed previously that this heritage space aims to
accommodate a one-dimensional vision of immigrants as those already integrated
within French society and to silence any criticism of this model or any issues experi-
enced in attempting to attain the status of a fully integrated French citizen. This
silencing demonstrates the impossibility of fulfilling the aims and goals of this heri-
tage space. Indeed, whilst it aims to advocate and promote the French integration
model, this space does not recognise the difficulty of becoming part of this model, or
its pitfalls. It does not facilitate the incorporation of immigrants within this system
either. These silences have thus, unfortunately, led to the continued marginalisation
of this space from debates and initiatives on immigrants.

Conclusion
The laudable aims and goals of the CNHI – to positively (re)present immigrants
and their essential contributions to French society, as well as to strengthen social
cohesion – have unfortunately failed. This is due first of all to the confusion
between colonialism and immigration created by the location of the CNHI in the
former Palais des Colonies and the lack of clear criticism of and detachment from
the French colonialist period in the interpretation of this space. Second, several
deafening silences run counter to the objectives of the CNHI, including the unde-
constructed stereotypes of the colonialist period iconography, the lack of emphasis
on immigrants’ individual trajectories and their multifarious contributions to
French intellectual, political and economic life, and the omission of those
328 Journal of Social Archaeology 13(3)

immigrants’ trajectories which do not correspond to the French integration model.

These silences are crucial to maintaining an illusion that the universalist, republican
model of integration works, despite its major failures. The CNHI therefore, despite
its proclaimed inclusive aims and goal, has been used to construct a homogenous
national identity where hybrid identities and the celebration of diversity and multi-
culturalism have been rejected. Besides, an authoritative and objective voice dom-
inates the permanent exhibition, leading to stereotypes and an unbreakable
dichotomy between ‘the immutable French’ and the migrants.
Against this rather grim background, the CNHI was occupied by 500 working
illegal immigrants as a symbolic space of power to speed up their regularisation and
their authorisation to remain legally on French territory. During this four-month
occupation, the aims and goal of the CNHI were fulfilled as it played a central role
of social cohesion through facilitating access to the Minister of the Interior. This
occupation was also the perfect opportunity to move away from the objectification
and silencing of immigrants to their subjectivisation and the presentation of first
person accounts of their trajectories, as narrated in this article.
Despite its significance and symbolism, the silencing of memories of and
thoughts on this occupation within the permanent exhibition itself reflects the
impossibility of the CNHI fulfilling its aims and goal on a daily basis. As of
May 2013, no change had been made to the permanent exhibition, which still
did not engage seriously with individual trajectories and with the issues faced by
contemporary immigrants on a daily basis or to assist with solving these issues. A
deliberate choice was thus made to keep the CNHI unengaged with and at the
margin of the debate on immigrants’ issues and social cohesion.

Acknowledgement
The main version of this article was written when I was a Senior Research Fellow at the
Institute of Advanced Study, Durham University (September 2012). This article, and the
presentations that preceded it, benefited from comments from Dr Lindsay Weiss (Stanford
University) and the participants at the Museum of London’s conference on ‘Museums and
Refugees’ (March 2008).

Note
1. In May 2011, Claude Guéant, then Minister of the Interior, stated that two-thirds of
immigrant children were failing at school, a remark that was then publicly denounced as
erroneous by the main French statistical organisation.

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Author Biography
Sophia Labadi is director of the Centre for Heritage and a lecturer at the University
of Kent, as well as a regular consultant for international organisations on heritage
issues. She has a PhD and a Masters in Cultural Heritage Studies from the Institute
of Archaeology, University College London (UK) and graduated from the Institute
of Political Sciences in Grenoble (France). Since 2001, she has worked for a
number of regional and international organisations. At UNESCO, she worked in
the Secretariat of the 1972 World Heritage Convention and the 2003 Intangible
Cultural Heritage Convention, participated in the strategic planning and drafting
of the 2009 UNESCO World Report on Cultural Diversity and acted as the
Associate Editor of the International Social Science Journal. For her research she
has received a number of scholarships and awards, including a Getty Conservation
Guest Scholarship (2006–2007), the 2008 Cultural Policy Research Award and an
International Senior Fellowship from Durham University in 2012. She was also an
invited fellow at Stanford University in 2011.