Algeria

Sharper Divisions of Class Structure

During the French colonial era, however, the Berber society developed the rudiments of class differentiation, and this class structure has become more pronounced since independence. Overcrowding in the cities broke up ethnic quarters and weakened families. That and the civil war promoted individualization of women and the young. Displaced people in the millions weakened tribal ties and developed personal networks based on interests. The French imposed a new set of Eurocentric networks on the Algerian networks, superseding merchants and professionals and expropriating rural lands, forcing a migration of unskilled labor to the cities, disrupting traditional networks. The migrants moved beyond Algeria to France by the 1950s.

Many migrated to France. The Arab-Berbers were the first colonial Algerians to migrate to Europe in sizeable numbers. They were mostly male, uprooted by the European destruction of traditional Algerian peasant social and cultural structures and labor migration patterns. Relocation as subjects of the empire meant adaptation to different social cultural and linguistic patterns, but Algerians worked in mining, manufacture, and heavy industry, sending every spare centime in remittances to their poor families in Algeria. Life in exile was difficult. After World War II, Algerians were citizens, and the migrants included more Arabs than Kabyle-Berbers. The Kabyle of the mountains were agriculturalists and herdsmen.

These new migrants had less-well-established networks and migrated as families rather than as individuals. They more often relocated permanently, even though they were the lowest class, beginning their tenure in France in shantytowns. These diasporans were a strong factor in the increased Algerian unrest that led to the war for independence. The regime of Houari Boumediene (1932–78) emphasized Islamic socialism, consistent with the history of egalitarianism. State capitalism, however, required a technical elite, and by the late 1970s, there was an indigenous overlay of administrators, managers, and military under the political leadership. The overlay was Western and modernizing and weakened further traditional subordinate status for women and local and family social networks. Beneath the elite was a middle class of state workers, professionals, artisans, and businesspeople; lower yet was a working class, and on the bottom were the urban poor.

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