Nanterre and its slums: a shared memory

Audio 48:30

Former residents of the vegetable gardens in front of the walls of their city which, in 1961, welcomed the inhabitants of the slums.

It is one of the last transit cities of Nanterre, today doomed to demolition.

© Inès Edel-Garcia

By: Céline Develay Mazurelle Follow

3 min

While an official commemoration awaited around the massacre of October 17, 1961 has just taken place in France, we suggest that you leave to the west of Paris, in the Hauts-de-Seine prefecture, which has been strongly marked. by these tragic and long ignored events.

For a long time, Nanterre has been shaped by immigration, Algerian in particular, except that during the Thirty Glorious Years, in Nanterre as elsewhere, the place that was given to immigrant workers, called to rebuild France after the war, was mostly called "slums".

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In Nanterre alone, there were a dozen slums. There, in the shade of the new towers of the La Défense business district and the factory chimneys then in search of cheap labor, the dreams of thousands of immigrants, often from the Maghreb, were stranded on wasteland, in the muddy bays of these cities of misfortune, made of wood and metal. Until the early 1970s, in the slums of Nanterre, 14,000 people went to invent a life there, often out of sight, on the edge of cities and our consciences. 

Today, these places have disappeared but the memory of the shanty towns has marked the image of this city, once a stronghold of Algerian immigration which, under the impetus of the Greater Paris projects, is now getting a new look, or even a clean place.

Fearing that this memory will be erased, some Nanterriens tirelessly seek to share it and make it exist in the public space, on the street.

By following them in the city, they also remind us of the need to write and build a common history between Algeria and France. 

In the company of associative actors and slum children, all very attached to Nanterre, or on a visit with the Nanterre Historical Society, follow us on the paths of a living, sensitive and popular memory. 

A report by Inès Edel-Garcia initially broadcast in November 2020.

Find out more:

To read :

- "

", by Abdelmalek Sayad.

Autrement editions, 1995

- “

” by Mehdi Charef, Hors d'Attachment Editions, 2019

- "

", by Monique Hervo.

Editions Threshold 2001

- “

”, by Mehdi Charef.

Out of reach editions, 2020

- “

”, by Brahim Benaïcha.

Desclée de Brouwer editions, 1999

- "

", by Laurent Maffre.

Actes Sud BD / Arte Éditions, 2012

- “

”, by Victor Collet.

Agone editions, 2019

- “

”, by Serge Santelli and Isabelle Herpin.

Nanterre Historical Society, 2020.

To have :

- In Nanterre, meet, as soon as possible, bookstores passionate about

, a bookstore open in 2020 in the district of the Provinces Françaises, in front of the university.

- Take the walk along the Parc du Chemin de l'Ile.

A permanent exhibition of photos taken by Serge Santelli in 1968 on the shanty towns of the rue des Prés, is hung on the gates of the Park.

- For Heritage Days, the

Historical

organizes historical tours of the city. 

-

, photojournalist from Nanterre, who for years documented the slums of Nanterre with his camera.

Residents come to collect their mail from letter boxes in the slum of Nanterre.

© UPI / AFP

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