Algeria

L’analyse des phénomènes migratoires en Algérie à travers le genre est à la fois problématique et indispensable. Elle est problématique en raison du déficit de connaissances au sujet de l’émigration des femmes, que les rares travaux sur l’émigration familiale ne sauraient combler. En effet, ni les statistiques algériennes sur l’émigration, ni les politiques et les dispositifs institutionnels en matière d’émigration et d’installation dans les pays d’accueil ne tiennent compte des femmes en tant que telles. De même, le statut légal des femmes immigrées en Algérie est le même que celui des hommes : ces dernières sont considérées comme des « résidents étrangers » ou des « migrants irréguliers ». L’analyse « genrée » des phénomènes migratoires en Algérie est donc indispensable, en raison, particulièrement, des évolutions structurelles actuelles de l’émigration algérienne et de la pérennisation de la présence immigrée en Algérie. / A gender-based analysis of migration in Algeria is both complex and indispensable. It is complex because, notwithstanding a few studies dealing with family migration, we know so little about the migration of Algerian women. Indeed, neither the data, nor the policies and the institutional frameworks touching on migration from Algeria, nor, for that matter, integration in the host countries consider women as such. Furthermore, the legal status of women migrants in Algeria is the same as that of any other foreign nationals : in other words, they are viewed as “foreign residents” or “irregular migrants”. Therefore, a gender-based approach for migrations is indispensable, at a time of structural change in the patterns of migration from and to Algeria.

Britain is not an obvious country to which Algerians migrate, although the crisis of the Algerian civil war in the 1990s was to make it an alternative to continental Europe, especially France. From 45 in 1991, asylum applications peaked in 1995 at 1,865 persons and then ran at a consistently high level up to 2002. They are now in steep decline. Return of Algerian asylum-seekers has not followed a similar pattern, however, and many Algerians in Britain are illegally here. In fact, they have ranged between 85 (1998) and 220 (2005) a year, with no figures being available for 1999 and 2000. The British government admits that the efficacy of its return policy has been very limited, although domestic pressure has led to a much more concerted effort to return failed asylum seekers in recent years. However, the bare statistics must be seen against the growth of British security policies since 2001 and particularly since 2005. Fears of terrorism in Britain linked to the Algerian community here have led to a disproportionate arrest rate amongst Algerians, particularly in the ricin trial, the indefinite detention of Algerians on suspicion of involvement in terrorism without trial, agreements about mutual extradition, memoranda of understanding over the return of Algerians allegedly involved in terrorist activities and much closer cooperation between British and Algerian security services. This securitisation process has made the return of Algerians to Algeria much more problematic and has brought into question the British government’s commitment to its obligations within the European Union.

Résumé La question de la migration hautement qualifiée en Algérie mérite d’être appréhendée sous plusieurs angles. Le premier est la situation objective de développement économique et culturel atteint par l’Algérie, 50 ans après son indépendance. Les retards scientifiques, techniques et culturels accumulés (y compris du fait de la généralisation de l’arabisation) expliquent largement le départ du fleuron de l’intelligentsia algérienne entre 1975 et 2009. La deuxième est la dévalorisation du statut symbolique et matériel des cadres, à partir de 1984 jusqu’à ce jour, qui a contraint nombre d’entre eux à s’expatrier. La troisième est l’absence de sollicitude concrète des pouvoirs publics algériens à l’égard de la communauté nationale à l’étranger. Il existe désormais deux catégories d’Algériens hautement qualifiés expatriés. Celle qui exclut toute participation avec l’Algérie, lui préférant le Maroc, la Tunisie ou les pays arabes du Golfe pour des raisons essentiellement dues aux incertitudes et aux contradictions de la politique algérienne à l’égard de la communauté nationale installée à l’étranger. Et il y a celle qui appelle de ses vœux l’institution de relations régulières avec le pays d’origine, pour autant qu’elle ait exactement le même statut que les experts et coopérants étrangers sollicités par les institutions algériennes ; autrement dit, il est exclu que cette communauté s’investisse moralement, a fortiori politiquement, dans les politiques publiques que le gouvernement dit vouloir mettre en place. Il serait vain de spéculer sur une participation effective de la diaspora algérienne à l’effort de redressement de l’Algérie sur les plans économique, culturel et scientifique aussi longtemps que l’Algérie sera un pays très faiblement attractif pour les investissements étrangers. Ce n’est que du jour où l’Algérie deviendra une terre d’accueil des investissements étrangers, qu’elle pourra solliciter dans des conditions optimales la diaspora nationale. Abstract The issue of highly qualified migration in Algeria ought to be treated from three points of view. The first one concerns the objective situation of development reached by Algeria, 50 years after its independence. All the delays accumulated in many fields, such as scientific, technical and cultural domains (among them the arabisation’s generalization), largely explain the departure of Algerian intelligentsia’s fleuron between 1975 and 2008. The second one is the depreciation of symbolic and material statute of all the managerial staff from 1984 till today, which constrains many of them to expatriation. The third one is the absence of concrete solicitude from Algerian authorities towards national community established abroad. Henceforth, there are two categories of Algerian expatriates among highly qualified migration established abroad. One category excludes any participation with its country of origin, and prefers to be in Morocco, Tunisia and some other Arabic countries for reasons due to all the uncertainties and contradictions of Algerian Policy towards Algerian residents abroad. Another category wishes to participate to national scientific projects, under the condition to benefit from the same statute as the statute delivered to foreign experts who regularly intervene in Algeria. In other words, this kind of migration does not want to be involved in Algerian public policies that the government pretends to set up. It would be unavailing to expect the national community’s participation to Algeria’s economic recovery, as long as Algeria remains weakly attractive for foreign investments. Algeria will be able to attract its diaspora in optimal conditions when it becomes an attractive territory for foreign investors.

MIREM stands for MIgration de REtour au Maghreb. This collective research programme was launched in December 2005 and ended in December 2008. Today, MIREM and its deliverables (publications, statistics and field surveys on return migrants, conferences and seminars) are part of the RDP. Focusing on returnees’ aspirations, the core deliverable of the MIREM project is a comprehensive comparative database based on 992 interviews made with return migrants to Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. As the collected data were gradually processed and analysed, it became clear that the distinction between migrants who decided on their own initiative to return to their country of origin and those who were compelled to do so constituted one key variable explaining returnees’ prospects of socio-professional reintegration back home. The main objective of the MIREM project lies in taking into better consideration the challenges linked to return migration as well as its impact on development. A whole set of analytical tools have been produced to shed light on the sociodemographic characteristics, conditions and patterns of reintegration of return migrants to the Maghreb countries (Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia). The project collected both quantitative and qualitative data in selected countries or regions.

This paper uses the recent survey carried out in the framework of the MIREM project on returnees to Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia and studies the duration of emigration and the labour force status upon returning. The results suggest that age and the year of emigration play a central role in the migration decision, but they do not support the hypothesis that the duration of migration is determined by the desired labour market status upon returning home.

This report covers migration in 18 EU neighbouring countries, including: Algeria; Armenia; Azerbaijan; Belarus; Egypt; Georgia; Jordan; Lebanon; Libya; Mauritania; Moldova; Morocco; Palestine; Russia; Syria; Tunisia; Turkey and Ukraine. Each country report provides the most recent update on the demographic, legal, and socio-political aspects of both inward and outward migration stocks and flows.

This project seeks to bring a new perspective to understanding state construction in Algeria after independence. Through a history of the first generations of Algerians who went to university in the 1960s and 1970s, it explores the intersections between political and institutional transformations and social, cultural and economic processes. These processes include increasing literacy, rural to urban migration, migration to study abroad and changes in gender relations and family structures. Bringing together concepts and methodologies from across a number of humanities and social science disciplines, the project will produce a case study setting out new approaches to studying state-building as a dynamic process which takes place at different levels of power (transnational, national and local) and which both shapes, and is shaped by, individual agency and wider processes. The goal is for this approach to be applicable to a range of other post-colonial contexts, challenging teleological readings of post-independence histories and homogenising understandings of post-independence states. The project is to be carried out in Algeria, France and the UK, with the researcher working with leading experts in the field in each of these countries to create a transnational, interdisciplinary network exploring the central research themes. Through extensive interviewing of former students, this project will create a new body of sources for researchers, which will also, with informants’ consent, be made accessible online. Public engagement is integral to the research design and process of data collection as well as dissemination, with Algerian students from the 1960s and 1970s invited to participate in group testimony sessions, alongside the wider public, throughout the project.

La migration hautement qualifiée suscite l’intérêt aussi bien des responsables gouvernementaux et étatiques, des partis politiques que de la société civile, des médias et des chercheurs. Malgré cet intérêt, la lecture des textes et documents disponibles sur cette question permet de relever que les dispositifs expérimentés pour gérer cette migration n’ont pas donné des résultats à la mesure des objectifs escomptés. Highly skilled migration has triggered the interest of many stakeholders in Algeria: governmental decision makers, political parties, civil society actors, the media and researchers. Despite this interest, the analysis of texts and data available on this issue led the author to infer that institutionalised channels and plans that manage this form of migration have been unable to meet expected objectives.

The objectives of the Study are two-fold: To analyze the key labour market determinants of migration flows from selected Arab Mediterranean Countries (Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia and the Occupied Palestinian Territories), with a particular emphasis on demographic pressures, wage differentials and relative income disparities with the EU, employment policies, labour market flexibility and unemployment rates; this analysis includes the impact of migration on the labour markets of Arab Mediterranean Country (AMCs) labour markets; To propose a series of specific recommendations to improve the design of the EU’s migration policies towards AMCs and policy options available to them for the management of mismatches between labour supply and demand.

La migration hautement qualifiée suscite l’intérêt aussi bien des responsables gouvernementaux et étatiques, des partis politiques que de la société civile, des médias et des chercheurs. Malgré cet intérêt, la lecture des textes et documents disponibles sur cette question permet de relever que les dispositifs expérimentés pour gérer cette migration n’ont pas donné des résultats à la mesure des objectifs escomptés. Highly skilled migration has triggered the interest of many stakeholders in Algeria: governmental decision makers, political parties, civil society actors, the media and researchers. Despite this interest, the analysis of texts and data available on this issue led the author to infer that institutionalised channels and plans that manage this form of migration have been unable to meet expected objectives.

Au cours de la décennie ’90, l’Algérie faisait partie des dix pays ayant connu les plus forts taux d’émigration des compétences au monde. Aujourd’hui, même si toute la documentation statistique nécessaire fait défaut, la question du brain drain et du rôle de l’émigration dans le développement du pays sont des sujets bien présents dans le débat public. Ce papier contribue à alimenter ce débat à plusieurs niveaux. Tout d’abord, il propose une présentation systématique du mouvement des compétences algériennes et de son évolution. Par ailleurs, il passe en revue certains facteurs susceptibles d’expliquer l’évolution du brain drain en Algérie ; une décomposition originale des causes du brain drain a également été effectuée afin de mettre en exergue la contribution de la pression migratoire et celle de la sélection positive à l’augmentation de l’émigration des compétences sur la période récente. Enfin, la note analytique aborde les conséquences de l’émigration des compétences sur la croissance économique de l’Algérie. In the 1990s, Algeria ranked among the top 10 countries in terms of its highly- skilled emigration rate. Today, despite insufficient statistical documentation, the brain-drain issue and the role of emigration in the development of the country are both much debated. This paper aims to contribute to this debate at several levels of analysis. First, we present the recent evolution of Algerian brain drain highlighting the role of destination countries. Moreover, an attempt to understand the causes of this phenomenon is provided through an original analysis of brain-drain push-factors, which helps individuate the relative contribution of 1) migratory pressure and 2) positive selection in increasing highly-skilled emigration flows. Finally, emphasis is put on the consequences of brain drain for economic growth in Algeria.

The main objective of this Study is to analyze the key labour market determinants of migration flows from selected Arab Mediterranean Countries (Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia and the Occupied Palestinian Territories) and the impact of outward migration on the labour markets of Arab Mediterranean Countries (AMCs). This has been done mainly on the basis of the evidence and analysis produced by the two Thematic Background Papers and the 8 National Background Papers commissioned for the Study. In turn, the National Background Papers are deliberately based on national statistical data sources: this makes comparability less straightforward, but has the merit of using original data available at the local level, where they are collected and generated.