« La baraque [les camps], on y était ! » Faire la preuve administrative de son statut d’enfant de harki

Abstract

Since the beginning of 2019, descendants of harkis have been eligible for financial assistance, for having stayed in camps and forestage hamlets after the repatriation of 1962. This article looks at the production and appropriation of an administrative category, that of the child of a harki who has passed through the camps, within the framework of a public action program aimed at repairing prejudices linked to the colonial past. It is based on a survey of observations and interviews conducted in the National Office for Veterans and Victims of War (ONAC-VG) and its recipients who are children of harkis. The article begins by tracing the genesis of the Solidarity Fund for the children of harkis, in a judicial and memorial context that, since the end of the 2010s, has associated the experience of repatriation and the camps with the notion of prejudice. While the integration policies conducted since the 1980s had previously concerned all sons and daughters of former auxiliaries, the introduction of a criterion of at least 90 days’ stay in the camps led to a redefinition of the boundaries of the category of recipients formed by the children of harkis. For the administration, the design of the Solidarity Fund was accompanied by the negotiated production of a historical and technical discourse on the history of the camps and hamlets. It was a matter of determining which of the many sites that had housed harki families had been subject to exceptional administrative management, giving rise to a right to compensation. The administration also defines a system of self-referential proof system, in which the children of harkis attest to their eligibility for the program with the help of administrative documents from their past administrative care. The second part of the article examines the way in which the children of harkis involved in administrative procedures are recognized as entitled to financial aid. The possibility of converting their social and historical belonging to the group into an administrative status attached to resources implies overcoming certain cognitive and symbolic obstacles. The children of harkis must first learn of the existence of aid, generally through better informed members of the group who, through repeated contacts with the administrations, have become relays for public action. Identifying with the category of public concerned by the system generates symbolic costs, particularly linked to the stigma of assistance and the administrative burden of filling out the application. To prove their eligibility, applicants for the program then try to find documents relating to the colonial and post-colonial period, as proof of membership of the group. Although these old documents are a priori difficult to obtain, the meticulous conservation practices of the parents and the administrative skills acquired by certain members of the siblings, generally the eldest daughters, most often enable the children of harkis to comply with the demands of the administration. Finally, the administration's civil servants, especially when they establish personalized relations with the claimants, frequently play a role in facilitating administrative procedures.

Keywords

• France
• reparation
• harkis camps
• children of harkis
• administrative procedures