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In the cities of the Maghreb, informal settlements are proving to be a privileged observatory of the relations between institutional policies and social dynamics. The focus here is put on the subtle links between the processes of marginalization and informalization and forms of domination of the populations concerned. The segregation and injustice that characterize the legalization policy undertaken by the State in the late 1980s had disgruntled the aspirations of empowerment and affirmation of the urbanity of the inhabitants of Cherarba. The government lost its legitimacy among residents and the neighborhood then passed into the hands of radical Islamist opposition who had to turn to informal channels to finance its activities. People’s expectations and hopes of change this time encountered aggressive Islamist authoritarianism and the situation passed from a symbolic kind of violence to deadly violence that was probably the cause of the change in position of a large part of the population: a change in position and disaffection which she paid for by a massacre. The suppression of terrorism and the “pacification” that followed were accompanied by a desire of the government to reconquer the territory, through the revival of housing programs and development of several amenities. Residents of the area want only one thing: turn the page of the Civil War and delete the terrorist image of Cherarba. The government’s relations with the populations of informal settlements are forged with a form of government whose purpose is primarily political, which even more strongly raises the democratic question, especially in the current context of Arab countries.