Blanc-Chaléard,

A National Center for Immigration History - 2006.


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Since the 1980s, the question of immigration has been posed concerning the rejection and exclusion of a part of French inhabitants, undermining the future of the society. Reversing the image of immigration by dedicating a space as a national memory place to immigrants in the construction of contemporary France is the project of the national center of immigration history. This ambitious project aims at joining a prestigious museum, a place where history is recounted, with a living place for memory and culture; it is an unloved project: put off for fifteen years, it is now taking shape in a seriously tense context concerned with the past and the present of migrations; the building to house it at the Porte Dorée is also contested, which hurts its symbolic dimension. The stakes are intact; it remains urgent to change the look on tomorrow’s France; the collective will to give it form is still up in the air.