La mémoire de l’immigration comme politique sociale ?

This article deals with the tensions provoked, in a small tourist-oriented city of the French Riviera back country, by a memorial project undertaken by an association seeking to establish and publicize a history of local immigration from countries of the Maghreb. The investigation shows what these tensions owe to the clash of three sources of remembrance : one celebrating the patrimonial past of a locality finding therein a resource for fabricating a touristic image founded on “authenticity” ; another, that of the Vence “immigrants”, whose contribution to the city’s history has never been publicly recognized ; and, finally, that of the association itself which, on this occasion, is confronted with its own past as a militant association, having become over time a partner of local authorities in the implementation of social policies