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The impact of forced migrants’ political preferences in receiving areas:
Evidence from the French Algerians’ repatriation
Camille Remigereau∗
May 5, 2022
Abstract
I show that forced migrants transform the political landscape in receiving areas. On July 3, 1962
Algeria became independent after more than a hundred years under French colonial rule. Fearing
for their safety, the French Algerian population fled the country massively and suddenly that same
year. Using a unique dataset stretching from 1956 to 2017, I exploit the uneven distribution of the
repatriates from Algeria across electoral districts in France to measure their impact on political
behaviors. I instrument the share of repatriates using the 1954 distribution of French from Algeria
in mainland France. I show that the districts that received more repatriates shifted towards the
far-right from 1962 until 2002. The French far-right (a staunch supporter of French Algeria) has
attracted a part of the repatriates’ community who felt betrayed by the mainstream parties for
having abandoned French Algeria. Later, the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the far-right resonated
with a share of the repatriates who were harboring resentment towards Algerian immigrants. Yet,
the French far-right has become more and more popular in the last decade and the impact of the
repatriation shock on far-right vote shares weakened significantly from 2007 until 2017. Neverthe-
less, the shift away from the moderate left in high-inflow districts that started in the mid-1980s, has
persisted until 2017. Using survey data, I show that political preferences, especially the dislike for
the left, are transmitted from the repatriates to their children. Finally, I find that other voters (i.e.
non-repatriate) in high-inflow regions appear to have politically shifted to the right more strongly
than in low-inflow regions between 1956 and 2007. My results suggest that long-lasting political
behaviors differ across communities within a country. Accounting for this heterogeneity is critical
when studying political outcomes.
Keywords: forced migration, political economy, identity, extremism, voting, France
Acknowledgments: I am extremely grateful to Alexandra Spitz-Oener for her invaluable advice and guidance
throughout this project. I would also like to thank Sascha O. Becker, Hannah Liepmann, Ole Monscheuer, Michelle
Hansch, Cevat Giray Aksoy for their thoughtful comments and suggestions. Finally, I express gratitude to Thierry
Couderc at the library of the French Statistical Office (Bibliothèque de l’Insee Alain Desrosières) as well as Odile
Gaultier-Voituriez at Sciences-Po.
∗
Humboldt-University of Berlin. Email: remigeca@hu-berlin.de
1 Introduction
In 2020, the UN Refugee Agency estimated that there were around 21 million refugees worldwide
representing a 70% increase in twenty years (UNHCR, 2021, 2001). Refugees bear the trauma of the
violence they fled but also the painful memory of leaving their possessions, their homes and their lives
behind. Displacement has a long-lasting impact on the preferences (Becker et al., 2020), behaviors
(Nunn and Wantchekon, 2011) and attitudes (Dinas et al., 2021; Lupu and Peisakhin, 2017) of refugees
and their descendants.
For many displaced individuals returning home is prevented by enduring violence, persecutions, cli-
mate disasters, etc. In 2018, only 3% of refugees returned in their home country (UNHCR, 2018).
Mossaad et al. (2018) find that refugees acquire citizenship faster than other lawful permanent resi-
dents in the US. As refugees become citizens, it is crucial to understand how their political preferences
might affect the country they settle in. Identifying the long-lasting political preferences of forced
migrants can help explain past and current voting behaviors. Yet, little is known on the long-term
political change brought by forced migrants. In this paper, I study the impact of the political pref-
erences of forced migrants on the political outcomes in the regions they settled in, both in the short
and the long-term.
The return migrations following the dismantlement of the French colonial empire provides a unique
historical setting to examine the political impact of forced migrants on receiving areas. On July 3,
1962 and after more than a 100 years under French rule, Algeria became independent.1 Consequently,
about 800,000 of French installed in Algeria fled to mainland France. Fifty years later, the French from
Algeria and their descendants represented 7% of the French electorate, i.e. 3.2 million potential voters
in the presidential election (IFOP, 2014).2 A 2002 ”exit polls” survey revealed that 30% of French
from Algeria voted for far-right candidates in the first round of the presidential election, i.e. around
10 points over the national far-right vote share (IFOP, 2014). The French far-right pandered to the
French Algerian electorate fueling their resentment of the mainstream political parties for renouncing
to French Algeria and their animosity towards Algerian immigrants (e.g. Stora, 1997; Cohen, 1980;
Stora, 1999; Comtat, 2009). While researchers have mainly concentrated on explaining the relation-
ship between the repatriates and the far-right, this paper aims at measuring and understanding the
political impact of the repatriates in receiving areas.
I use a unique dataset consisting of the 1962 and 1968 French censuses data and electoral data from
1956 until 2017 from the Centre de données socio-politiques de Sciences Po (CDSP) and the French
Interior Ministry. To maximise the number of observations, I merge census and electoral data at the
1
French President Charles De Gaulle pronounced Algeria an independent country on July 3. Algerian leaders declared
July 5 to be Algeria’s Independence Day.
2
Among the French population registered on the electoral lists, there were 1.8% of people who define themselves as
pied-noir, i.e. French from Algeria, as of 2012. Descendants of the French Algerians, i.e. individuals who declared having
at least one French Algerian parent or grandparent, represented another 5.2% of the population registered to vote.
1smallest level possible, i.e. the electoral district level. Thus, I observe 371 electoral districts over 61
years. I exploit the uneven distribution of the repatriates from Algeria across electoral districts and
pre-shock electoral data (6 and 4 years before the exodus) to estimate their impact on voting out-
comes. I also implement an instrumental variable strategy to account for the endogenous settlement
decisions of the repatriates. Similarly to Edo (2020), I exploit the distribution of French from Algeria
in mainland France in 1954, i.e. 8 years before the repatriation shock.
I find that the far-right vote shares were significantly higher in districts with high shares of repatriates
for both parliamentary and presidential elections from 1965 until 2002. This shift towards the far-right
was accompanied by a strong decline in moderate left-wing voting that started in the mid-1980s and
has persisted until 2017. The higher far-right vote shares in high-inflow districts right after the repatri-
ation shock (1965 - 1981) is in line with earlier findings in the literature on French Algerian repatriates.
The renouncement to French Algeria by the mainstream parties, especially the conservative party of
president Charles De Gaulle, was seen as a failure and a betrayal by the repatriate community (e.g.
Stora, 1997; Cohen, 1980; Stora, 1999; Comtat, 2009). The far-right as a staunch supporter of French
Algeria was the only political alternative for many repatriates. As time passed, the far-right fierce
anti-immigrant rhetoric touched a nerve for a part of the repatriate community who resented Alge-
rian immigrants particularly (e.g. Stora, 1999; Comtat, 2009). Using French censuses from 1962 until
2017, I show that the far-right voting in the 1980s is aggravated by post-shock Algerian immigration
in high-inflow districts (1986 - 2002). As the far-right has become more and more popular in the last
10 years, the impact of the repatriation shock on far-right voting decreased especially in presidential
elections (2007 - 2017). Yet, in 2022, far-right pundit and presidential candidate Éric Zemmour fared
significantly better in districts that welcomed higher numbers of repatriates from Algeria back in 1962.
While Marine Le Pen, the candidate of the largest French far-right party (National Rally), focused on
social issues, Mr Zemmour campaigned on promises of a hard-line approach to immigration, Islam and
security. Finally, I show that the left-wing vote shares were significantly lower in high-inflow districts
from the mid-1980’s until 2017.
I further implement a series of robustness tests. My results are unchanged by the inclusion of regional
dummies interacted with time dummies in the main specification, excluding the possibility of unob-
served shocks at the regional level influencing political outcomes. Using French censuses from 1962
until 2017, I show that my results are also robust to controlling for subsequent migration shocks in
high-inflow districts. Moreover, I can exclude unemployment shocks in districts with high shares of
repatriates as another alternative explanation. Even though the repatriation shock increased native
unemployment at first (Hunt, 1992; Edo, 2020), the repatriation shock was not positively correlated
with unemployment after the 1970s. I find that French Algerians who migrated before 1962 tended
to move to high-inflow districts. My results are robust to including them as part of the repatriation
shock. Finally, I provide evidence that my results are mostly driven by the repatriates themselves. In
2the short-term, voters driven by anti-repatriates sentiments would not have supported the far-right
because it was widely recognized as promoting the political demands of the repatriates. Using a 1970
survey, I show that those opposing financial aid or reparations for the repatriates were on the left of
the political scale. Using unique 1954 census data, I find that unemployment did not positively impact
far-right vote shares in 1956 and 1958. This suggests that the short-term rise in native unemployment
following the repatriation shock did not drive the increase in far-right vote shares in the 1960s and
early 1970s.
I further use the the Trajectory and Origin Survey (TeO) from 2007 to study the mechanism behind
the persistent impact of the repatriates on political outcomes. I find direct evidence of the transmis-
sion of political preferences from the repatriates to a specific group of mainland natives: their children.
Controlling for individual and parental characteristics, I find that the children of repatriates are, on
average, 7.79 percentage points (pp) less likely to position themselves on the left of the political scale
than the children of mainland natives. The transmission of the dislike for left parties from one gen-
eration to the other helps to explain the persistent lower left-wing vote share in high-inflow districts.
The question of the long-term impact of the repatriates on the political preferences of natives cannot
be precisely answered with current data. This is mainly due to the fact that votes of natives and
repatriates are not distinguishable in the electoral data. Nevertheless, using the unique information
provided by the TeO, I can show that non-repatriate voters (i.e. neither repatriate themselves nor
children of repatriates) appeared to have moved to the right of the political scale in high-inflows areas.
In this paper, I document a case of political change brought by migrants rather than political reaction
to the migrants; thus contributing to an emerging literature (e.g. Chevalier et al., 2018; Miho et al.,
2019; Calderon et al., 2021). While some study displaced individuals that were politically active
before migrating (e.g. Ochsner and Roesel, 2020; Dippel and Heblich, 2021), this paper observes a
broader group of forced migrants. Few recent studies have documented the increase in far-right voting
in areas that welcomed German expellees from Eastern Territories after WWII (Menon, 2020) and
French Algerian repatriates (Cefalà, 2021). The latter analyses the far-right strategy to pander to
the repatriates’ community, while this paper investigates the political legacy of forced displacement
across generations of French Algerians. Studying the political impact of the repatriation shock at
the département level, the author finds higher far-right vote shares in high-inflow départements in the
short-term (data from 1962 to 1974) and long-term (data from 1982 to 2012).3 Those results are in line
with my findings. Moreover, the two pre-shock electoral data (1956 and 1958) allow me to account for
both time and district fixed effects in the main specification. Aside from Ochsner and Roesel (2020),
other papers have, however, not directly identified the transmissions of political preferences from the
3
The administrative divisions of France is as follows: regions (22 in mainland France up to 2015; 13 from 2015
on), départements (90 until 1968: 96 from 1968 on), cantons (3,883 up to 2015; 1,995 from 2015 on), commune or
municipalities (34,836 as of 2021). The electoral districts circonscriptions électorales is below the département level and,
in some cases, below the canton and commune level. As of 2021, there were 539 electoral districts.
3forced migrants to their offspring.4 I compare the political preferences of the repatriates’ children to
the preferences of similar children of natives adding to the literature on the intergenerational transmis-
sion of political preferences (e.g. Avdeenko and Siedler, 2017; Lupu and Peisakhin, 2017). By doing so,
I identify a potential mechanism behind the persistent political difficulties faced by the moderate left
in high-inflow districts. Finally, my results indicate that non-repatriates (i.e. voters who are neither
French Algerians, nor children of French Algerians) in high-inflow districts have moved towards the
right of the political scale. This is in line with the findings by Miho et al. (2019), who show that
gender norms diffused from ethnic Germans and Chechens deportees to the local population in the
USSR.
I also contribute to the literature on the drivers of far-right voting. The economic literature has been
investigating how immigration (e.g. Halla et al., 2017; Edo et al., 2019; Dustmann et al., 2019; Otto
and Steinhardt, 2014) and economic distress (e.g. Malgouyres, 2017; Colantone and Stanig, 2019; Au-
tor et al., 2020; Dehdari, 2022) have activated far-right voting in developed economies. Similarly to
Cantoni et al. (2019), I investigate the historical roots of far-right voting. I further link the experience
of forced migration in the decolonisation context with the preference for the far-right.
Others have used this specific migration shock in their analyses as well. The unexpected repatriation
of the French from Algeria meant a sudden increase of the labor force. Hunt (1992) and Edo (2020)
have investigated its impact on the labor market outcomes of the natives and find negative effect on
unemployment in the short-term. This paper adds to the literature on the repatriates from Algeria,
their integration in and their impact on the French society (e.g. Baillet, 1975a,b; Couto, 2013, 2014;
Veugelers et al., 2015). I supplement those studies by quantifying the political impact of the repatri-
ates in the regions that welcomed them. More generally, this study is part of the literature on the
consequences of forced migration (see Becker and Ferrara (2019) and Becker (2022) for a review).
The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 explains the historical background. Section 3 describes
the data and presents the empirical framework. Section 4 includes the analyses and results. Section 5
provides sensitivity analyses and robustness checks. Section 6 presents the study of the mechanisms
of the diffusion of political preferences from the repatriates to their children and to other voters. I
conclude in Section 7.
4
Ochsner and Roesel (2020) find evidence of intergenerational transmission of political preferences from Austrian Nazis
to younger generations. Thanks to Phonebook entries from 1942, the authors use the geographic origin of surnames of
far-right party members to show that the Nazis who fled the Soviet Zones pass on their political preferences to their
offsprings. However, their findings are based on political extremists, while this paper observe a broader group of migrants.
Furthermore, I able to definitely identify the children of repatriates in a survey.
42 Historical Background
2.1 French Algeria and the Algerian Independence War
Following the French colonisation of Algeria in the 19th century, European colonizers settled in the
new territory. Yet far from being a melting pot the Algerian society was made up of juxtaposed
communities. The colonial society fostered institutional racism (Stora, 1997).
Algerian claims for equality began to emerge at the beginning of the 20th century. As the French ad-
ministration denied the colonized population the full rights of French citizenship, the focus of Algerian
nationalists changed from demanding equal rights in the French society to fighting for Algerian inde-
pendence. The decline of Europe in the world, which began in 1919, further encouraged the Algerian
population to claim their right to self-governance (Nouschi, 1962). Until 1944, indigenous Algerians
could not vote or be elected in local or national elections French elections in spite of their French
nationality.5 After World War II, all indigenous Algerians were finally given the French citizenship
and thus the right to vote (Law of September 20, 1947).6 Still Europeans and indigenous Algerians
were equal only in theory. To limit the power of the local population, the French citizens living in
Algeria were divided between two electoral colleges with the same number of representatives. The
first college was made mostly of around 510,000 French Algerians and some high-ranked indigenous
Algerians, while approximately 1,500,000 voters of indigenous Algerians descent composed the second
college (Nouschi, 1962). The Algerian War of Independence officially started on November 1, 1954
in what became known as the Red All-Saints’ Day (Toussaint Rouge). On that day, the Algerian
nationalists of the National Liberation Front (FLN) attacked military and civilian targets throughout
Algeria. The conflict that ensued was characterized by guerrilla warfare, maquis fighting, and the use
of torture.
As the Algerian conflict intensified, the government in Paris weakened. As Pierre Pflimlin, a sup-
porter of negotiations with the Algerian nationalists, was appointed as French Prime Minister, an
insurrectionist committee was set up on May 13, 1958 in Algiers. To avoid a larger political crisis,
president René Coty named Charles De Gaulle to head a government of national union, invested with
5
From June 26, 1889 until July 3, 1961, the child born in Algeria of a parent himself born in Algeria was French at
birth.
6
Indigenous Algerians (français musulmans) and French Algerians of European descent did not have the same status
under colonial law. The former were considered French citizens under local law, while the latter were common law
citizen. At the Algerian independence, indigenous Algerians (French citizens under local law) became Algerians and lost
the French nationality. French Algerians of European descent, including Algerian Jews, kept their French nationality. I
will refer to the Algerians of North African descent as indigenous Algerians. The French Algerians of European descent
are sometimes referred to as pieds-noirs. However, the term pieds-noirs is imprecise as it sometimes includes the French
from the protectorate of Tunisia or Morocco. In some occasions, it is also used as a quasi-synonym for repatriates. Thus,
I will refer to the French (from mainland France, other European states or Sephardic Jews) who settled in Algeria from
1830 to 1962 and their descendants born in Algeria as French from Algeria (français d’Algérie) or French Algerians. For
those who migrated from Algeria to France as a result of the Algerian independence (i.e between 1962 and 1968), I will
talk about the repatriates from Algeria (rapatriés d’Algérie).
5extraordinary powers.7 In February 1959, De Gaulle was elected president of the new Fifth Republic.
Many greeted De Gaulle’s return to power as the breakthrough needed to end the hostilities.8 Yet,
even though De Gaulle initially showed support for keeping Algeria French, national and international
pressures to end the war forced him to change course. In 1959, De Gaulle first outlined his desire to
submit the question of self-determination for Algerians to a referendum opening the way for Algerian
independence. The president was expressing the opinion of many in mainland France that the status
quo in Algeria could not last.9 On January 8, 1961 the referendum on self-determination of Algeria
was held. 75% of the voters (75.3% in the mainland and 69.5% in Algeria, i.e. European Algerians
and indigenous Algerians combined) approved self-determination.
The French from Algeria perceived the approval of an independent Algeria as a betrayal and an
abandonment from the mainland. In response to the January 1961 referendum, the Organisation de
l’Armée Secrète (OAS), a far-right terrorist organization, was created. In an attempt to prevent Alge-
ria’s independence from French colonial rule, the OAS carried out terrorist attacks including bombings
and assassinations. Convinced that the OAS was best able to ensure their protection, the French from
Algeria largely supported the organisation. The ”Pieds-Noirs 2002” survey indicates that 70% of the
polled French from Algeria supported the OAS (Comtat, 2009).10
Yet, despite the OAS efforts, representatives of the French government and the FLN officially put
an end to the Algerian War by signing the Évian Accords on March 18, 1962. Again, the voters in
mainland France were called to the voting booths. They approved the Peace Accords with 90% of
the votes on April 8, 1962 making way to the referendum on auto-determination in Algeria and thus
sealing the fate of French Algeria. On July 3, 1962 Charles de Gaulle declared the independence of
Algeria two days after 99.72% of its population voted for it.
2.2 The exodus
The end of the war and the independence of Algeria led to a massive and sudden out-migration of
the French population. From the 1,024,000 of French Algerians living in Algeria in 1960, only 91,276
were still living in Algeria in 1965 (Scioldo-Zürcher, 2010).11 The majority of those we came to call
7
A national union government (gouvernement d’union nationale) is made up of the main political parties represented
in a parliament. The formation of such an executive is seen when the political, economic or security situation of the
country requires that the traditional pattern of debate between majority and opposition cease.
8
After World War II, Charles de Gaulle had been elected head of the government, but quickly resigned due to his
refusal to work with the communists within the government.
9
In August 1958, 41% of the French thought that sooner or later independence should be granted; they were 51% in
February 1959 (Ageron, 1976).
10
The ”Pieds-Noirs 2002” survey - PACTE / CIDSP (UMR 5194) - is a self-administered survey launched in 2002.
It was carried out among 6,000 Algerians of European descent born in Algeria before 1962 and living in Isère, Alpes-
Maritimes and Hérault. The contact details of the persons were obtained by drawing lots from the electoral rolls showing
the place of birth of those registered. The questionnaire focuses on the political behavior of the French Algerians in
Algeria and France since 1962, on the professional paths and on the memory.
11
Some French Algerians of European descent decided to stay in Algeria to protect their property or simply because
they felt home in Algeria. They were still 50,000 to 60,000 living on the other side of the Mediterranean sea as of July
31, 1965(Planche, 1997). After that, the estimates of the French population from Algeria have strongly varied. In 2008,
while the French consulate counted 300 of them, the Association of French Abroad in Oran estimated them to be 4,500.
6the French from Algeria fled to France, yet few went to Spain (est. 50,000), Canada (est. 12,000),
Israel (est. 10,000) or Argentina (est. 1,500) (Palacio, 1968). While some French from Algeria started
to flee the country in 1961, the exodus took place in the year 1962. This sudden and massive exodus
is a result of different factors. First, the OAS forbade all departures in 1961. The ban was lifted on
May 22, 1962. Furthermore, the French from Algeria clung to the hope that France would not leave
Algeria (Esclangon-Morin, 2007). Finally, the resolution of the conflict and the pending independence
of Algeria came quicker than people anticipated. In January 1962, only 17% of those polled thought
that the war would end within a few months, while 28% thought it would take one, two or three years
to solve the conflict (Ageron, 1976). The record arrival from Algeria was in June 1962 with 200,000
arrivals showing both the effect of the lift on travel ban by the OAS and the fear of the looming of
the Algerian independence (Scioldo-Zürcher, 2010).
Figure 1 shows the migrant inflows from Algeria to mainland France from 1954 until 1968. In the 1968
Census, 1,103,153 individuals indicated living in Algeria on January 1, 1962. Of those migrants from
Algeria, 926,000 had the French nationality in 1968. 884,206 (85.49%) were French Algerians from
European descent, while 41,794 (4.51%) were French Algerians from North African descent (indigenous
Algerians). Finally, 157,803 (17.04%) declared having the Algerian nationality. Within the Algerian
immigrants (with and without the French nationality) were the harkis, i.e. indigenous Algerians
who fought on the side of France during the war and faced persecution in Algeria.12 They did not
receive benefits at their arrival since the government wanted to avoid their massive resettlement in
France. The number of harkis who fled persecutions is difficult to estimate precisely since many settled
in France clandestinely. Thénault (2008, p.86) estimates that approximately 60,000 harkis and their
families migrated to France after 1962. Even though they are now considered to have been repatriates,
I will exclude them from my analysis to focus on a more homegenous group.13 Using the 1968 Census
supplementary data, I estimate that around 581,723 French of European descent arrived from Algeria
between March and December 1962. The repatriates largely arrived in the south of France. Marseille
was the principal port of entry. In June 1962, 1 in 3 repatriates arrived in Marseille. In the summer
1962 the port city was overwhelmed. The government had estimated the number of repatriates to
be around 400,000 over four years (Esclangon-Morin, 2007). The public authorities, surprised by the
massive arrival of repatriates, were unable to control their settlement. Their measures failed to reverse
12
Like all the French Algerians of North African descent, they lost the French citizenship on July, 5 1962. Some, but
not all, obtained the French citizenship back (par reintégration) before 1968. Any person born in Algeria before January
1, 1963 and who was a French citizen under local law at the time of Algeria’s independence lost French nationality in favor
of Algerian nationality, except, if they had submitted the declaration of recognition provided for by law before March
22, 1967; or if this recognition statement had been submitted by the father or, failing that, by the mother. (Author’s
translation of the decree 62-825 from July 21, 1962)
13
Natives would have reacted differently to them than to the other repatriates. Despite arriving in the same ports of
entry, the shares of harkis and repatriates in the population are positively yet weakly correlated (Pearson’s correlation
coefficient = 0.35). I define the harkis in the data as French citizens from North African descent born in Algeria who
were living in Algeria as of January 1, 1962. However, as explained above, this does not include all the harkis. Hence,
the harkis settlements should not confound my results.
7Figure 1: Inflows from Algeria in mainland France by Year of Arrival
Sources: French censuses from 1962 and 1968.
Notes: The columns of the graph show the migrant inflows from Algeria to France between 1954 and 1968 (see values
on the left y-axis). The number of migrants between 1954 and 1961 is calculated from the 1962 census. The number of
migrants between 1962 and 1968 is calculated from the 1968 census. The red line represents the share of French from
Algeria in the mainland population (see values on the right y-axis). French from Algeria are defined as French citizens
of European descent that were living in Algeria at the time of the last census (i.e. 1954 census for those arrived between
1954 and 1961 and 1962 census for those arrived between 1962 and 1968) and in mainland France in the subsequent
census. The French from Algeria also includes those who migrated before 1954. In that case, French from Algeria are
defined as French citizens of European descent that were born in Algeria.14
the influx to the South of half of the French Algerian repatriates.15 In 1968, 68.34% of repatriates
from Algeria were living in 7 southern regions accounting for 27.37% of the total population.16 Figure
2 shows the concentration of French Algerian repatriates in the southern regions and around Paris.
2.3 French extreme-right
After World War II, the far-right movement in France had been discredited for its collaboration with
the Nazis during the Vichy Regime (Marcus, 2000; Shields, 2007). The crisis of the Fourth Republic
and the Algerian conflict enabled the emergence of the new nationalistic movement (Cohen, 1980).
15
First, French Algerian repatriates were given a geographical bonus for settling in regions with low population density.
Faced with the little effect of this measure, the public authorities decided to harden their methods. From July 4, 1962
repatriates from Algeria who arrived in France could not settle in Marseille, otherwise they would be refused benefits.
This measure is extended to the departments of Bouches-du-Rhône, Hérault, Var and Alpes-Maritimes for repatriates
who arrived after July 23, then to repatriates who arrived after August 31, 1962 in the departments of Aude, Vaucluse
and Pyrénées-Orientales. Exemptions from these rules could nevertheless be admitted in favor of spouses, descendants
and ascendants, joining family members who arrived in these departments before the deadline as well as repatriates who
have found employment (Esclangon-Morin, 2007, p.104). I will not consider those failed measures in my analysis since
repatriates settled in the forbidden départements in 1968 or later (Baillet, 1975a)
16
Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Corse, Languedoc-Roussillon, Midi-Pyrénées, Aquitaine, Rhônes-Alpes and Poitou-
Charente.
8Figure 2: Distribution of repatriates from Algeria in 1968
Sources: French censuses from 1962 and 1968.
Notes: The map presents the share of repatriates is defined as the number of repatriates
from Algeria, i.e. French who were living in Algeria as of January 1, 1962, divided by the
pre-existing population, i.e. individuals living in mainland France as of January 1, 1962, in
district e in 1968. The unity of observations is the electoral district level (N=371).
In 1954, Pierre Poujade founded the Union de défense des commerçants et artisans (referred to as
UDCA). What it now called poujadism was initially a movement of spontaneous resistance by small
shopkeepers and artisans against government inspectors dispatched to eradicate tax fraud. Following
the beginning of the Algerian War, Poujade, himself married to a French from Algeria, turned his
movement increasingly to the defense of French Algeria. This new ”colonial nationalism” aimed at
sustaining France’s grip on Algeria, revitalized the far-right (Marcus, 2000). Over time, more and more
far-right nationalists joined the movement. Poujadism was ”less as a fascist movement than a reserve
for it” (Touchard 1956, p. 43). However, its popularity was short-lived and its electoral breakthrough
in 1956 (obtaining 12% of the votes) was followed by an electoral disaster in 1958. Pierre Poujade and
its party lost political significance but the nationalists who used poujadism as a bandwagon continued
to build a unified nationalist movement in the 1960s and the 1970s.
One of those nationalists was the 27-year-old Jean-Marie Le Pen who was elected to the French
Parliament as a poujadist in 1956. After leaving the poujadist movement, he later became the campaign
director for Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour’s presidential bid in the 1965 election. Tixier-Vignancour’s
party, Alliance pour les Libertés et le Progrès, was the first yet unsuccessful attempt to form a far-
right political party during the Fifth Republic. It took seven more years for Le Pen to found his
far-right party, the National Front (referred to as FN). During the 1974 presidential election, he
campaigned against immigration and for the abrogation of the Évian Accords (which led to Algerian
9independence). However, the party failed to gain significant support in the electorate in its earlier
years. Table 1 presents a timeline of the French far-right from 1956 until 2017. From the late
1930s until the mid-1980s, the party struggled to present candidates in the parliamentary elections.
The electoral breakthrough came in the 1980s under the presidency of left-wing president Francois
Mitterrand. From then on, the party steadily became more and more attractive to voters. The
FN discourse on immigration incorporates xenophobic and discriminatory rhetoric portraying non-
European immigrants as a threat to French national identity, living off state handouts and fuelling
crime and violence. On January 15, 2011 Marine Le Pen (Jean-Marie Le Pen’s daughter) became the
new leader of the party. Since then, she has worked to transform the FN into a mainstream party by
softening its xenophobic image. The “normalisation” of the party proved to be a successful election
strategy. In 2017, Marine Le Pen made it to the second round of the presidential elections against
Emmanuel Macron. She was defeated 66.1% to 33.9%.
Table 1: Timeline of the French far-right (1956 - 2017)
Parliamentary elections Presidential elections
Far-right Number of electoral Far-right Number of
Number of
Year vote shares districts with at least vote shares far-right
electoral districts
(in %) one far-right candidates (in %) candidates
1956 465 11.83 438
1958 465 2.50 208
1965 473 4.87 1
1967 473 0.54 68
1968 473 0.08 9
1969 473 0 0
1973 473 0.61 135
1974 473 0.72 1
1978 474 0.75 222
1981 474 0.31 109 0 0
1986* 555 9.47
1988 555 9.64 546 13.82 1
1993 555 12.28 555
1995 555 15.97 2
1997 555 14.60 555
2002 555 12.39 555 18.71 2
2007 555 4.70 554 10.96 2
2012 539 13.97 539 18.52 2
2017 539 14.77 538 22.13 2
Source: Own calculations. CDSP and French Ministry of the Interior.
* Contrary to other legislative elections of the Fifth Republic, the electoral system used was that of party-list proportional
representation.
2.4 French Algerian repatriates and politics
Historians and political scientists shed light on the particular relationship the French far-right and the
French Algerian repatriates (e.g. Stora, 1999; Comtat, 2009). Yet, the relationship between the two
10is neither automatic nor straightforward. The affinity of a part of the repatriate community towards
the far-right can be explained through two main channels: their relationship with the Algerians and
their resentment towards French politicians.
Before the War Using pre-Algeria War electoral data and interviews with French Algerian repa-
triates, Comtat (2009) shows that political opinions and behaviors were heterogeneous in Algeria.
The left-wing parties had a significant audience at certain times in Algeria, e.g. French Algerians (of
European descent) elected 4 (out of 10) left-wing MPs as a national left-wing coalition (the Front
Populaire) came to power in 1936 (Marynower, 2014). However, the influence of the left diminished
in favor of the Gaullist right from the end of the 1940s. The ”Pieds-Noirs 2002” survey indicates
that about 50% of the French Algerian repatriates in the sample were leaning right-wing before the
Algerian War, 20% were leaning left and less than 5% were leaning far-right while 25% did not answer
the question (Comtat, 2009).17 Table A1 presents the 1951 election results for the French mainland
and Algeria separately. It is apparent that the French population leaned more to the right than the
native population before the war. However, a third of the population voted for left-wing parties.
During and after the War The Algerian War was a civil war. The violence of the conflict produced
persistent feelings of hatred and anti-Algerian prejudice among the French population in Algeria,
particularly in families that directly experienced terrorism or kidnapping (Comtat, 2017). The war
disrupted traditional political alignments (Stora, 1999; Comtat, 2017). The French from Algeria first
strongly supported De Gaulle who they saw as a defender of French Algeria. Feeling abandoned by
him in the following years, they strongly supported the OAS. As explained in section 2.3, the French
far-right was re-activated through the Algerian War. It was also for many French from Algeria the only
party who stood by them during the crisis. In the 1960s the far-right strongly supported the amnesty
of crimes committed during the Algerian War and a financial compensation for the repatriation of the
French from Algeria. It is important to note that not all repatriates from Algeria stand behind the
far-right. Though a large share of the community was attracted to the far-right, another large share
was not. Esclangon-Morin (2007) notes that the center coalitions had the most repatriates (fifteen)
on their lists in the 1965 municipal elections. Yet, the far-right reactivated a revanchist memory
turning against the immigrants and feeding on vivid memories of turbulent Algeria appealing to many
repatriates. The far-right campaign against the migration from North Africa, and especially Algerian
immigration, meets with the support of part of this population. It seemed unacceptable to them to
welcome a growing number of Algerian immigrants in France, while themselves had been expelled
from Algeria.
Voting behaviors of the French from Algeria As evoked in the introduction, a 2002 ”exit polls”
survey found that 30% of French from Algeria voted for far-right candidates in the first round of the
17
The ”Pieds-Noirs 2002” survey took place 48 years after the beginning of the Algeria War in 1954. Considering their
age, the time lapsed and the events during and after the war, one should consider the possibility that some of the French
Algerians might have had a revisionist memory.
11Table 2: Voting intentions in the 1st round of the 2012 presidential election
French from Algeria Natives Descendants of Individuals with
aged more than 50 French from Algeria no French Algerian
Candidates ancestry
(1) (2) (3) (4)
Far-left 5% 12.5% 13.5% 13%
Left-wing 23.5% 31% 28% 31%
Moderate 7% 9.5% 9% 9%
Right-wing 42% 31,5% 29% 29%
Far-right 21,5% 14% 20% 18%
Source: Replication from IFOP (2014). Author’s translation.
Notes: the table presents the results of a rolling poll that took place from January until Main 2012. Individuals were asked
their voting intentions for the first round of the presidential election that took place on May 22, 2012. An individual is
considered descendant of a French Algerian if they had at least a parent or a grandparent who was French Algerian. The
IFOP classification of candidates is here somewhat different than the classification used in my analysis (see Table H6).
Marine Le Pen (National Front) is considered a far-right candidate. Nicolas Sarkozy (Union for a Popular Movement) and
Nicolas Dupont-Aignan (France Arise) are right-wing candidates; François Bayrou (Democratic Movement) is classified
as a centrist candidate; François Hollande (Socialist Party) and Eva Joly (Greens) are accounted as left-wing candidates;
and Jean-Luc Mélenchon (Left Front), Philippe Poutou (New Anticapitalist Party) and Nathalie Arthaud (Workers’
Struggle) are far-left candidates.
presidential election, i.e. around 10 points over the national far-right vote share. In 2007, 31% and
18% of the French from Algeria voted for Nicolas Sarkozy (right-wing candidate) and Jean-Marie Le
Pen, respectively (IFOP, 2014). Again, the vote of the French Algerian was 8 points over the national
vote. Table 2 presents the voting intentions for the first round of the 2012 presidential elections. A
little more than one in 5 French from Algeria intended on voting for Marine Le Pen (the far-right
candidate) in the presidential elections, while 3 in 20 of non-French Algerian voters aged more than 50
intended to do the same. We also see a stronger preference of the French from Algeria for right-wing
candidates in general (+10.5pp compared to non-French from Algeria). Furthermore, the IFOP data
indicates a certain level of inter-generational transmission of political preferences. Descendants of
French from Algeria appear slightly more inclined to vote for the far-right candidate and less inclined
to vote for the moderate left than individuals with no French Algerian ancestry (+2pp and -3pp, re-
spectively). However, these statistics do not provide any indication on the comparability of the voter
groups. Voters in column (3) are per definition, on average, younger than voters in column (4), since
they must be born after 1962.
3 Data and specification
3.1 Data and Sample
I use data from the French census in 1962 and 1968. The 1962 census represented a 5% sample of
population living in mainland France. To precisely estimate the share of French Algerian repatriates
in the population at the electoral district level, I use the 1968 full census. The 1968 census is a unique
dataset distinguishes between French from Algeria and Algerians who both were living in Algeria in
121962 and were French as of 1968. I define the repatriates from Algeria as the French who were living
in Algeria as of January 1, 1962 and in mainland France in 1968 (as explained in section 2.2, I exclude
the harkis from my analysis). The 1962 census, that took place in March 1962, allows me to control
for other pre-shock demographic variables that I will further use as control variables.18 The data for
the 1962 and 1968 have been provided by the French Statistical Office (INSEE) and the Secure Access
Data Center (CASD).
To merge the censuses data with electoral data from 1956 until 2017, I aggregate census data at
the smallest level possible, the electoral district level (i.e. below the département level (Hunt, 1992;
Cefalà, 2021) and the regional level (Edo, 2020)).19 For the years 1958 until 1981, I used the electoral
data at the electoral district level (i.e. circonscriptions electorales) from the Centre de données socio-
politiques de Sciences Po (CDSP). I digitalised the 1956 election results using the Liste des candidats
aux élections législatives, 23-30 novembre 1958.20 Yet, in 1986, the electoral districts have been
restructured. To avoid compositional effects, I use the electoral data of the French Ministry of Interior
at a smaller level (communes) from 1993 until 2017.21 I can then preserve the 1956 electoral districts
through time and obtain a data set stretching from 1956 until 2017 containing 371 electoral districts
over 15 parliamentary elections (1956, 1958, 1967, 1968, 1973, 1978, 1981, 1986, 1988, 1993, 1997,
2002, 2007, 2012 and 2017 and 10 presidential elections (1965, 1969, 1974, 1981, 1988, 1995, 2002,
2007, 2012 and 2017).22 As there was no presidential election data available before 1965, I used the
1956 and 1958 parliamentary election data as pre-shock electoral data in the presidential sample.23
Table 3 compares the French Algerian repatriates and natives in the 1968 Census. The French Algerian
repatriates were, on average, 2 years younger than natives. Furthermore, they were more educated
than natives, i.e. 18.92% of the repatriates had a high school diploma or more (7.40pp more than
natives). They were also more likely to be in university at age 18 or more. 11.92% of the repatriates
were working in higher managerial and intellectual positions. Only 19.86% of the repatriates compared
to 30.80% of mainland natives were blue collar workers. The colonial economy had little developed
industry and the French from Algeria worked in the tertiary sector such as office workers, civil servants,
salespeople, small business-owners, craftsmen or traders, etc (Esclangon-Morin, 2007). One can also
see that the repatriates were overrepresented in the public sector with almost 1 out of 3 repatriates
18
As explained in section 2.2, the massive out-migration of French from Algeria started in spring of 1962 as the approval
of the Évian Accords on April 8, 1962 and the OAS travel ban was lifted on May 22, 1962. I estimate that 13,499 French
from Algeria arrived in January and February 1962. This should not have impacted the results of the 1962 census.
19
I used the 1962 and 1968 Code Géographique, i.e. the list of all the French cantons and communes with their
geographical codes. I merge the census data and the electoral data using documents from the Library of the French
Statistical Office (Bibliothèque de l’INSEE ).
20
The book is a list of the MP candidates for the 1958 parliamentary elections. It also lists the detailed results of the
1956 election at the electoral district level.
21
The electoral data for the years 1986 and 1988 were only available at the new electoral district level. For those years,
I assumed the homogeneous distribution of votes over the districts to impute the votes at the old electoral district level.
22
I left out the 1962 parliamentary election that took place in November 1962 as the repatriation shock was still
ongoing (see Figure 1).
23
Up until 2002, the president was elected every 7 years and parliamentary elections took place every 5 years. Since
2002, both elections take place in the same year as the presidential mandate was shortened to 5 years.
13working in a public administration (20.65pp more than the natives). Owing to their experience of
forced migrants, they were also more likely to be unemployed (+1.37pp) and out of the labor force
(+2.77pp) six years after their arrival. I additionally use the data from the Permanent Demographic
Table 3: Comparison between French Algerian repatriates and mainland natives in 1968
Mean Difference
VARIABLES Repatriates Natives (1) - (2)
(1) (2) (3)
Female 0.4811 0.5026 -0.0215***
Age 25.45 27.43 -1.98***
Observations 152,056 7,901,344
High Qualification 0.1892 0.1152 0.0740***
Med. Qualification 0.2099 0.1255 0.0844***
Low Qualification 0.5927 0.7537 -0.1610***
Observations 68,375 3,436,390
Unemployed 0.0259 0.0122 0.0137***
Out of the labor force 0.2373 0.2096 0.0277***
Student 0.0739 0.0582 0.0156***
Retired 0.0683 0.0963 -0.0281***
Observations 86,814 4,670,696
Farmer 0.0239 0.1130 -0.0891***
Business Owner 0.0735 0.1246 -0.0512***
Higher managerial and intellectual position* 0.1192 0.0771 0.0421***
White collar 0.5702 0.3646 0.2056***
Blue collar 0.1986 0.3080 -0.1094***
Observations 43,092 2,065,177
Worked in public administration 0.3228 0.1163 0.2065***
Observations 51,662 2,993,379
Lives in the South 0.6034 0.3250 0.2784***
Observations 152,056 7,901,344
Source: 1968 Census
Notes: the table presents means by repatriate status and the difference between the means. Column (1) shows
the means for the repatriates defined as French citizens living in Algeria as of January 1, 1962. Column (2) shows
the means for the mainland native defined as French citizens born in mainland France and living in mainland
France as of January 1, 1962. ***, **, and * denote significance at the 1 percent, 5 percent, and 10 percent level,
respectively. Column (3) shows the different between the means.
*in French, cadres et professions intellectuelles supérieures. This category brings together professors and scientific
employees, arts and entertainment information professionals, administrative and commercial company executives,
high-qualified and/or high-level employees, engineers and technical company executives.
Sample (Échantillon Démographique Permanent or EDP) to study the economic integration of the
repatriates from Algeria. The EDP is a large-scale socio-demographic panel established with census
data to study the birth rate, mortality, relationships and geographical migrations within the national
perimeter. I can identify 6,194 French individuals that were living in Algeria as of January 1, 1962. In
Figure A1, I estimate the unemployment gap between repatriates and natives, controlling for education
level, birth year, and gender. Despite governmental measures to facilitate the repatriates integration
14into the labor market, it appears the repatriates faced higher unemployment risk in the 1990s.24 This
goes against the idea that the economic integration of the repatriates was a success (Baillet, 1975a;
Rowley, 1990). Yet, my results are in line with the findings of Couto (2014). Similarly, Bauer et al.
(2013) finds that expellees from the Eastern Territories after WWII were more likely to be unemployed
25 years after their arrival in West Germany. Their fragile attachment to the labor market might might
have been further feeding the repatriates’ resentment. Indeed, Halla et al. (2017) find that the impact
of immigration on far-right vote shares is stronger in communities where unemployment among natives
is high.
3.2 Specification
The specification of the regression model follows Moser et al. (2014) and Chevalier et al. (2018) and
takes the form:
T
X T
X
F arRightet = βt (AlgRepShareet · τt ) + γt (Xe,1962 · τt ) + λe + τt + et (1)
t6=1956 t6=1956
with F arRightet being the standardised vote shares for far-right candidates in district e in year t in
the first round of the election.25 I divide the votes shares by their standard deviation for year t such
that they are comparable across the years.26 As the French far-right has evolved and grown over the
last 60 years, vote shares for far-right candidates and parties have varied strongly. As explained in
section 2.3 the far-right in the 1960s and 1970s was unorganized and thus less visible (see Table 1).
AlgRepShareet is defined as follows:
0 if t ≤ 1962
AlgRepShareet =
Repatriates
Pre-existing population d,1968 if t > 1962
the number of repatriates from Algeria divided by the pre-existing population (i.e. individuals living
in mainland France as of January 1, 1962, in district e in 1968). I standardize the number of repatri-
ates by the population in 1968 and not 1962. As βt is expected to be positive, a native out-migration
away from the districts that received more repatriates would suggest that βt is a lower-bound, while
a native in-migration into those districts would be captured by AlgRepShareet . Xe,1962 includes the
share of immigrants in the native population27 , the shares of (skilled and unskilled) workers in the
working population (Edo, 2020) as well as the share of high educated French nationals, i.e. with a
high school diploma or more, the population density, the native unemployment rate, in 1962. I use the
24
The government established a list of job vacancies, to which the repatriates were given first priority (Hunt, 1992).
25
The classifications of parties and candidates are presented in Appendix H.
26
I calculate the standard deviation (σt ) of the share of far-right votes (ShareF arRightet ) for each year t as calculate
as follows: F arRightet = ShareF arRight
σt
et
.
27
The native population is defined as the number of foreign-born individuals that did not possess the French nationality
divided by the population in district e at time t.
15unemployment rate and the population density as proxies for economic prosperity. The literature has
found that economic distress fosters far-right voting (Autor et al., 2020; Dehdari, 2022). Time fixed
effects (τt ) account for the national trend in far-right voting. I further control for electoral district
fixed effects (λe ) to exploit variation within electoral districts over time. Throughout the analysis, I
cluster standard errors at the electoral district level to explicitly account for any potential correlation
in the error terms within electoral districts over time.
I choose the 1956 parliamentary elections as the baseline since the 1958 election was a special election.
France was in a deep political crisis after an attempted coup over the Algeria War. In the wake of
the event, De Gaulle, invested with full powers, appointed a commission responsible for drafting a
new Constitution. The parliamentary election took place on November 23 and 30, followed by the
presidential election in December. De Gaulle was elected president with 78.51% of the votes in the
first round. Hence, the 1958 elections were a referendum on De Gaulle and its vision for France in a
time of significant uncertainty.
The causal identification of the parameters of interest βt in Equation (1) is challenged by the en-
dogenous distribution of the repatriates in France. Even though the repatriation was sudde n and
disorganised, the repatriates’ settlement decisions might have been based on unobserved local charac-
teristics that are correlated with changes in voting behaviors. Hence, I use the historical distribution
of the French from Algeria in 1954 as an instrument and estimate the number of French Algerian
repatriates in electoral district e in 1968 as follows:
French from Algeriad,1954
\ d,1968 =
Repatriates · Repatriates1968 (2)
French from Algeria1954
\ d,1968 by the pre-existing population in district e to compute the instrument.
I then divide Repatriates
The identifying assumption is that, conditional on controls, the local factors that influenced the French
from Algeria settlement in 1954 are uncorrelated with changes in voting behaviors after 1962. The
bigger the time lag to predict the actual repatriates distribution, the smaller the correlation between
the pre-existing French from Algeria settlement and current shocks (Dustmann et al., 2005). Hence,
I use the 1954 distribution of French from Algeria, i.e. the biggest time lag allowed by the existing
data.
Similarly to Halla et al. (2017), I follow the migration literature that has been using the historical
distribution of immigrants across local labor markets to build an instrument for immigrant inflows (Al-
tonji and Card, 1991; Edo, 2020) to study the impact on far-right voting. The historical distribution
of immigrants is a good predictor of inflows of migrants from the same regions as existing networks
facilitate the installation of newcomers (Bartel, 1989; LaLonde and Topel, 1991). Yet, the settlement
patterns of past migrants should not be correlated with current economic shocks. As Jaeger et al.
(2018) point out the exogeneity of the instrument is threatened in case of general equilibrium adjust-
16ments and strong serial correlation between immigrant inflows. However, this issue arises mainly in
situations where immigrant flows are stable over time. It is less a concern here as the 1962 exodus
of the French Algerian repatriates was an unexpected migration shock that disrupted the inflow of
French from Algeria in mainland France (Edo, 2020; Jaeger et al., 2018). Furthermore, the IV esti-
mates in Figure 4 indicates that the French Algerians historically settled in more left-leaning districts
(see Figure B4). The French Algerians who migrated to mainland France in 1954 or earlier were more
educated than the repatriates (24.51% vs. 18.92% had a high school diploma or more). They were
also less likely to live in the South (53.72% vs. 60.34%). Since they migrated before the start of the
conflict, they were migrants but not refugees, i.e. they did not flee the war.
Figure 3 presents both the predicted distribution of repatriates as well as the true distribution of
repatriates in mainland France in 1968. The maps indicate a strong correlation between the share of
repatriates and the instrument using the historical distribution of French Algerians (Pearson’s cor-
relation coefficient = 0.7032). Table 4 presents the first stage results of the two stages least square
Figure 3: Settlement of repatriates from Algeria in 1968
(a) Share of repatriates (in %) (b) Predicted share of repatriates (in %)
Sources: French censuses from 1962 and 1968.
Notes: map (a) presents the share of repatriates defined as the number of repatriates from Algeria (i.e. French citizens
who were living in Algeria as of January 1, 1962) divided by the pre-existing population (i.e. individuals living in
mainland France as of January 1, 1962) in district e in 1968. Map (b) presents the predicted share of repatriates using
Repatriates
\ d,1968 from equation (2) to calculate the share of repatriates in the pre-existing population. I use the 1954
distribution of French Algerians to predict Repatriatesd,1968 .
estimation. An increase of 1pp of the predicted share of repatriates increases the actual share of
repatriates, on average, by 0.56pp. The Montiel-Plueger statistic (69.35) indicates that using the
historical distribution of French Algerians to predict the share of repatriates does not provide a weak
instrument.
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