This article was downloaded by: [Colorado College]On: 08 October 2014, At: 15:36Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK

The Journal of North AfricanStudiesPublication details, including instructions for authorsand subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fnas20

Spatial and social mobilities inAlgeria: the case of AlgiersMadani Safar Zitouna

a Department of Sociology, University of Algiers 2,Algiers, AlgeriaPublished online: 09 Dec 2013.

To cite this article: Madani Safar Zitoun (2013) Spatial and social mobilities inAlgeria: the case of Algiers, The Journal of North African Studies, 18:5, 678-689, DOI:10.1080/13629387.2013.849898

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13629387.2013.849898

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all theinformation (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform.However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, orsuitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressedin this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not theviews of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content shouldnot be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions,claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilitieswhatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connectionwith, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly

forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

5:36

08

Oct

ober

201

4

Spatial and social mobilities in Algeria:the case of Algiers†

Madani Safar Zitoun∗

Department of Sociology, University of Algiers 2, Algiers, Algeria

Urban sociology explores the relationship between individuals and social groups, and thematerial space in which they live, evolve, and socially organise. While the field is be dividedby diverging macro- and micro-level approaches and methodologies, it is unified by thewidely held assumption that social mobility creates opportunities for spatial mobility. Usingthe case of post-independence Algeria, and specifically the capital, Algiers, this chapter showsthat contrary to developments in Europe, the USA, or indeed other parts of the Maghreb,Algerian social mobility is instead the result of spatial mobility opportunities, themselves theoutcome of sudden shifts in the evolving relationship between state and society. Focusing onthe ‘National Real Estate Pact’ established shortly after independence, attempted stateconsolidation via administered access to the market in the 1980s, and the retreat of the state inthe 1990s, this chapter outlines processes by which Algerian spatial mobility opportunities,created by the state or wrested from it by society, have promoted social mobility.

Keywords: property; urbanism; social mobility; state; Algeria; rent

Introduction

Urban sociology is a particular field in the social sciences, distinguished by the particular atten-

tion theorists place on the relationship between individuals, communities, groups, and societies

and the material space in which they live, evolve, and socially organise. Influenced by the writ-

ings of Simmel ([1903] 1984a, [1908] 1984b), Weber ([1922] 1982), and Maurice Halbwachs

(see Amiot 1986), the field studies the manner by which different actors understand, produce,

and consume space as a practical and strategic resource, and the ways in which spatial order

shapes actions, practices, and representations.

The field divides along scalar lines. Often drawing from social and cultural anthropology, pro-

ponents of micro-level studies view villages, neighbourhoods, cities, suburbs, and peri-urban

zones as specialised places in which actors have ‘local logics’ of social power and mobility.

These ‘local logics’ can be contrasted to larger ‘societal logics’, which are not anchored to a par-

ticular place. Focusing on the regional or state-level, proponents of macro-level analysis focus

on how aggregate demographic trends and spatial changes reflect changing social behaviour.

†Translated by Robert P. Parks, Centre d’Etudes Maghrebines en Algerie, Oran, Algeria.∗Email: safarmad@yahoo.fr

# 2013 Taylor & Francis

The Journal of North African Studies, 2013

Vol. 18, No. 5, 678–689, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13629387.2013.849898

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

5:36

08

Oct

ober

201

4

More recent studies on globalisation argue that both ‘local’ and ‘societal logics’ are increasingly

outmoded. Castells (1998) argues that in the contemporary ‘Network Society’, social power (and

mobility) is founded neither on local social structure nor on larger, society-wide norms, but on

access to electronically processed information networks. De-linked from local space, and their

original function, ‘local logics’ of social mobility cease to exist, whereas ‘social logics’ are

increasingly irrelevant. Despite the scalar debate, the local, state, and global camps epistemolo-

gically converge: social and spatial mobilities are linked by the market; spatial mobility is the

result of social mobility.

Positing the market as the field in which social and spatial mobilities interact in that causal

direction assumes an exchangeability of a residential property in a rationally functioning real

estate market. In a rational real estate market, real estate has a price based on scarcity, size,

and location in urban space and real estate is a good that is freely exchangeable. Bluntly put,

upward social mobility creates more spatial mobility opportunities; downward social mobility

decreases spatial mobility opportunities. Though fascinated by market power, urban sociologists

too pioneered research on how laws and social barriers can preclude market access for certain

groups. Non-market factors, such as violence and power, frequently impinge on social mobility.

Indeed, work by the Chicago school of the 1920s and 1930s had a profound impact on our under-

standing of how racial laws and local political power can circumscribe the market to certain

groups, limiting both social and spatial mobilities (see Park, Burgess, and MacKenzie 1925).

Though addressing how limited market access and blocked social mobility are products of

state and society, urban sociology has paid less attention to what happens once those man-

made barriers are removed. Implicitly, we are led to imagine a return to market forces, and

spatial mobility opportunities remain a function of social mobility.

The Algerian case problematises that assumption. During the colonial era, extra-market norms

and laws set the limits of both Muslim social and spatial mobilities: participation in European

economic and social arenas and space was legally limited. Though those barriers were

removed at independence, however, social mobility did not have a major effect on residential

mobility in the 1960s and 1970s. Rather, we witnessed the converse: it was residential mobility

opportunities that increased or decreased the probability of social mobility. The processes of

rapid, chaotic decolonisation and the exigencies of late development were pressures too great

for the nascent market to withstand. Algerian social and urban promotions are the product of

the development of the Algerian political economy, itself an outgrowth of the evolving relation-

ship between state and society. The processes of decolonisation and state consolidation sup-

planted a model of rational market distribution, with a model of political distribution in its

stead. This process first delinked, while liberalising reforms in the 1980s and housing market

chaos in the 1990s reversed, the relationship between social and residential mobilities.

Independence: decolonisation and the biens vacants

The causal inversion in the relationship between social and spatial mobilities in Algeria can be

traced to the effects of a heavy colonial legacy and radical processes of decolonisation on the

property market at independence. The French settler regime operated on a two-tiered system

that enforced social and economic segregations between European settler and Muslim popu-

lations, with distinct effects on the relationship between social and spatial mobilities for the

two populations. For the European population, upwardly mobile citizens could participate in

the liberal housing market to move to more exclusive neighbourhoods (or vice versa). Market

prices clearly distinguished rich, middle class, and poor (and often mixed), and Muslim

The Journal of North African Studies 679

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

5:36

08

Oct

ober

201

4

neighbourhoods. The same was not the case for most Algerian Muslims: the European housing

market remained closed to Muslims for economic and social reasons. The colonial system – pre-

dicated on economic, political, and social segregation – aimed to control Muslim social and

spatial mobilities. While a few assimilated and wealthy Muslims were able to move into the

finer neighbourhoods of Algiers or Oran, and in more ordinary districts apartment houses

were inhabited by families from different communities, the majority of Muslim Algerians –

rich and poor – were relegated to neighbourhoods on the Muslim periphery.1

Though it was the structures of a colonial society that blocked Muslim social and spatial mobi-

lities, the conventional causal relation between the two variables did not mechanically reassert

itself at independence. Just as the type, intensity, brutality, and duration of colonisation pre-

cluded Muslim social advancement, the rapid and violent manner in which decolonisation

occurred affected the way in which both the new state and post-independence society defined

the contours of post-colonial urban space, severely limiting the development of the free

market. Those broad contours were defined between 1962 and 1967, years characterised by a

topsy-turvy, double state-society movement: Muslims replaced French in the ‘vacated proper-

ties’ (biens vacants) of colonial urban space, and an Algerian state was formed in the wake of

a departed French administration. The five years immediately following independence witnessed

an Algerian ‘urban revolution’ and subsequent formation of a ‘National Real Estate Pact.’ Both

would have a profoundly lasting effect on the property market, defining the relationship between

Algerian social and spatial mobilities.

The urban revolution

Hundreds of thousands of European settlers fled Algeria in the months immediately leading to

and following independence, abandoning millions of hectares of agricultural and industrial land,

as well as urban properties – the colonial apartment buildings and villas that constitute the core

of most villages and cities in Northern Algeria today. While Algerians suddenly experienced

urban spatial mobility, the chaotic occupation of abandoned apartments and villas did not

follow the traditional spatial hierarchy seen in urban areas elsewhere. The population transfer

did not follow an orderly schema in which like socio-economic categories moved into space

that would normally correspond with an individual’s position in a conventional urban hierarchy.

Instead, the near-absence of state authority allowed families from lower socio-economic cat-

egories to occupy luxurious apartments. The rapid and chaotic population transfer in Algiers

at the moment of independence transformed many formerly well-to-do quarters into working

class neighbourhoods in a period of less than a month (Safar Zitoun 1996, 71).

While the new Algerian state was formally bound by the Evian Accords to protect European

properties, given the reality of under-administration, it was hard pressed to guarantee those

rights in face of a war-weary, impoverished population eager to symbolically and physically

reclaim their country and its possessions. While the regime officially nationalised abandoned

colonial properties in 1963, the state was neither willing nor able to enforce its claims on

these de jure possessions against their new occupants. Instead, the fledgling Algerian state

adopted its new real estate and housing laws around a de facto situation in which property effec-

tively had no real market value. The state recognised the illegal occupation of former colonial

property, as it nationalised it, through a series of landmark measures enacted in March 1963,

known as the ‘March Decrees’.2 The colonial era link between real estate and market value

(defining the causal direction between social and spatial mobilities) was broken when settlers

abandoned their property. Through nationalisation, the fledgling Algerian state substituted the

M. Safar Zitoun680

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

5:36

08

Oct

ober

201

4

market contractual exchange with political-administrative procedures that fixed the market

while affording citizens subsidised rent. This ‘National Real Estate Pact’ became an immutable

reference point for the political economy of property in post-colonial Algeria, defining the

relationship between a state-cum-landlord and a ‘civil society’ dependent on the social and econ-

omic rents of the agreement.

On 18 March 1963, the Algerian state nationalised abandoned French properties and set fixed

rental rates3 on those properties.4 Rent was calculated on construction date, quality, location, and

space: for example, the rent for a typical three room apartment ranged between 75 and 226 dinars

(DA) per month. The decrees ambitiously expanded the new Algerian state’s reach into post-

colonial society – according to the 1966 census, just under 70% of Algerians rented property

from the state (ONS 1968). The decrees especially impacted Algerians living in large cities,

where the former colonial properties were concentrated. Seventy-three percentage of post-

colonial housing units in Algiers belonged to the state (Sgroı-Dufresnes 1983, 1986). Figures

were likely greater in Annaba and Oran.

However, ambitious, it is not clear that this ‘National Real Estate Pact’ had the effect on

state-society relations that the regime sought – control over the housing market. According to

a 1966 study of household economy in the Algiers metropolitan area, the majority of families

could not afford to spend more than 100 DA per month on rent (AARDES 1966).5 While

some families did leave their bien vacant in response to a state-imposed rent that was beyond

their means, especially in the highly desired neighbourhoods of the former colonial rich, for

most the scheme remained theoretical. The embryonic state administration did not, in fact,

have the capacity to implement rent collection. Indeed, a 1979 Ministry of Housing report

revealed that fewer than 40% of Algerians made regular rent payments during this period

(MUCH 1979).

From 1963 to 81, rental rates remained static, while household income noticeably increased.

In the greater Algiers area, household income tripled: the percentage of household income allo-

cated to housing dropped from 35% in 1966 to 7.2% in 1981 (Safar-Zitoun 1996, 197–200). This

did not, however, lead to an increase in the percentage of theoretical rent paid on bien vacant

properties. The obverse seems to be true. A report drawn up in 1981 revealed that fewer than

28% of those households surveyed regularly paid rent to the state (MUCH 1981). Indeed two

years earlier, in 1979, a Ministry of Construction and Housing report complained: ‘Former

biens vacants have artificially low rent, which represents a veritable indirect state subsidy to

occupants of those apartments’ (MUCH 1979).

The reforms of the 1980s

On 10 February 1981, the Algerian state attempted to rewire the ‘National Real Estate Pact.’

Law 81–01 set into place the framework for the legal purchase of bien vacant real estate.6

Though ostensibly written to stimulate the economy and promote the quality of life, the law

also rewarded the regime’s political and social bases. While construction date, quality, location,

and space were calculated in the administrative price of sale, prices fixed to the bien vacant prop-

erties remained far lower than the prevailing (and structurally smaller) private sector real estate

market. Just as the state fixed and subsidised rents following the March 1963 Decrees, the new

prices on properties offered for sale were the continuation of the state’s subsidy to society.

Article 5 limited sales to those occupants up to date in rental payment, while Article 31 provided

further advantages for veterans of Algeria’s War of Independence. The law also aimed to

reinforce the state’s administration: selling a significant portion of its real estate portfolio

The Journal of North African Studies 681

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

5:36

08

Oct

ober

201

4

generated additional income, and allowed the state’s housing administration to focus its activi-

ties on collecting unpaid rent from its remaining properties.

Law 81–01 had major effects on state, society, and the market. To beneficiaries, the sale

legally consolidated the social and spatial mobilities conferred upon Algerians who occupied

vacant colonial property at independence. Delinked from markets since nationalisation, state

properties hitherto endowed neither social mobility nor spatial mobility on their occupants.

With title in hand, new owners had formal access to urban property, which conferred status

and access to the private sector property market. The latter, in turn, created further opportunities

for social and spatial mobilities: though the laws stipulated a five-year moratorium on flipping

newly acquired properties7, the difference between the official sale price and prevalent real

estate market rates ensured a guaranteed future financial windfall for most beneficiaries. The

law also, of course, increased the overall size of the private property market. Finally, the law

helped streamline the national housing administration while increasing the state’s scope for

influence on real estate. Hitherto the often-ignored tutor of occupied bien vacants, state-

management of the privatisation process positioned the state as a key player in the political

economy of real estate.

Over the next five years, the regime passed a series of reforms further liberalising the housing

market. In as much as these reforms sought to rationalise the nascent private sector real estate

market, they were also a reaction to pressure from market, society, and political interests.

Decree 81–448 expanded opportunities for property speculation by state agents, granting

them the right to acquire multiple properties, while most citizens were limited to one. In addition

to the right to purchase their primary residence, Front de Liberation Nationale party members

and state cadres of the national and local administrations as well as public companies were

extended the right to acquire apartments reserved to them for official use. Restrictions on the

proximity of such properties to a primary residence, moreover, were loosened. In theory, a

state cadre based on Oran could purchase a primary residence and a service apartment – if trans-

ferred, s/he would also have access to property in the new locality. The provisions reinforced the

standing of state agents in the economic hierarchy, promoting state-led social and spatial mobi-

lities.

Law 86–02, passed on 4 February1986,9 further liberalised the housing market. To the extent

that it sought to rationalise real estate, this law was a reaction to pressures from market, society,

and political interests. The new law removed Article 27 of Law 81–02, which had set a five-year

moratorium on flipping privatised real estate, encouraging informality in the nascent private

sector housing market. Banned from legally selling or renting recently privatised property,

many owners engaged in illegal subleasing or in untitled sales, thus undoing the efforts to cen-

tralise real estate transactions and rent collection that the 1981 law had promoted. The 1986 law

also enlarged the pool of available properties and potential buyers: state-owned commercial and

industrial properties were now accessible, and private companies, which had been excluded from

the 1981 law, could now purchase these properties.10 Finally, provisions in the 1986 law laid the

foundation of a state-subsidised construction programme: the new law permitted the purchase of

public-sector housing administration apartments built the after 1 January 1981.11

While the 1981 real estate reforms offered the possibility of change to the relationship

between social and spatial mobilities, those opportunities were restricted to the occupants

who were up to date in rent payments. Neither the 72% of non-rent-paying bien vacant occu-

pants, nor their properties were eligible participants in the programme. By expanding the

reform to state housing built after 1981, the 1986 law augmented the state in the eyes of political

and economic entrepreneurs as a veritable source of wealth: with increased market leverage, the

M. Safar Zitoun682

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

5:36

08

Oct

ober

201

4

state expanded its patrimonial capacity vis-a-vis market and society. The 1981 and 1986 reforms

combined opened an irreversible process of real estate acquisition to privileged social categories,

which, by their position in formal and informal decision-making circuits, were able to privatise

the benefits and goods distributed through administrative channels. For the first time since 1962,

the state had taken veritable steps to control its real estate, and by association the market and

society.

Market liberalisation: market distortion and administrative clientelism

The real estate reforms of the 1980s fell short of official objectives: rationalisation of state

housing policy and the invigoration of a private sector market failed to disrupt the ‘National

Real Estate Pact’ founded during the chaotic decolonisation of the country. Instead of a slow

transfer of property from state to private hands, the 1980s’ reforms engendered a speculative

real estate market accessible to the middle class and persons with reach into the administration,

on the one hand, and an ossification of the rules of the game created shortly after independence,

on the other hand. The reforms affected the urban landscape in different ways, with different

implications for social and spatial mobilities. In a few neighbourhoods – especially those occu-

pied by former combatants, political apparatchiks, and high-ranking state cadres – the great

majority of residences were purchased by their occupants and a veritable housing market was

established around those properties. Social mobility afforded spatial mobility to these areas.

In neighbourhoods of mixed socio-economic status, which constitute the majority of Algeria’s

major urban areas, the property market remained static: housing prices were more moderate

and upwardly mobile people who could not afford to move to more chic residential areas

were restricted in spatial mobility. And in the poorest neighbourhoods, like Megharia, Bourouba,

and Bachdjarrah in Algiers, individuals who purchased their occupied ex-bien vacant found their

property value structurally fixed at dismally low rates.

State efforts, beginning in 1983, to homogenise mixed and poor neighbourhoods by increasing

state-owed rates of rent to more closely approximate those in the private sector, along with

promises to renovate that real estate, had little effect on market prices. Citizens unable to

match rent increases did not move to neighbourhoods with lower aggregate state rent, liberating

their occupied housing units to those who could afford the higher rents (and possibly purchase

that property at a later date). Instead, they simply avoided rent payment altogether. Rent evasion

continued to hover around the 1981 level of a little more than 70%. Indeed, figures generated by

the Ministry of Housing on the percentage of rent collection on state-owned properties in the

mid-2000s reveal how little things had changed over the past 25 years: rates of recovery on

rent owed to the state still stood at only 32.81% and 35.48% in 2006 and 2007, respectively

(MHU 2008).

The post-reform housing market was captive to the perverse effects of this dual public–

private pricing system and administrative caprice. After 1986, beneficiaries of the privatisation

process began reselling properties purchased at state-subsidised rates for their real (i.e. private

sector) market value. Many of these individuals used their connections in local and state insti-

tutions, and the housing administrations were able to purchase subsidised, state-built real estate

destined for lower middle class revenues. While the difference between state-administered and

market prices was initially justified as a form of social justice giving all Algerians the opportu-

nity to own their own homes, by the early 1990s, the perversity of the system became increas-

ingly clear, as the conditions of access became less and less democratic with the rise of

speculative misappropriation of housing, building land, and commercial properties.

The Journal of North African Studies 683

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

5:36

08

Oct

ober

201

4

Throughout the 1980s, as private sector real estate prices skyrocketed (Table 1, below), specu-

lators increasingly looked toward the cheaper markets in order to profit from the ever-growing

gap between the dual pricing system. Administrative connivance facilitated this momentum,

which increasingly crowded the poor and lower middle classes out of housing programmes

that had been specifically tailored for them. A 1989 Ministry of Housing report noted that in

different municipalities, between 40% and 56% of state subsidised properties released into

private ownership had been misappropriated through manipulation of the lists of beneficiaries

drawn up by local administrations (MHU 1989).

The continued existence of controlled prices up to the present, despite legal revisions that,

since 1994, have stipulated setting sale prices at market levels, has facilitated the emergence of

an extremely speculative market in real estate and land. Flush with liquidity from the sale of

state property, acquired cheap at the subsidised rate and sold dear at the market price, many

property-owners turned to the market in land to buy up lots on which to build new individual

homes. The supply of building land being restricted, however, this part of the market in turn

experienced both an explosion in the price of land, whether designated as construction lots or

not, and a flurry of speculation on legally attributed building plots. Unwilling to respect the

five-year moratorium on reselling land, which was not changed by the 1986 real estate

reforms, entrepreneurs participated in the creation of a parallel land market outside of local

real estate registries. Individually acquired municipal land was sometimes sold on up to four

times in this informal market, with no legal transfer of the title. In this way, individual

profits from real estate sales were also reinvested in state-owned urban or suburban land

held in Municipal Land Reserves. The reserves were municipal land funds, created in 1974,

on which city commissions could draw for specific public or private construction projects

deemed necessary to urban growth. According to a 1979 Ministry of Housing report

(MUCH 1979), 56% of lots acquired from Municipal Land Reserves between 1975 and

1988 were subsequently sold on without ever having been used for their initial purpose. The

same report revealed that, while this practice of reselling had initially been limited (20% of

lots resold in 1975), it ballooned in the 1980s, with close to 70% of land acquired in

certain zones from the Municipal Land Registry of Greater Algiers being exchanged in

illegal second-hand sales by 1988.

The process of speculation accelerated following the collapse of the single party regime in

1988–89, and Algeria’s first multiparty municipal elections in 1990. Seeking to reward political

clienteles with access to land and property, and to expand voter support in anticipation of the

December 1991 legislative elections, the majority victor of the 1990 local elections, the

Islamic Salvation Front (FIS, Front Islamique du Salut), accelerated the distribution of property

held in the Municipal Land Reserves. In 1991, the FIS won the first round of legislative elec-

tions, triggering a military takeover, dissolution of parliament, and a ban on the FIS. FIS-run

municipalities were dissolved and replaced by state-nominated Executive Municipal

Table 1. State and private sector real estate prices per m2 in the Algiers region, 1979–87 (in 2011 dinars).

Price per m2 1979 1981 1987 D1979–81 D1981–87

Market price 131 200 900 52.7% 350%State price 30 80 126 166.7% 57.5%Difference 1:4.4 1:2.5 1:7.1 – –

Source: Safar Zitoun 1996.

M. Safar Zitoun684

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

5:36

08

Oct

ober

201

4

Delegations (Delegations executives communales, DEC). Despite direct control from Algiers,

the pattern of clientelism did not abate: the DEC too distributed public real estate to various con-

stituents, mostly those connected to local power bases. In 2004, Ministry of Housing officials

counted more than 59,000 lots across all the districts of Algiers that had been improperly attrib-

uted to individuals and illegally parcelled out and sold.12

The mechanisms of rapid social mobility engendered by political or bureaucratic access to

property and real estate following the reforms of the 1980s therefore stimulated a very large-

scale spatial mobility. Quitting their formerly state-owned apartments, beneficiaries of

public–private real estate transactions bought and built on suburban land, which according to

the 1989 Ministry of Housing report, itself may have been initially illegally parcelled out and

re-sold from the Municipal Land Reserves. These processes probably sparked the boom in resi-

dential construction on the periphery of Algiers (Safar Zitoun, 2010, 48–50). The majority of

these new neighbourhoods are mixed residential–commercial. The typical housing-unit con-

struction pattern is a villa with commercial storefronts built into the ground floor, the revenue

from which can continue the upward social climb. Residential mobility thus drives social pro-

motion: access to property and real estate, and the conversion of the beneficiaries of real

estate redistribution into small or middling independent economic entrepreneurs, has been a

principal mechanism of contemporary social mobility in Algeria. A micro-spatial study in the

modes of population distribution in Greater Algiers, as the following section reveals, clearly

demonstrates this.

Weakening of the state and the resurgence of society: social promotion in the urban

periphery

Data trends from 1987 and 2008 reveal a prolific distribution of land lots in suburban Algiers,

underscoring the effects institutional shifts in the rules governing the interaction between

state, society, and market in the late 1980s and early 1990s had on the urban development of

Algiers during the past 20 years.

The flow of rural migrant populations towards Algiers sparked by independence tapered in the

mid-1980s, and net migration to the Wilaya of Algiers13 halted altogether in 1987. Whereas past

migration flows had been marked by a centripetal flow towards the centre of Algiers, 1987

marked the first year in a continued trend of outward flow from downtown Algiers to the first

and later second suburban rings. Between 1987 and 2008, the five administrative units compos-

ing central Algiers lost close to 240,000 inhabitants to suburban migration – nearly a quarter of

the population of the city, according to the 1987 census.

While data from the same period indicate an overall increase in urban population density,

from 28.92 to 38.26 inhabitants/hectare (ha) in 1987 and 2008, respectively, aggregate figures

obfuscate the significant drop in population density in the urban core and a doubling of popu-

lation density in the first suburban ring between 1987 and 1998, and a sharp increase in the

second suburban ring between 1998 and 2008. The neighbourhoods of Algiers’ city centre –

Bab el Oued, Sidi M’hamed (Belcourt), and the Casbah – witnessed a net population migration

towards the suburbs. Inhabitants from central Algiers, and more generally downtown Algiers,

either sold or converted their primary residence into commercial property in order to move to

the suburbs. Others kept their urban apartments as secondary residences. Between 1998 and

2008, 12,624 apartments in downtown Algiers were vacated but not subsequently re-occupied

– presumably they were kept as secondary residences.

The Journal of North African Studies 685

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

5:36

08

Oct

ober

201

4

Property and real estate strategies available to Algerians varied during the 1980s and 1990s,

prescribing the effects of social mobility for different socio-economic groups at each stage, but

combining to effect the spatial development of suburban Algiers (see Map 1).

During the first wave of property and real estate liberalisation (1981–1990), access to wealth

and administrative reach limited the scope of market accessibility. As noted above, the 1981

reform limited market access to state cadres or Algerians with capital savings: the close to

72% of Algerians who were behind in rent payments, along with their occupied bien vacant,

were left out of the trend. While the 1986 reform expanded the liberalisation programme to

include public-sector housing units built after 1981, extremely tight demand caused by a

severe housing crisis and the lucrative gains to be generated by flipping those properties into

the private market placed a premium on bureaucratic and administrative intervention.

Wealthy early beneficiaries from the private sector used capital gains generated by the dual

pricing scheme to re-invest in the property and real estate market, participating in the first

wave of migration, creating the first suburban ring. High-ranking state cadres and the political

elite used their own neo-patrimonial power to access large stretches of land on the southern

suburbs of Algiers at subsidised state prices, resulting in the creation of socio-economically

homogenous, closed and elitist ‘cooperative’ residential neighbourhoods.

Veritable extensions of El Biar and Hydra, the elite districts of the colonial era reserved to

high-ranking officials following independence, the development of the southern suburbs of

Baba Hassen, Ben Aknoun, Dely Ibrahim, Draria, and El Achour were organically linked to

the former single-party regime. Though 20 years have passed since the shift to multiparty poli-

tics the extension of the housing market to the middle class, power and capital continue to be

concentrated in those districts. Map 2, plotting topographical view of 2008 vehicle ownership

concentration in the Greater Algiers region, reveals the lingering financial and political privi-

leges of the southern suburbs. Unequal access to state resources, not market-generated social

mobility, promoted spatial mobility to these neighbourhoods.

The shift to a multi-party system in 1990 created new political clienteles, opening the markets

to a broader spectrum of lower-middling and more popular classes of Algerians. Suburban

Map 1. Distribution of growth of individual housing units, 1998–2008 (each point in the distributionrepresents an increase of 10 housing units).

M. Safar Zitoun686

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

5:36

08

Oct

ober

201

4

development triggered by this second wave of beneficiaries concentrated in the eastern suburbs

of Algiers (e.g. Baraki, Bordj el Bahri, Bordj el Kiffan, Dar el Beida, and Les Eucalyptus, where

the Islamic Salvation Front held the most clout following the 1990 municipal elections, and

where the Executive Municipal Delegations (DEC) tried to create new political clienteles

when FIS councils were dissolved in 1992.

Neighbourhoods built during the second wave of market liberalisation are easily recognisable.

Unlike the well planned, high standing residential neighbourhoods of the southern suburbs, the

eastern suburban developments followed a mixed residential–commercial model, and were built

with minimal municipal urban planning oversight. Though constructed on concessions from the

Municipal Land Reserves, which contractually obliged the land recipient to follow urban plan-

ning specifications, few of the buildings in these neighbourhoods have registered titles or build-

ing permits. Initial Municipal Land Reserve recipients ignored city ordinances, illegally

parcelling the land and re-selling it to land-hungry middle classes.

Lacking official land titles, new owners could not apply for building permits. With no formal

record of these developments on the municipal books, new phases of construction were not

formally linked to municipal service expansion, and the resulting neighbourhoods therefore

lack access to basic utilities and services like water, gas, sewerage, paved roads, and garbage

collection. Though lacking these basic infrastructures, owners maximised the opportunities

for future social mobility by leveraging the advantages of the absence of planning oversight

and the freedom of ‘self-build’ projects: housing units in these neighbourhoods are ‘vertical

family’ homes, with the ground floor used for commercial activities and several related

family groups occupying different storeys. The commercial activities these households

engage in has supplemented, if not exceeded, income generated by formal employment else-

where. In Algiers’ vast eastern suburbs, then, spatial mobility increased social mobility oppor-

tunities, not vice versa.

Map 2. Private vehicle ownership per household.

The Journal of North African Studies 687

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

5:36

08

Oct

ober

201

4

Conclusion

The post-colonial nationalisation of land and real estate laid the foundations of the political

economy of Algerian property. The struggle between state and society over access to and

control over property has been a major preoccupation in Algerian economic, political, and

social arenas. State distribution of land and real estate to compliant citizens and supporters

has been an effective political strategy. Liberalisation allowed the regime to divest indirect sub-

sidies like state-defined rental and concession prices as well as management costs. In terms of the

figures, liberalisation seemed effective: in 1966, 70% of Algerians rented their housing unit

(ONS 1968), by 1987 that number had dropped to 22% (ONS 1988), falling to 13.8% in 1998

(ONS 1999). In a little over 30 years, Algeria had transformed from a society of renters to a

country of property owners (or co-owners).

Liberalisation did not, however, reinforce the market – the mechanism by which social mobi-

lity creates spatial mobility opportunities – but rather supplanted it. The highly administrative

process in which liberalisation occurred (and society’s creative responses) distorted the market

while reinforcing clientelism and corruption within the state administration. Those strategies

that subverted both state and market are at the origin of the reversal in the causal relationship

between social and spatial mobilities that make the Algerian case such an outlier. The disquali-

fication of abstract and general market rules (Lefebvre 1974) has, at the very least, reinforced

communitarian and localist logics that rely on the proximity of individuals to informal, local

political, and economic networks, to the detriment of formal, national political, and social

processes.

The Algerian situation is, in comparative terms, therefore a very particular one; one in

which, since before independence, urban social relations have experienced none of the

characteristics conventionally attributed to the modernity and rationality of generalised

market exchange. Such continued to be the case during the consolidation of the neo-patrimo-

nial system that dominated property relations up to the early 2000s. Since then, other logics,

conforming more closely to the ‘metropolitan’ model proposed by Bourdin (2005) have

emerged strongly; these newer patterns display much more clearly than before the determin-

ing effect of money alone in the behaviours and attitudes of the social actors who create the

urban fabric.

Notes

1. See Khadra (2008) for a literary example of the discriminatory market set in colonial Oran.

2. Notably, Decree 63–68 of 1 March 1963, lowering rent and Decree 63–88 of 18 March 1963 on biens vacants.

3. These decrees did not apply to the private sector housing market.

4. Properties declared biens vacants by Decree 63–88 of 18 March 1963, fell under the rent regime established by

Decree 63–64, issued less than three weeks earlier.

5. The equivalent of 15,000 DA in 2011, or close to $US 150.00 – just under the actual minimum wage in Algeria,

18,000 DA per month.

6. Law 81–01 of 10 February 1981.

7. Law 81–01 of 10 February 1981, Article 27.

8. Decree 81–44 of 21 March 1981, Article 3.

9. Law 86–02 of 4 February 1986.

10. Law 86–02 of 4 February 1986, Article 3 and Article 6.

11. Law 86–02 of 4 February 1986, Article 2.

12. For more details, see Safar Zitoun 2004, 326.

13. Algeria has 48 wilayas, or prefectures.

M. Safar Zitoun688

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

5:36

08

Oct

ober

201

4

References

AARDES (Association Algerienne pour la Recherche Demographique, Economique et Sociale). 1966. Unpublished

report, Les conditions de logement a Alger.

Amiot, M. 1986. Contre l’Etat: les sociologues. Elements pour une histoire de la sociologie urbaine en France

(1900–1980). Paris: Editions de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales.

Bourdin, A. 2005. La metropole des individus. La Tour d’Aigues : Editions de l’Aube.

Castells, M. 1998. La societe en reseaux. Paris: Editions Fayard.

Khadra, Yasmina. 2008. Ce que le jour doit a la nuit. Algiers: Sedia.

Lefebvre, H. 1974. La production de l’espace. Paris: Anthropos, p. 468.

MHU (Ministere de l’Habitat et de l’Urbanisme), RADP. 1989. Enquete : evaluation du dispositif d’acces aux reserves

foncieres communales. Unpublished report, Algiers.

MHU (Ministere de l’Habitat et de l’Urbanisme), RADP. 2008. Bilans annuels consolides des OPGI 2006 et 2007.

Unpublished report, Algiers.

MUCH (Ministere de l’Urbanisme, de la Construction et de l’Habitat [Ministry of Housing]), RADP. 1979. Pour une

politique operationnelle de l’habitat. Unpublished report, Algiers.

MUCH (Ministere de l’Urbanisme, de la Construction et de l’Habitat [Ministry of Housing]), RADP. 1981. Internal

report, Algiers.

ONS (Office National des Statistiques). 1968. Recensement General de la population et de l’habitat : Rapport de

synthese. Alger.

ONS (Office National des Statistiques). 1988. Recensement general de la population et de l’habitat 1987. Resultats

preliminaires, in Collections Statistiques, Vol. 09, Decembre 1998, Alger.

ONS (Office National des Statistiques). 1999. Recensement General de la Population et de l’Habitat. Principaux resul-

tats. in Collections Statistiques vol. 80, Alger.

Park, R. E., E. Burgess, and R. MacKenzie. 1925. The City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Safar Zitoun, M. 1996. Strategies patrimoniales et urbanisation: Alger 1962–1992. Paris: Editions l’Harmattan.

Safar Zitoun, M. 2004. “Alger, ville confisquee par l’Etat.” In Alger, lumieres sur la ville, edited by N. Chabbi-Chem-

rouk, 321–330. Algiers: Editions Dalimen.

Safar Zitoun, M. 2010. “‘Alger d’aujourd’hui: une ville a la recherche de ses marques sociales’.” Insaniyat 44–45: 33–59.

Sgroı-Dufresne, M. 1983. “La politique urbaine a Alger : continuite et ruptures.” PhD diss., University of Paris 1.

Sgroı-Dufresne, M. 1986. Alger 1830–1984 : Strategies et enjeux urbains. Paris: Editions Recherches sur les Civilis-

ations.

Simmel, Georg. [1903] 1984a. “Metropoles et mentalites.” In L’ecole de Chicago, naissance de l’ecologie urbaine,

edited by Y. Grafmeyer and I. Joseph, 53–60. Paris: Editions Aubier Montaigne.

Simmel, Georg. [1908] 1984b. “Digressions sur l’etranger.” In L’ecole de Chicago, naissance de l’ecologie urbaine,

edited by Y. Grafmeyer and I. Joseph, 61–78. Paris: Editions Aubier Montaigne.

Weber, Max. [1922] 1982. La ville. Die stadt, extraits de Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Paris: Editions Aubier Montaigne.

The Journal of North African Studies 689

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

5:36

08

Oct

ober

201

4