Custody Battles and the Politics of Franco-Algerian Divorce, 1962–1992

Based on previously untapped archives, this article explores Franco-Algerian custody battles in order to offer a new perspective on the economic, political, and emotional history of decolonization. These disputes both personified and gendered contests over sovereignty in the wake of the 1970s economic crisis: French courts granted the custody of children to the mothers, while Algerian law, partially based on Muslim law, privileged the fathers. Divorce and custody became subjects of sentimental concern and intensive diplomatic negotiation at the highest state levels. Drawing on an exemplary case, the article shows how French and Algerian law courts, feminists and migrants’ rights activists, diplomats and journalists debated these cases, amplifying their symbolic resonance over time. Family disputes replicated geopolitical contests on a smaller scale and provoked new ones in turn, as children’s futures became freighted with political as well as personal meaning. In the process, conceptions of economic and national, religious and gender difference on both sides of the Mediterranean became affectively entwined. Custody cases that erupted over two decades reveal the troubled “divorce” between the two countries as an ongoing emotional, economic, and legal battlefield.