Equality Among the Refugees: A Rancièrean view of Montréal's Sans-Status Algerians.

The political status and movements of refugees and sans-papiers has become a focal point for French political thought, but also more universally in the wake of globalisation. We have witnessed the issue here in the US in the debate over immigration. In France, Alain Badiou's Organisation Politique, for instance, has coined the phrase, in regard to France's sanspapiers, 'all those who are here are from here.' However, if we follow closely the events of 2002 and after among the Algerian refugees of Montréal, what emerges is a case study in politics as conceived by Jacques Rancière. This paper details both the movement and its implicitly Rancièrean underpinnings. I will include an overview of Rancière's political thought. What is attempted in this paper, as part of a larger project that will examine other contemporary political movements, is to show how a politics can look in our world, and thus to begin to efface the line that is often drawn between political theory and political activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]