Postcolonial Hospitality: The Immigrant as Guest (review)

In a sophisticated and well-argued study, Mireille Rosello asks what issues might be at stake if the immigrant (legal or otherwise, and usually non-European) were considered a guest? Engaged with current postcolonial theory and with Jacques Derrida's essay Of Hospitality (Paris: Calmann-Lévy,1997; Stanford: Stanford UP, 2000), Rosello's analysis combines a brief historical inquiry into the nature of French hospitality as a metaphor for public acceptance of the other, and close textual analysis of several recent French and francophone novels and films. As a result, Postcolonial Hospitality is a work that will prove to be invaluable to scholars and general readers interested in contemporary French society and immigration studies.

In the preliminary chapter, Rosello examines France's traditional role as the terre d'asile or terre d'accueil for political refugees and how this image of a welcoming France is now contrasted with France as part of the "fortress Europe," a land that seeks to close its borders to unwelcome immigrants. Rosello's analysis also discusses the entire decade of the 1990s in France, when media reports of demonstrations and sit-ins by hundreds of sans-papiers demanding amnesty and regularization of their status filled newspapers almost every week. Also featured in her study on the role of the French state in defining hospitality is an examination of the French government's efforts to hinder illegal immigration throughout the 1990s, including an attempt to make private citizens responsible for the residency status of their guests (i.e., the Jacqueline Deltombe case).

Continuing with the notion of public (State) and private concepts of hospitality, in chapter two, Rosello examines Didier van Cauwelaert's 1994 Goncourt Prize winning novel Un aller simple (One-Way Ticket). Un aller simple is a humorous story about a young man (born in France, raised by Gypsies) deported to a nonexistent Moroccan village because his fake passport names this fictional place as that of his birth. Rosello's analysis of the novel links it to French and European Union immigration laws and treaties of that decade. The absurdity of immigration laws that seek to reduce individuals to their paper, or "official," identities without regard to the fluctuating and ethereal nature of national identities are highlighted by van Cauwelaert's novel. Rosello's chapter looks at Un aller simple in the context of what this text reveals about definitions of hospitality between groups and between individuals, especially the notion of hosts and guests and their respective responsibilities. Furthermore, Rosello analyses van Cauwelaert's work in relationship to larger issues of French national identity, exclusion, and inclusion. As she notes: "What Cauwelaert's novel does achieve, however, is an exploration of the constantly interlocking identities of communities perceived as 'ethnic' by the dominant French constructions of Frenchness" (54).

Chapters three, four, and five examine several French and francophone narratives, feature films, and documentaries in light of metaphors of hospitality and the notion of immigrants as guest. The films studied by Rosello are: Karim Dridi's Bye-Bye (1997), about two brothers visiting family in Marseilles; Yamina Benguigui's documentary film (which exists also as a subsequent publication) Mémoires d'immigrés (1997); and in more in-depth analyses, Merzak Allouache's Salut cousin! (1996); Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's La promesse (Belgium, 1996); and Jean Renoir's Boudu sauvé des eaux (1932). Renoir's classic film is examined in the context of Sembene Ousmane's short story "La noire de . . ." (1962), the poignant tale of a young Senegalese domestic who kills herself while in the employ of an unfeeling French family. So far, very little critical attention has been paid to the two important films Salut cousin! and La promesse;therefore, Rosello's essays are most welcome additions to the relatively slim body of work on francophone cinema dealing with immigration. Her essay on Allouache's quirky comedy about two...