"Invoking collective ownership of former colonial property for individual gain is not an isolated incident in Algeria. The widespread occupation of colonial-era properties and refusal to pay state rent in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, in addition to more recent examples -- including SIFFAN, UNIAL, and several cases of former colonial agricultural land claimed by tribes in the High Plains -- underscore a consistently held perception of colonial-era property. When Algerians invoke the colonial period to justify access to land and properties whose value has exponentially increased as Algeria has become increasingly embedded in the international economy, they are not mnemonically reciting tropes and slogans of the past, as French president Emmanuel Macron seemed to have hinted during a recent visit to Algiers. Rather, they are making a very clear set of claims based on collective memory. They are invoking colonialism in order to appropriate and claim the spoils of the Algerian war of independence. Specifically, they are asserting their collective right to egalitarian, individual ownership of what should have always been theirs: Un seul héros, le peuple (A single hero: the people). Algerian cities like Oran remain preeminent sites for this long and ongoing process of decolonization."

From the war of national liberation to gentrification