France has a prolonged tradition of being land of asylum. Nevertheless, the ever-increasing
influx of immigrants and inconvenient immigration politics had provoked many difficult situations within French society. On the one hand, the existence of the so called problematic zones and their sociál problems clearly manifest the defects of republican integration system. On the other hand, we should not omit the role of the immigrants themselves as participants in the prolonged crisis. Other influence that could be mentioned is the clash of memory and history, when, among other factors, the statě comes into play as a source of official history, especially the colonial history. This situation affects most intensely the immigrants from northern Africa, especially the Algerians.