Political effects and scope of memory on local public migration policy: The case of the reception of asylum seekers in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, France

This article examines how local memories of refugee reception are mobilized, contested, and reinterpreted in the contemporary context of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, an emblematic French municipality known for its role in sheltering refugees during the Second World War. Drawing on empirical research, it shows that opposition to reception in rural areas is not always expressed overtly, but may instead take more subtle forms, such as the erasure of the present from official narratives or the refusal to incorporate recent reception policies into institutional accounts. This case study therefore invites a reassessment of the frequently asserted assumption that the anchoring of a strong local memory necessarily fosters receptiveness toward refugees. The article demonstrates that memory in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon is shaped by power relations and tensions among actors holding divergent visions: While the municipal authorities tend to freeze memory within a past temporal framework, other actors—associations, individuals, or those embedded in village sociability—appropriate and reactivate this memory to legitimize contemporary reception practices and challenge exclusionary discourses. These memorial mobilizations divert the original project of the local museum of memory, which excludes the contemporary temporality of reception within its exhibitions, revealing the deeply political and conflictual nature of the relationship between local memory and refugee reception.