The Harga In Popular Algerian Song: Representations And Identity Constructions

Abstract

The phenomenon of illegal immigration (or harga) has been constantly evolving in recent years. Our study focuses on the popular Algerian song addressing the issue of harga and its links with identity construction. It is a question of knowing how this song, as a social and cultural fact, carries a message of transgression and the search for identity reconstruction.It should be noted that these harga songs, which have gradually become hymns of protest and revolt, have played an important role as a privileged means of expressing emotions and feelings of demoralization which encourage young people to act of harga. The questions we will try to answer are the following:- How does the circulation of these songs on social networks feed the migration desires of harragas? What messages do they convey?- How do they approach the clandestine crossing of the Mediterranean and the living conditions in Europe? What representations of harragas do they convey?- Are the singers targeting a given audience (the new generation for example)? What is the impact of their songs on the evolution of the harga phenomenon?- Why and how do Algerian artists use foreign languages in popular protest songs?On the basis of a corpus made up of a set of popular Algerian songs of a social and protest nature on the phenomenon of harga, collected from social networks, we propose to analyze the linguistic and stylistic processes most used in this type of song that carries the voice of young zaoualiya (the poor) and translates their hopes and their revolts.