This multidisciplinary edited volume examines wide-ranging exchanges between France and its
Mediterranean neighbours and their impact. It questions the changing notion of a Mediterranean
space and its representation centrality and relevance in terms of France's international
relations under Sarkozy's presidency from the launch of the Union for the Mediterranean and
its complex articulations with the European Union's own agenda in the region to the tortuous
relations with Libya made even more complicated by the 2011 'Arab Spring'. Beyond the realm of
state relations and formal policy networks the volume examines the crucial role played by
diasporas the interplay between postcolonial and transnational representations in the fields
of cultural diplomacy cinema and architecture and considers how these can produce merged or
hybrid identities. Later in the collection the politics of ethnicity in post-war France the
interplay between negative perceptions of Islam and the changing memory of the Algerian War
and the evolution of Franco-Algerian relations since 1962 are used to question the weight of
the colonial past when analysing the relations between France and North Africa.
