Social Service Assistance to Migrants (SSAE): Individual files on social assistance granted (1958-1969)

Originally, the SSAE (service social d’aide aux émigrants) was called SIAE (service social d’aide aux émigrants). It was declared to the prefecture as an association on 29 May 1926, although its first meeting as a committee was held on 18 December 1924. The SIAE’s head office was at 40, rue de l’Élysée, Paris. Its purpose is to help emigrants when the difficulties they encounter can only be overcome by efforts made in different countries. There was also a committee in Marseille, which formed an association in 1928. On 24 October 1929, the SIAE officially changed its name to Service social d’aide aux émigrants (SSAE). Its head office was moved to 3, rue Jules Lefebvre, in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. It was recognised as being in the public interest by decree on 23 August 1932. The SSAE’s activities were many and varied, depending on the historical period: it helped families wishing to emigrate to the United States in the 1920s; it provided assistance to foreign workers in the 1930s; it came to the aid of people placed in internment camps, particularly Jewish families, and managed aid funds for refugees during the Second World War; after the war, it returned to its mission of assisting foreign families immigrating to France. The diversity of the actions carried out by the association is also due to the wide range of situations with which it is confronted and which concern all aspects of the material and moral living conditions of foreigners: reconstituting a broken family unit, adopting a child from another nation, moving from a shanty town to a decent home, obtaining a social right, awarding study grants, translating a document, providing material assistance to a destitute refugee, providing information in hostels for workers whose families have remained in their country of origin, learning French or acquiring vocational training, giving practical advice to a mother, etc.At the beginning of the 1970s, the SSAE’s activities were extended to the whole of mainland France: offices were set up in forty-five départements with high foreign population densities, and outreach services were provided in one hundred and twenty-two towns. The SSAE’s remit, which is funded by the State, has evolved in line with the migration policies of successive governments.The principle of assimilation of foreign families (1946 agreement) was followed by the notion of adaptation of these families (1976 agreement) and then integration (1996 agreement).The latter convention also included for the first time the objective of « facilitating their return to their country of origin or their emigration to another country ». From the 1990s onwards, following a takeover by government departments, the association was gradually marginalised, particularly through the introduction of departmental reception plans for reuniting families under the aegis of the Office for International Migration (OMI).On 10 April 2003, the Interministerial Committee on Integration announced the creation of a French agency responsible for reception and migration, encompassing the OMI and the SSAE. In 2005, some of the SSAE’s functions (public service, reception and integration missions) were merged with those of the OMI to become the Agence nationale de l’accueil des étrangers et des migrations (ANAEM), which in 2009 was transformed into the Office français de l’immigration et de l’intégration (OFII). The SSEA, renamed « Soutien, solidarité et actions en faveur des émigrants » (Support, solidarity and action in favour of emigrants), will continue to provide information, guidance, training and publications until 2010 (studies, Accueillir magazine, Green Book on migration project).On 2 February, at an extraordinary general meeting, a resolution was passed to dissolve the association and transfer its assets to the Fondation nationale des sciences politiques. This fonds of 131 items, classified by country of origin and then alphabetically (by family name), lists the individual files for social aid granted by the SSAE to migrants and refugees of all origins (Spain, Yugoslavia, Russia, Italy, Poland, Germany, Portugal, Hungary, Romania, Armenia, Czechoslovakia, Tunisia, Morocco, Albania, Mali, Africa, Bulgaria, America, Oceania, Austria, Belgium, Holland, Finland, Greece, England, Ireland, Turkey, Switzerland, Egypt, Algeria and Asia). It is made up of administrative records of social assistance granted. The files are not gender-disaggregated, but some concern migrant women.