Social Service for Emigrants (SSAE): Individual files on social aid granted (1958-1969)

This collection of 131 articles, classified by country of origin and then alphabetically (by family name), lists the individual files on social aid granted by the SSAE to migrants and refugees of all countries of origin (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 consists in the administrative records on social assistance to migrants. The files are not gender disaggregated, but some concern migrant women. 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 located at 40, rue de l’Élysée in Paris. Its purpose is to help out-migrants. In addition, a committee also existed in Marseilles. On 24 October 1929, the SIAE officially changed its name to Service social d’aide aux émigrants (SSAE). Its head office was transferred to 3, rue Jules Lefebvre, Paris. The actions carried out by the SSAE were varied depending on the historical period: it helped families to the United States in the 1920s; provided assistance to foreign workers in the 1930s; helped people in internment camps, particularly Jewish families; and managed aid funds for refugees during the World War II. After the war, it assisted foreign families who had migrated to France. Its missions include assisance in reconstituting a dislocated family unit, adopting a child from another nation, moving from a shanty town to a decent home, obtaining a social right, granting scholarships, translating a document, providing material assistance to a destitute refugee, providing information to workers whose families have remained in the country of origin, learning French or acquiring vocational training, giving practical advice to mothers, etc. At the beginning of the 1970s, the SSAE’s activities extended to the whole of metropolitan France: offices were set up in 45 departments and there were permanent offices in 122 towns. The missions of the SSAE, which is subsidised by the State, change according to the migration policies of successive governments. Thus, the principle of assimilation of foreign families (1946 convention) was followed by the notion of adaptation of these families (1976 convention) and then integration (1996 convention). In addition, the latter convention includes 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 the state services, the association was gradually marginalised, particularly through the implementation of departmental reception plans for the reunion of families under the aegis of the Office for International Migration (IOM). In this sense, on 10 April 2003, the Inter-ministerial Committee on Integration announced the creation of a French agency responsible for reception and migration, including IOM and the SSAE. In 2005, part of the SSAE’s functions (public service, reception and integration missions) were merged with those of the IOM to become the National Agency for the Reception of Foreigners and Migration (ANAEM) which, in 2009, was transformed into the French Office for Immigration and Integration (OFII). The SSEA, renamed « Soutien, solidarité et actions en faveur des émigrants » (Support, solidarity and actions in favour of emigrants), will continue to provide information, guidance, training and publications (studies, the magazine Accueillir, the Green Book on Migration project) until 2010. On 2 February, during an extraordinary general meeting, a resolution was passed to dissolve the association and transfer its assets to the Fondation nationale des sciences politiques.