“Resurfacing of the repressed past”, “war of memories”, “competitions of victims”: since the 1990s, the issue of collective memory has entered the public debate, especially when it comes to the role of immigrants in the national narrative.The idea that there would be a “need for memory” with regards to immigration —from immigrants and their offspring but also from French society at large— has become obvious. As a result, it has increasingly called the attention of public authorities and of a variety of social actors (academics, artists, memory activists, …)Based on a comparative study in the two cities of the Rhone-Alpes Auvergnes region: Saint-Étienne and Villeurbanne, this thesis aims at assesing this “need for memory” with regards to immigration without taking this need for natural. It is rather regarded as a construction that can be used for political and social purposes.While these two cities are marked by an important industrial history, local memory –namely that related to immigration– is treated in different ways. This context begs the following question: “besides the past, what else it at stake in those public policies that are supposed to be entirely dedicated to it?” (Gensburger 2010).Through an approach that brings together ethnographic and document analysis, this work does not center on the relationship of a particular group to its memory but on the very question of memory. Memory is now considered as a major issue in the public sphere and has become a category for action and interpretation by public authorities but also for grassroots activists. Thisthesis represents an attempt at unraveling the conditions for its constitution as a new symbolic good that circulates in local territories. In addition, this work looks at the political stakes that are inherent to the publicizing of the immigration past.The institutional and activist translation of the inequalities plaguing immigrants and their offspring into terms of symbolic reparation informs the transformation of public action, the evolution of the struggle over the question of immigration and ultimately sheds light on the inter-penetration of these two worlds.