"A journey is often the opportunity to revisit, the moment to take stock of one’s identity or rather one’s identities. Those we have inherited, those we embody in the eyes of others and those we project to ourselves, that we try to emancipate. Whether national, economic, ethnic, minority, cultural, sexual, psychological or affective, a journey brings into question all of these layers of identity, which form new configurations throughout our movements. It is during these movements that the feeling of being a FOREIGNER appears...

During a recent journey to Vietnam and to Cambodgia, I discovered a new way to explore this feeling of being a foreigner. In a discussion about the violence of the conflicts that have torn these countries apart, I remembered the pages of my father’s military papers; my father, who was made to crush this Indochina of earlier times. As the discussion progressed, because of my French nationality, I realized that I was considered the son of a colonialist, even though what linked my father to Indochina was the legacy of another colonisation, that to his country, Algeria. Once again during this conversation, it struck me that the upheavals and the devastation caused by the violence of armed conflict should lead us to reflect upon the image of the foreigner in many areas of the world.