Between the preamble to the Constitution of France’s Fifth Republic, and its fourth line, lies a contradiction; while the preamble recognizes "the right to self-determination of peoples," article 24 grants "French citizens living abroad" the right to representation in the National Assembly and in the Senate, and article 34 allows laws (arising from the legislature) to define rules relating to "nationality, status and capacity of persons." When construction workers fell from scaffolding, when tools malfunctioned, when work sites collapsed, what special problems emerged from this relationship between citizenship and nationality (Genova 2004a, 2004b)? My contribution to this panel on the body draws on disability studies under circumstances of imperialism. This study uses historical method, relying on records groups within the National Archives of Algeria, including administrative records of the Direction du travail et de la securité sociale, as well as the office of Travail et affaires sociales, and administrative collection of Statistiques des accidents du travail, during the Plan de Constantine (1955-1960). I analyze data from these files and other documents pertaining to new construction in the city of Constantine during this period using the discourses Douglas Baynton identified governing disability as a privilege of citizenship (2005, 2011). In doing so, I argue that disability in the Fifth Republic functioned as a privilege of civic belonging, extending conversations about “embodiment” in French Algeria (Shepard 2018) to the still unexplored quotidien experiences of labourers.