The Impact of Social Mix Policies in France

Abstract

Abstract In France, a Housing Act, called Solidarité et Renouvellement Urbain (Solidarity and Urban Renewal), came into force in 2000. Its main aim is to challenge segregation in housing and to strengthen solidarity among citizens. It promotes a tenure mix through legal requirements: in urban areas, every commune should reach a minimum of 20 per cent social housing in its housing stock before 2020. This paper attempts to explain why policy makers believe in the virtues of a tenure mix. The second aim is to assess the discrepancies between the rhetorical level of policy aims and the pragmatic level of policy outputs, raising methodological issues on the relevance of the communal scale for the measure of segregation and social mix. The conclusion raises paradoxical issues: social class segmentation resists social mixing more strongly than ethnic segmentation; the French social mix policy strengthens ghettos and hinders the right to decent housing for the very poor. Keywords: Neighbourhoodshousing tenureurban regenerationsegregationsocial housing Notes 1 The SRU Housing Act presumes segregation is an 'urban' issue and rural areas are beyond the scope of this Act. In urban areas, small communes with fewer than 1500 inhabitants in the Paris Region, and fewer than 3500 inhabitants elsewhere, are also exempted of this obligation. 2 Quotations in French were translated by the author. 3 The Welfare State in France is slowly disappearing and prisons are crowded as in the US. Conversely, the Welfare State might emerge again in the US, should Barack Obama be successful. 4 As noted earlier, ethnic recording is forbidden in France. 'Foreigners' and 'immigrants' (immigrés) are the only statistical data available as a proxy. Foreign residents (3 260 000) have a foreign nationality and they are born abroad (2 750 000) or in France (510 000). Immigrants (4 310 000) are born abroad and dwell in France with either foreign (2 750 000) or French (1 560 000) nationality (INSEE 1999 Census, in Thave, Citation1999). French nationals born in France from parents with a foreign origin are not included among immigrants.