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THE FRENCH POLICY FOR DISADVANTAGED NEIGBOURHOODS SEEN FROM AN URBAN RESEARCH PERSPECTIVE

Annales de la Recherche Urbaine

Anne Querrien

PUCA-METL. PARIS. FRANCE

Université d’Evry Val d’Essonne

The French urban policy became area-based as soon as it targeted disadvantaged neighbourhoods around 1975 in an experimental scheme called "Habitat et vie sociale", and from 1981 until now in what was first called "Développement social des quartiers" and since 1990 "Politique de la ville". This balance between area-based and area targeted policy is resumed by the fact that all this policy is implemented through contracts between the State, national level, and the commune, local level. But the local level, politically allowed to contract, is not the level seen as the good one by dwellers: those live in relatively small neighbourhoods, marginalized, and not represented properly even at the local political level of the commune. So there is a great difficulty for dwellers to be listened to while civil servants, social workers, volunteers are making plans of actions for the contracts: a lot seems to be done for those neighbourhoods, and dwellers do not appreciate; youth carry on violence, specially burning cars. A lack of confidence in institutions, deputies and all authorities results from this misunderstanding.

The neighbourhoods concerned by this situation are not marginal by themselves: they house around 10 millions persons, but out of the 6 millions French people who can be said poor with the international standard, only 2 millions live in the social housing projects which are the main place of this misunderstanding between dwellers and public authorities. The other French poor live in rural areas, in small towns, or in old buildings in great towns, but in a dispersed manner. Areas concerned by poverty as one of their typical feature are areas of social housing which were built from the mid-fifties until the mid-seventies. But as poverty is still a problem of a minority of people inside them, they are not featured by national policies as poor areas. The same happens with ethnicity: people from North Africa and from Black Africa are more numerous in those neighbourhoods than in all France, but most people from African origins live elsewhere, and those living there are not the majority in their neighbourhood, and even if some have French nationality they cannot be citizen, recognized in parties and associations as the old French residents.

The national housing policy changed around 1975 in relation with the worldwide move of public policies in developed countries. Social housing before was thought as housing all working class without enough money to house on private market, and that meant building social housing with State subsidies at a large scale, with inflation consequences. So the move was to stop building a great quantity of social housing, and to devote the existing one to poorer dwellers. This new meaning of social housing was not accepted by people living in already, whose leaders became very defensive in front of newcomers. The alliance between leaders of social housing tenants unions and local elected representatives from leftist parties began to collapse. Mayors hesitated between applying the new national regulations or carrying on the old policy of housing local civil servants or recommended people in social housing estates in their communes. With a national allowance given to social housing owners to house the poorest, those choose the poorest. And it was no longer a gift to be housed in social housing. The mayors began to disregard those quarters. The risk of political marginalisation of those neighbourhoods grew. This risk was seen as soon as the new policy began. So it was asked to urban researchers to think to this situation, either by local research-action or by evaluation-research in relation with national policies. In spite of the great quantity of research done, the critical situation of those neighbourhoods remains, and the right

for housing cannot be guaranteed for all, as it has been recognized at the Istanbul submit in 1995.

Urban research linked with area-based urban policy

During the fifties and sixties the urban studies commissioned by the national state were mostly quantitative, linked with national planning of local equipments. Quantities of equipments in relation of quantities of population were defined by national norms. Communes were subsidised by the State to realise those equipments, as to realize social housing. The main concern was with the price of the land, and with the fact that it was not possible to realise everything in time. Social housing dwellers remember of their struggles for transports, schools, cultural equipments.

Creation of local public spaces

At the end of the sixties it appeared to national experts that public expenses were going to be restricted, and that it will be no longer possible to promise equality in equipment for alls. A new legitimacy had to be found: equity, that is local ability to fund the equipments claimed for, with a transfer of national money to localities. Some intellectual criticism of social housing estates had already appeared (Chombart de Lauwe, Lefebvre, Castells). The French Urban research was specifically commissioned by the State to think the move from a State urban policy to a local urban policy, inside national urban regulations. The researchers’ work on national regulations was mostly critical and showed how those regulations were taken in relation with capital interests, in industry or in land. But some researches were conducted also in little areas in which there had been long struggles to get equipments ( Touraine, Castells, Mehl, Cherki),or resist social housing architecture and get rehabilitation of former housing (Anselme, Peraldi, Grass, Royer), or create new spaces for public speech ( public space in the sense of Jurgen Habermas) putting in relation owners and dwellers, and local representatives, either in social housing or in old working class neighbourhoods ( Joseph, Anselme, Peraldi, Querrien, Neveu, Tassin).

The main idea coming from all those researches, and from the action-research, specially, was that in those marginalized areas which did not get their equipments or the services they wanted, because local representatives ignored them, the only way for local people was to create their local public space, their local way of representing themselves to others, and first for themselves. In Roubaix for instance, the Atelier populaire d’urbanisme was the place were dwellers gathered in the evening, or sometimes during the day, to think with the researchers to their own plan of their neighbourhood and give researchers the lines to follow to make the plans. In Marseilles the action research on experimental renewal gathered dwellers in a "permanence", a place of meeting, in which they could discuss the renewal of their flat with others. In Lyons a team of young ladies from the neighbourhoods made the link between the community and owners, etc.. Action research showed that the gap between dwellers, social housing owners and municipalities could be reduced; but with the work of researchers, which for their own interests will leave the neighbourhood and stop to act as mediators.

At the same time some municipalities, ( from a group called GAM, Groupe d’action municipale) from towns in which there was a great quantity of social housing, experienced a new way of organising the technical work of the municipality towards the neighbourhood. To stand nearer the dwellers, they open offices in the neighbourhoods for the inhabitants to be able to put their asks directly to the technical team which was able to answer them. This local reform worked quite well; except when the demands where more political, that is in the poor social housing estates, whose problem, due to the reform in regulations of housing, is the lack of solidarity between the different groups of tenants.

So the national policy for social development of neighbourhoods which began in 1982 tried to mix the municipal experience of GAM, and the research experiences of local "public spaces". In a first time the State choose 22 neighbourhoods which were known to have heavy problems, linked with the fact that they have been built to house workers from car or iron industries, and have to change their meaning inside the all conurbation. But has this experiment was linked also to he big move of the urban policy towards the municipalities in the decentralization laws, very quickly the experimental definition of the policy was changed towards a common policy of the State and the municipalities towards the areas making problems to the municipalities.

Evaluation research of local urban policy

The evaluation researches made afterwards showed that those areas were often part of former industrial cities reluctant to move to service economy, but also social housing estates devoted to welcome poor people in relatively affluent cities. In the first case the local commune has become poor also and both the commune and the neighbourhood are under national standards; very often this kind of commune is ruled by the French Communist Party. In the second case, the ruling party is either Socialist or Right Wing, the municipality has some means to deal with its poor neighbourhood, but does not bother to do it because it is not worthy. Then the subsides given by the State may help if the control of the use of funds is sufficient.

Another evaluation-research was made very early, in 1985, when the policy had just begun to be implemented by municipalities. It was certainly to early, but it was necessary because a new government was coming which will ask for an audit; it was better to do it before. This evaluation showed very clearly that the municipalities who had already done a lot inside this policy had begun before, and found the policy as a new way of doing their own policy. This result is close to some former results of Crozier, Thoenig, Grémion. France was supposed to be a very centralized country in which Paris government forced its policy to the local; but looking carefully to the relations between the local and the national in the sixties, these authors found that the prefect was more a mediator between the local and the national, than somebody enforcing the national will in the local. As soon as decentralisation began to be discussed at a national level, big municipalities, with the help of the Caisse des depôts et consignations, the French public bank, had begun to create their own institutions to take care of urban affairs at the local level, for instance the "agences d’urbanisme". So when the new urban policy came they were ready to get in, because they had made the same analysis of the situation.

The "agences d’urbanisme" were at first teams of planners. But as the French law for urbanism (1967) creates the possibility to plan an area new with the developers, they had to create new kinds of professionals: "chefs de projet" in charge of this little areas planning, with owners, developers, etc… and "chargés des questions sociales", in charge of the social problems created by the new urbanism: displaced people specially. So the new policy mixed those two profiles in the "chef de projet de développement social urbain" in charge of linking all partners concerned by an area, from national administration and local administration. A contract was signed between the national and the local to agree on a common analysis of the area problems, and to give the great lines of the plan to tackle with it. The contract is funded by both the local and the national.

Local-national contracts, but what about dwellers?

As too many municipalities were asking for such a contract ( 22 became 150, went up to 750 and even more than 1000), it was decided that the negotiation of the contract would not happen any longer between the State and the municipalities directly, but through the region prefect, inside the contract between the State and the region for the development of that region. This is a way to regulate the asks coming from the municipalities of the same region, for them to consider they are not the only exciting case to deal with.

In this new decentralized context the demand to researchers has not been any longer to develop action-research and experiencing the policy as a lot of professionals have move in.

An interesting attempt was made to compare the approach of ten of these areas by statisticians and by sociologists. The national statistics were not worked to depict specific areas until now. It was done experimentally for this research, and is done for all urban France now. It showed that the areas chosen inside this policy were under the average for earnings, and education, had more people out of work; more immigrants, and that the population was mainly single or in large family. It gave precise figures to features already known. But it showed also that the leaders of the neighbourhoods met by sociologists have a different perspective, don’t recognize themselves in this features. Then the political problem of lack of communication everyone feels about these neighbourhoods, may last.

The new minister for towns, Claude Bartolone, has recommended that the new "contrats de ville" take a particular account of the dwellers participation. But it can already be seen, as reading at them, that these contracts are mainly public-public partnerships, signed between the national administrations and the local ones, trying to work properly together, to give themselves the same objectives, to combine their means. Everywhere these means are felt as insufficient in front of the problems met, and specially this incapacity to communicate with the people targeted, insufficient to have real area projects. The difficulty to move the image of those areas has been recognised so heavy, that it has been decided to destroy some of the buildings, the one from which inhabitants have moved already. The feeling of those who remain is despair, as the new buildings or gardens promised after destroy don’t come quickly enough or at all.

Area-based development, when it worked for short times, was led by militants or researchers who were able to create public spaces for listening to local people and defining solutions elaborated with them and known by them. The capture of those solutions into national technical models have cut them from their political significance, and let them useless even in the places in which there are born. Then it begins to be recognized that a new kind of democracy, more participative, should be implemented to prevent such a misfit. Such a move may bring new problems: this new participative democracy would be open to all, and perhaps better understood by the most advantaged. So new ways of management have to be implemented at the conurbation level, to realize equity between areas, and keep equality as an objective. Three dimensions can be more studied in this perspective: economy, ethnicity, culture.

Three dimensions on which more research is needed

The first set of researches made on the area-based development of disadvantaged neighbourhoods was more or less linked with the political problem of those areas, marginalized by the economic change. Researchers as social workers did not bring on the area any knowledge to share, except that of organizing people, which they mainly keep for themselves. The transmission of research results to local people was very poor, so as the capacity of research to create long time change. Research seems to have been unable to leave major presumptions of intellectuals in front of supposed poor people: the necessity to maintain economic actors apart because they are responsible of such a situation, the necessity to assimilate all participants to French nation and republic because it is supposed to be the only way of progress, the necessity for inhabitants to have mediators to confront themselves to authorities because they are not sufficiently educated to negotiate with them. Those beliefs had inspired the movement of students towards working class after 68, and were still present in their attempt of professionnalization through the new policy. To get rid of those beliefs, important researches have still to be made in the three fields of economy, ethnicity, and culture.

Can economic actors be present inside local urban partnerships?

As said before the existing agreement on partnership are mostly public/public, trying to coordinate and improve interventions of most public bodies but they generally ignore the economic actors. The level of unemployment in the areas targeted is twice the general level ( around 20% instead of 10%) and the qualification of the unemployed is worse than in the all country. Those neighbourhoods were built to house working class families, without great expectations in qualifications. The education system is not as good as elsewhere for all the not compulsory levels. So the local people are not able to search work anywhere like people living in the centre of towns, and this is known by enterprises which will not trust people coming from these neighbourhoods. There is a kind of vicious circle on the labour market for them, specially young ones. Working conditions may have improved inside firms, but distances to jobs are fairly important, hour schedules are different for each guy, etc… working class jobs seem less interesting than they were for parents at the end of their carrier. Those negative images from young ones are doubled by negative images of youth from entrepreneurs. The result is a big difficulty to get out this situation of unemployment even now that growth has come back.

State and public authorities made a lot to change this situation. The education system was moved towards national standard, but then met specific difficulties with a population who does not like academic studies. Some experiments are done, but in the national system it is very difficult to give them some stability. The State decided to give a special subside to civil servants working in those neighbourhoods, specially to teachers and policemen; it was named "discrimination positive territoriale": the advantage is not given to a member of minority claiming for his or her rights like in States, but to the civil servants working in an area where live those minorities. It appeared very quickly that it was a wrong idea: people went a few year in those areas to get the money, and to get the rights linked with it, and leaved as soon as possible. Again the economic advantage was built for the public sector only.

During the few months Bernard Tapie, French famous entrepreneur and president of Marseilles football club, was Minister for the towns, a direct attempt was made to make links with enterprises, with the concept of "entreprises citoyennes". Those enterprises would accept to employ young people from poor neighbourhoods in exchange with some advantages coming from the State or from local authorities, for instance a priority in public tenders( it appeared to be illegal), or a remove of some fiscal and social charges. This last measure has been kept since with different modalities of choosing the young people concerned. The first enterprises who accepted to become "entreprises citoyennes" were building enterprises which had some big works to do in the neighbourhoods. The young employed were then volunteers for this kind of work, and it seems to have been a real opportunity for them, like for the building of the Stade de France.

In 1995 there was a "plan de relance" of the policy for towns, organised by the right wing government of that time. All the territories under that policy were graded in a priorities geography. The areas with the highest level of unemployment were given the right to welcome enterprises which would employ local young people in exchange with cuts in taxes and social charges. At the first stage of the plan the streets from where the young were authorized to come were very strictly chosen at the national level! Of course it created a lot of problems, the non authorized being jealous of the authorized. It appeared afterwards that the enterprises which created enterprises in such generous conditions were not as competitive as those doing the same thing not far from there, specially for big supermarkets. Any how it brought some jobs in the area, but not in a sustainable manner, and not with the belief that the people of the area were able to change, and need to be put on valorisation paths rather than maintained in the old image of those low working class neighbourhoods.

Again the measures inside the public sector were the most important: national government gave local authorities, public enterprises, schools, police, associations 80% of five years salaries for jobs given to young unemployed less than 25 years. All public or social institutions implied in the plan had to invent with the young people new jobs which could become permanent after the five years. 350 000 jobs were created like that in front of an estimated unemployment of 700 000. Most of the jobs were taken as transitions by the young people. Lot of them thought it was difficult to be employed as the assistant of the school, as both institutions are not in love with their communities. The program seems to have selected the most integrated and leave the most violent, who are still burning cars, and perhaps more than ever.

The reality of the attempts made in the framework of the policy for towns- the money spent, the professional mobilised, the jobs created- does not seem to change anything at the outlaw position of the core of the people living in those areas. Some people began to speak of a neo-colonial situation: the only thing searched by the authority is peace, and no attention is paid to the real life of those neighbourhoods, specially in the economic field. But those areas can be developed in market places with new concepts, like the concept of selling goods just coming out the factory as in Roubaix or like the concept of informal economy. This economy is already ruling those cities, but in a struggle with the official economy which costs to both. Why not leave informal economy live when the formal one gets such cuts in charges to be there? Research about economy of social capital is very poorly developed in France. So the economy of those neighbourhoods is nearly not studied: the official economy still there is dependant upon national firms and unable to take decisions, and to participate local partnerships. The employment measures had been negotiated with the State at a national level

In a globalized economy important decisions are taken at a worldwide level, but consequences for people are suffered at a local level, in areas in which social capital can be invested in new kind of answers, local services specially (cf Sassen). As it has been showed for big electronic firms or for new economy, social capital to be invested from nearly nothing needs very informal manners at the beginning. This, which is very well tolerated in certain areas, is not in areas under social control. Paradoxically the tolerance, based on fear, is the one for violence and drugs; the power shows its presence by repressing the minor illegalities, and the image of the neighbourhoods become that of areas for drugs and violence, attracting new ones in that way. This image is even underlined for the ethnic groups.

Are local partnerships ethnic partnerships?

Since 1974, nearly the same date as the big move in social housing policy, the French immigration policy is to welcome families of immigrants already working in France. As social housing is the cheapest accommodation for families, little by little immigrant families have often move to social housing estates, were they may be four times more numerous than in other areas. As most of them come from Africa, the social housing areas are seen by everybody as ethnic territories. As everybody, immigrants prefer to get friends around and move in that way. All authorities in France are asked by national faith in republic, "laïcité", to discourage such moves, which are easier in the private housing than in the public. But most French people also don’t mix with foreigners or people from foreign origins, arguing that the level of school will not be so good. So in mixed areas families engage in different behaviours to prevent their children from going to the public school. As rich immigrants do exactly the same, the private schools, mostly catholic, may welcome as many immigrants as the public school. So the only way to get children to a school with very few children from foreign origins is to get out of the city in rich suburbs. It has become a big issue for developers ( Donzelot, Jaillet). A tendency to social dissociation seems to appear in upper middle classes.

The image of disadvantaged areas in such a context is that of ethnic areas. This is refused by people living there who feel themselves as people with little money but from very different ethnic origins, some from French provinces, some from North Africa, some from Africa, some from Asia, some from Caribbean islands, etc… In each area there will be a group more numerous than the others, having a kind of hegemony on the public space ( the local open space). The work engaged in research on public spaces was to experiment a local management open to all groups and not reserved to the more visible ones. A common research project between British and French researchers intended to compare the ways of building this local community management in both countries, and perhaps in some other European countries; it was submitted to European commission but was not selected. The Housing corporation in Great Britain, who had asked for this comparative research, discovered that the ethnic led housing associations, created problems to newcomers being of other origins than the leaders, and wanted to search about new modes of organisation with perhaps the French principles of not putting the origins in front. On the other hand in France the new ways of municipal organisation with neighbourhoods committees created by socialist mayors to open ( a little) to participative democracy seem to be completely shut to ethnic associations, which are not considered able to represent the whole people of the area. It is only for complete strangers that municipalities accept a representation in national terms; but the ones who have chosen to live in France for ever are not allowed to be represented by national associations.

Then there is a split between the visible public space in the street, were the people from Africa, North or Black, may be half of the people, and the political public space were the White are nearly the all. But the difficulty to introduce ethnic representatives in a council dealing with a local area is very important. At the local level the tendency will be to obey to quantitative figures, have a proportional representation, as do the Housing Corporation, or the Community Development Corporation in States. But this parallelism in representation and in reality is unstable because of moves in immigration. The last French municipal elections in Toulouse have shown that the will of the ethnic youth may be rather to be present at municipal level, but their demand was rejected by a majority of citizens of the town. In another town, Roubaix, the same way has been followed, but not through one cultural group: Maghrébins from Roubaix entered all political groups. Being half of the population of the city, they have members of their community in the town council. But they find it difficult to stand in the neighbourhoods committees were are accepted only associations for all people.

Researches don’t prove that school-fellows suffer from ethnic presence in the same school nor the contrary. Researches prove that the national measures taken to prevent parents or school directors from segregation attitudes don’t reach their objectives and even reinforce segregation because the richest or the most educated are the ones who turn the law the best. It is specially the case of school-teachers, who show thus their own confidence in school! An important research on-going is comparing attitudes in Bordeaux, Lyons and Paris region in this field. The first results show that the image is given by the behaviour of 10% of the population; but it is this behaviour which is reported all the times in medias, and making public general opinion. And then the other 90% , who don’t try to segregate, feel themselves as victims of the system so well described as urging to escape… This again creates a lack of confidence in government, and a will of retreat from voting.

The ethnicity issue, linked with school, appears to be mostly a cultural issue. Is the academic French culture, learnt at school and compulsory to go to university, the common culture in those areas, but also in business world, in music world, and anywhere?

Research on new cultural patterns

A new tender for research about culture in modern society was issued a few months ago by the Departments of Culture, Social Affairs, Towns and Urbanism. The researchers were asked to think, with field works, of the new ways of learning which are experienced in our societies through multiethnic contacts, or through new technologies, or other practices in the cities. The results are not here yet, but one can say that the blank which can be observed in the areas under the policy for towns, seems limited to those areas, under a high level of social control, and of control from one administration towards the other. In the cultural field, in the cultural jobs, ethnicity is a resource, but not to be used inside the community, to be used constructing a mixed new world with diverse origins. It is the former generation of social or cultural workers who tried to get interest from the different ethnic groups by looking to their own products, in a folkloric attitude. The new generation, no more than 35 years old, prefers to laugh at French culture, by little inventions, which gives it the revival natives do not find themselves. One of the most famous type of singing "rap", is sung in French by those people, a minority of them from French origin. French singing tradition is mixed by them to american and others. In all show-business and movies, the social mixity, which is urged through political discourse covering opposed practices, is not completely realised but accepted as a principle.

On the opposite, social mixity is not realised at the upper level of universities, in the great schools were are taught high civil servants, and heads of enterprises. There the pupils coming from the old French families are a huge majority. This because of the selection through the different levels of academic courses, but also perhaps because they don’t think that those places will accept them. Discrimination at the university level is becoming a national concern, and seems also to grade the universities themselves. The last universities created are the ones in new towns or in former big industrial towns; so they are the ones near the former working class places; near the supposed ethnic areas. They are the one who receives the largest number of students from ethnic minorities, and meet the social misunderstandings that discrimination creates always. The gathering of those students in law and social sciences shows an interest to solving the problems of their communities, or acting as mediators between the neighbourhoods and the local or national authorities. The State has offered thousands of jobs of mediators giving an amount of five years to see if it is the way to reduce social distance public services and poor and ethnic suburbs.

To young people in the suburbs, even with poor academic performances, proximity of the University gives a hope for more open public space in the town. Concerts can be organized there for all, sports in the campus can be used by youth in the neighbourhoods and new kind of contacts may happen which could contribute to fill the social gap between elites and people. But that may also mean that the culture taught and practised on University campus is no longer the culture of national and globalized elites. The ones wishing to be part of those elites will compete more and more for the few places in national great schools. But at the street level of society, which is the one for most private and public officers, learning in an open University, linked to the street culture, may lead to good qualification. This has to be studied through further research. But it can be said already that it is rather through culture, than through housing that social mixity can be produced.

The need of comparative research

Each country has its own history, its own relation to immigration but several features are the same, specially the tendency to discrimination which seems now a tendency for those who can afford it, to escape proximity with immigrants, and mixing cultures. The European appeal in favor of patrimonial architecture, conservation, historical culture is common to all our countries. The attitude towards immigrants and foreign cultures may be more diverse. The fight against discrimination seems easier in some countries than in others. National research programs are generally oriented towards studying immigrant adaptation to national regulations and cultural patterns. Little is done to look at this at the European level, more is done to compare with the situation in States, when this comparison is made quite difficult by difference in size and by federalism. Some international work has been done about public/private partnership, about economic leaders in local urban governance; is it possible to program the same kind of collective work on public/ethnic partnership, and the integration of the ethnic/immigrant dimension in local urban governance?