Social housing polity and the construction of ethnic boundaries. A comparison between Britain and France ; Politique du logement social et construction des frontières ethniques. Une comparaison franco-britannique

Abstract

This research analyses the way in which social housing policy contributes to the construction of ethnic boundaries in Britain and in France, relying on case studies in Birmingham and Marseilles. The thesis which is advocated is that social housing policy has a central role in the production of ethnic boundaries in both countries. As a consequence, it is not relevant to oppose a French universalist model, blind to ethnicity, to a British multiculturalist model which would recognise ethnic differences and mobilise ethnic categories. On both sides of the Channel, there is some institutional racism in local social housing policies, especially in the local management of social housing allocations. Social housing institutions routinely produce and mobilise ethnic categories and develop processes of ethnicisation and exclusion (or segregation) of some groups. Racism can neither be reduced to an ideology nor to individual and intentional acts. The ethnicisation and the exclusion of some groups from social housing (or from some parts of the social housing stock) are rooted in the banal, day-to-day working of institutions. The comparison between France and Britain reveals that there are some structural and cultural conditions of the production of ethnic boundaries. Its also shelds light on the contradictions of local antiracist policies. In Britain, multiculturalist antiracism, based on the recognition of "cultural difference" and of ethnic communities, encourages the euphemisation of ethnic discriminations into mere "cultural differences". In France, universalist antiracism, relying on the republican myth of ethnic indifferentiation, encourages the denial of ethnic discriminations, euphemised into socio-economic inequalities or attributed to the "misfitness" of some groups. ; Cette recherche analyse la façon dont la politique du logement social contribue à la construction des frontières ethniques en Grande-Bretagne et en France à partir d'études de cas menées à Birmingham et à Marseille. La thèse défendue est celle selon ...