Housing policies and social order in imperial and post-imperial France
Politiques de logement et ordre social en situation impériale et post-impériale française
Metropolitan, colonial and overseas territories from the 1920s to the present
Métropole, espaces coloniaux et ultra-marins des années 1920 à nos jours
Abstract
The aim of this issue is to examine the relationship between public housing and the reproduction of social order in colonial and post-colonial contexts from an intersectional perspective through the lenses of class, gender, race and/or nationality. The aim is to examine spaces that are often considered separate – the colonies and the metropole – in the same analytical frame, in order to uncover circulation between the metropole and colonies, understand colonial legacies, and explore the effects of decolonization.
Announcement
To be published in French Politics, Culture & Society.
Presentation of the issue
The aim of this issue is to examine the relationship between public housing and the reproduction of social order in colonial and post-colonial contexts from an intersectional perspective (Chauvin and Jaunait 2015 ; Crenshaw 1989) through the lenses of class, gender, race and/or nationality. The aim is to examine spaces that are often considered separate – the colonies and the metropole – in the same analytical frame, in order to uncover circulation between the metropole and colonies, understand colonial legacies, and explore the effects of decolonization.
Public housing is broadly conceptualized to include so-called “family housing” (HBM and HLM), “specific housing” (such as foyers de travailleurs and temporary housing) or “adapted housing” (such as logements évolutifs) constructed in certain colonial areas for “indigenous” or ethno-racial minorities. Although they were built according to different administrative and financial norms, and correspond to different occupancy regulations, all of them are overseen by public authorities, particularly the construction and allocation of public housing. Treating them together enables us to explore the role of the state in governing, framing, and spatially distributing various populations in a (post)imperial context.
This overall approach is guided by three goals:
- Reevaluating space. A global analysis of an imperial order, with a joint treatment of the metropole and colonies, from a perspective inspired by the work of New Imperial History (Stoler and Cooper 1997).
- Reevaluating chronology. Reconsidering periodization that is often separated by the pre- and post-decolonization of Algeria in order to interrogate imperial continuities and colonial legacies (Gildea 2019; Sidi Boumedine and Signoles 2020; Guyon 2017).
- Reevaluating methodology. Applying the interrogation on the articulation of colonial racial and gender policies (Stoler 2002) to housing policy, when this interrogation has hitherto mainly been applied to demographic policies, whether related to migration (Condon 2008; Pattieu 2016) or reproduction (Paris 2021; Saada 2007).
The time period chosen for this issue runs from the 1920s to the present day. It covers the birth of public housing policy with the Bonnevay law of 1912 and the Loucheur law of 1928, the period of mass construction of low-cost housing during the Trente Glorieuses and the rise of “ghettoization” and urban policies from the 1980s to the present day. To encourage comparisons between varied geographical and historical contexts, this issue focuses both on the French Empire and the post-colonial spaces that have emerged in its aftermath.
Throughout these periods, we find, across different geographical areas, the reiteration of norms, actors, and tools enabling the implementation of these housing policies. However, they take on different forms in different contexts, each marked by its own particular urban and housing dynamics. This variation is reinforced by the transformations brought about by decolonization. This issue will therefore focus on analyzing the diversity of contexts, as well as on comparisons between different parts of the (former) empire.
We welcome scholarship related to public housing policies and its contribution to the colonial and post-colonial order related, but not limited, to any of the following themes or questions.
Categorizing, dividing and distributing: public housing and settlement policies
The aim is to examine how public housing drove settlement policies in the (ex)colonies and in mainland France. Many works have shown the central role of housing policies in the spatial distribution of populations according to criteria of class, race, ethnicity, gender, religion or other (Desage et al. eds. 2014). While the term “settlement policies” originally referred to population movements organized by colonial enterprises, it has reemerged over the last twenty years or so in French post-colonial urban policies. Settlement policies refer to the construction, demolition, and conversion of public housing, as well as with its allocation. They help produce a spatial order whose goals are often varied: sometimes effectively segregating populations, while other times integrating them, for example as part of an intentional « social mixing ».
Contributions to the issue can focus on different aspects of settlement policies. They may analyze the categories used to designate (un)desirable tenants, distinguish sub-groups of residents (Arnoulet and Tournon 2021; De Barros and Cohen 2019; Escafré-Dublet et al. 2020) and allocate them to different types of housing (Belmessous 2013; Palomares 2008). They may also question the practicalities of separating social groups, the attitude of street level bureaucrats (Bourgeois 2019; Belmessous 2021; François 2023; Gilbert 2022; Lelévrier 2008; Sala Pala 2005) and how tenants and prospective tenants resist these policies (François 2023; Léobal 2017). Finally, contributions may also explore the consequences of settlement policies on the spatial distribution of social and racial groups (Clerval and Miot 2017; Desage 2012) or on discrimination in access to housing (Condon 1994; Lyons 2013; Vulbeau 2021).
Existing work on this subject focuses on metropolitan space after decolonization. The hope is that this issue can extend these lines of inquiry to a global imperial and post-imperial context. The aim of this issue is to examine the circulation and transformation of these categories across time and space. Finally, considering the power of legal and legislative policies in the management of colonial populations will help us to consider the role of street-level bureaucrats and the ways tenants negotiated and maneuvered, determining the forms of discretionary power at play and unequal possibilities of resistance.
Public housing as a tool for moral reform in service of the colonial order
We also welcome contributions that study the questions of moral reform that run through the history of public housing (Voldman 2019) by analyzing the articulation of social, racial and gender dynamics in imperial and post-imperial spaces.
The role of hygiene and the moralization of the working class in the emergence of policies to combat substandard housing, in the creations of both HBMs and garden cities is now well known (Fijalkow 1998; Topalov 1999; Voldman 2010). Recent research has shown, however, that these moral concerns are not limited to the emergence of social housing. We find them in the form of a housing education project deemed “modern”, underpinned by an evolutionnist representation of different racialized groups of inhabitants, at the time of the construction of cités de transit and the slum-clearing policies of the 1960s (Cohen and David 2012; Vulbeau 2020). This educational and moral dimension is also present in the “indigenous housing” built in the colonies from the 1920s onwards (Guillopé 2023), then in the “adapted housing” created in the French overseas departments from the 1960s onwards (Léobal 2022a).
These concerns also take the form of sexual and family morality, through the enforced separation of the sexes in certain housing units (Paris 2020; Pattieu 2016), the norms governing who was granted residence permits (Cohen 2010, 2014), or the surveillance of certain family structures (Gaullier 2008). Finally, these concerns have a political dimension, which was particularly prominent in the context of decolonization (Bernardot 2005; Pattieu 2016), but also more recently in urban renewal policies (Gilbert 2019).
We welcome proposals that address these questions from different angles. For example, how are we to understand the contemporary stigmatization of “large families” (François 2014), when housing them has historically been one of the pillars of social housing (Frouard 2010)? Proposals can also take account of the techniques and tools used to disseminate and inculcate this morality in tenants: housing architecture and organization, social work and social animation practices, and police surveillance. Finally, they may examine the forms of resistance to or appropriation of these moralizing projects.
Living together in social housing: everyday life, racism and solidarity
The final theme of this issue moves away from the prescriptions of urban decision-makers to focus on concrete situations of different social groups sharing space in imperial and post-imperial contexts.
The first examinations of this question in the 1950s were often the result of public commissions aimed at analyzing the emergence of the new social world represented by large-scale housing projects in metropolitan France. However, they were essentially operationally-focused, underpinned by a largely embellished vision of what these new areas would represent in terms of population mixing (Chombart de Lauwe 1965).
In this respect, Jean-Claude Chamboredon and Madeleine Lemaire’s survey (Chamboredon and Lemaire 1970) remains unrivalled in its understanding of the class relations that unfold in large housing projects, analyzing the effects of proximity and distance as a function of residential paths and positions in social space. Colette Pétonnet’s work (Pétonnet 1979), for its part, sheds light on racial and, to a lesser extent, gender relations within metropolitan social housing districts, studying different configurations, from transit housing to classic social housing. This type of study has subsequently given rise to surveys alternately focusing on class (Cayouette-Remblière 2020; Pinçon 1981) or race, also referred to as “interethnic relations” (De Rudder 2019; Taboada-Leonetti 1989).
We propose to take a fresh look at this question of communal living and communal space, adopting an intersectional perspective that can overcome some of the blind spots in previous research, and extending this line of inquiry to colonial territories. Indeed, most studies are confined to metropolitan France, leaving other territories where social housing is deployed understudied. On this point, we can draw inspiration from recent work on colonial and overseas areas, in particular Thierry Guillopé’s recently defended dissertation (Guillopé 2023) on Algeria, which examined everyday urban experience and inhabitants’ trajectories caught up in the colonial order and its changes until the era of decolonization. The study tests the notion of a “world of contact” (Blanchard and Thénault 2011) that scholars of colonialism question. We could also work from the analyses proposed by Clémence Léobal (Léobal 2022b), who analyzes the urban experience and administrative procedures of Bushinengue women living in public housing in Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni. What these works have in common is that they link the question of groups living alongside one another to the racial order that unfolds out of colonial and imperial realities.
In line with these studies, various lines of inquiry could be investigated: on the one hand, questions related to social integration within social housing; on the other, those that probe situations of solidarity beyond the logics of class, race or gender assignments. Finally, studies that explore situations when racial logic is expressed more or less openly, ranging from outright abuse, letters to the town hall or landlord (David 2016; Vulbeau 2021), or even violence (Brahim 2020) and hate crimes, including ‘‘ratonnades’’ (Thénault 2022).
Timetable and publication details
One-page proposals/abstracts (excluding bibliography) are due
by March 17, 2025.
Proposals should be sent to: thierry.guillope@gmail.com, violette.arnoulet@protonmail.com and janoevulbeau@yahoo.fr
- Authors will receive a response to their proposals in early April 2025.
- Selected authors will send a first draft of their article in July 2025.
- Papers will be discussed at an author exchange seminar on July 11, 2025.
- Papers are due back by the end of September 2025 for evaluation (peer reviewing).
Special Issue Guest Editors
- Violette Arnoulet
PhD in sociology (2023) and associate researcher at Lab’urba. Her thesis, directed by Christine Lelévrier, is entitled, “Les communistes et les ‘quartiers’ : sociohistoire d'un pouvoir municipal engagé dans la politique de la ville (Stains 1971-2018).”
- Thierry Guillopé
PhD in history (2023) and research associate at the Centre d’histoire sociale des mondes contemporains (CHS). His thesis focused on social housing policies in Algeria from the 1920s to the 1960s. He is post-doctoral researcher at Laboratoire de recherche historique Rhône-Alpes (LARHRA) on the history of health and the environment in the second 20th century.
- Janoé Vulbeau
PhD in history and research associate at CERAPS. He defended a thesis in 2021 entitled, “Roubaix, la construction d’une ville face aux Algériens, 1957-1990” under the supervision of Thibault Tellier. He then worked as a post-doctoral researcher with the ANR MIGRINDOM research program on overseas migration to mainland France.
Selected bibliography
Arnoulet, Violette et Tournon, Mariana. 2021. « Racialiser les locataires. Naissance de politiques de peuplement et entreprises de catégorisation dans deux cités HLM », Terrains & travaux, vol. 2, n° 39 : 189-213.
Belmessous, Fatiha. 2013. « Du “seuil de tolérance” à la “mixité sociale” : répartition et mise à l’écart des immigrés dans l’agglomération lyonnaise (1970–2000) », Belgéo, n° 3, En ligne : http://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/11540.
Belmessous, Fatiha. 2021. « Georges Martin, un fonctionnaire ordinaire de l’administration coloniale française à Lyon (1940-1960) », Terrains & Travaux, vol. 2, n° 39 : 31-59.
Bernardot, Marc. 2005. « Être interné au Larzac. La politique d’assignation à résidence surveillée durant la guerre d’Algérie (1958-1962) », Politix, vol. 1, n° 69 : 39-61.
Blanchard, Emmanuel et Thénault, Sylvie. 2011. « Quel “monde du contact” ? Pour une histoire sociale de l’Algérie pendant la période coloniale », Le Mouvement Social, vol. 3, n° 236 : 3-7.
Bourgeois, Marine. 2019. Tris et sélections des populations dans le logement social. Une ethnographie comparée de trois villes françaises. Paris : Dalloz.
Brahim, Rachida. 2020. La Race tue deux fois. Une histoire des crimes racistes en France (1970-2000), Paris : Éditions Syllepse.
Cayouette-Remblière, Joanie. 2020. « Les rapports sociaux dans les quartiers de mixité sociale programmée », Sociologie, vol. 1, n° 11 : 1-22.
Chamboredon, Jean-Claude et Lemaire, Madeleine. 1970. « Proximité spatiale et distance sociale. Les grands ensembles et leur peuplement », Revue Française de Sociologie, vol. 1, n° 11 : 3-33.
Chauvin, Sébastien et Jaunait, Alexandre. 2015. « L’intersectionnalité contre l’intersection », Raisons politiques, vol. 2, n° 58 : 55-74.
Chombart de Lauwe, Paul-Henry. 1965. Essais de sociologie 1952-1964, Paris : Les Éditions ouvrières.
Clerval, Anne et Miot, Yoan. 2017. « Inégalités et habitat en Île-de-France : quelles conséquences des politiques de renouvellement urbain sur le peuplement ? », Espaces et sociétés, vol. 170, n° 3 : 51.
Cohen, Muriel. 2014. « Contradictions et exclusions dans la politique de regroupement familial en France (1945-1984) », Annales de démographie historique, vol. 2, n° 128 : 187-213.
Cohen, Muriel. 2010. « “Qui tient la femme tient tout” Le contrôle de l’immigration familiale algérienne dans la France des Trente glorieuses », Regards sociologiques, n° 39 : 55-69.
Cohen, Muriel et David, Cédric. 2012. « Les cités de transit : le traitement urbain de la pauvreté à l’heure de la décolonisation », Métropolitiques, En ligne : https:// metropolitiques.eu/Les-cites-de-transit-le-traitement.html.
Collectif, 2022, “Cohabiter dans la ville : troubles, résistances, coopérations”, Espaces et sociétés, vol. 3-4, n° 186-187.
Collectif, 2017, “Maghreb-Indochine, comparaisons impériales”, Monde(s), vol. 2, n° 12.
Condon, Stéphanie. 2008. « Travail et genre dans l’histoire des migrations antillaises », Travail, genre et sociétés, vol. 2, n° 20 : 67-86.
Condon, Stéphanie. 1994. « L’accès au logement : le cas des Antillais en France et en Grande-Bretagne », Population, vol. 2, no 49 : 522-530.
Crenshaw, Kimberlé, W. 1989. « Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex. A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics », University of Chicago Legal Forum, vol. 1, p. 139‑167.
David, Cédric. 2016. « Logement social des immigrants et politique municipale en banlieue ouvrière (Saint-Denis, 1944-1995). Histoire d’une improbable citoyenneté urbaine », Thèse de doctorat en histoire, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense.
De Rudder, Véronique. 2019. Sociologie du racisme, Paris : Éditions Syllepse.
De Barros, Françoise et Cohen, Muriel. 2019. « Entre politiques urbaines et contrôle des migrants : la décolonisation inachevée des recensements des bidonvilles en France (années 1950-années 1970) », Histoire & mesure, XXXIV, no 1 : 151-184.
Desage, Fabien. 2012. « La ségrégation par omission ? Incapacités politiques métropolitaines et spécialisation sociale des territoires », Géographie, économie, société, vol. 14, no 2 : 197-226.
Desage, Fabien, Morel Journel, Christelle, Sala Pala Valérie (éds.). 2014. Le peuplement comme politiques, Rennes : Presses universitaires de Rennes.
Escafré-Dublet, Angéline, Kesztenbaum, Lionel, Simon, Patrick. 2020. « Quand le recensement comptait les Français musulmans », Population & Sociétés, vol. 11, no 583 : 1-4.
Fijalkow, Yankel. 1998. La construction des îlots insalubres, Paris, 1850-1945, Paris : L’Harmattan.
François, Camille. 2023. De gré et de force. Comment l’État expulse les pauvres, Paris : La Découverte.
François, Camille. 2014. « Disperser les ménages : groupes résidentiels et familiaux à l’épreuve de la démolition d’un grand ensemble », Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, vol. 4, no 204 : 102-117.
Frouard, Hélène. 2010. « À l’ombre des familles nombreuses : les politiques françaises du logement au XXe siècle », Revue d’histoire moderne contemporaine, vol. 2, no 57 : 115-131.
Gaullier, Pauline. 2008. « La décohabitation et le relogement des familles polygames. Un malaise politique émaillé d’injonctions contradictoires », Recherches et Prévisions, vol. 1, no 94 : 59-69.
Gilbert, Pierre. 2022. « Classe, race et autochtonie : tri institutionnel des “bons locataires” et ségrégation dans les cités HLM », Sociologie, vol. 2, no 13 : 159-180.
Gilbert, Pierre. 2019. « Fragmenter la population et défaire les collectifs militants. La rénovation urbaine comme dispositif de désarmement des mobilisations collectives », in Stéphanie Dechézelles et Maurice Olive (éds.) Politisation du proche : les lieux familiers comme espaces de mobilisation, Rennes : Presses universitaires de Rennes.
Gildea, Robert. 2021. Empires of the Mind. The Colonial Past and the Politics of the Present. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
Guillopé, Thierry. 2023. « Le logement social en Algérie à la période coloniale (années 1920 - 1960) », Thèse de doctorat en histoire, Université Gustave Eiffel.
Guyon, Stéphanie. 2017. « Trajectoires post-coloniales de l’assimilation », Politix, vol. 4, n° 116 : 9-28.
Lelévrier, Christine. 2008. « Pratiques de logeurs : de la mixité au processus de regroupements », in Marie-Christine Jaillet, François Ménard et Evelyne Perrin (éds.), Diversité sociale, ségrégation urbaine, mixité, Paris : Éditions du PUCA: 233-248.
Léobal, Clémence. 2022a. « Les couleurs du logement social Racialisations croisées et marquages de l’habiter en Guyane française », Terrains & travaux, vol. 2, n° 39 : 61-86.
Léobal, Clémence. 2022b. Ville noire, pays blanc. Habiter et lutter en Guyane française, Lyon : Presses universitaires de Lyon.
Léobal, Clémence. 2017. « Des marches pour un logement. Demandeuses bushinenguées et administrations bakaa (Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, Guyane) », Politix, vol. 4, n° 116 : 163-192.
Lyons, H. Amelia. 2013. The Civilizing Mission in the Metropole. Algerian Families and the French Welfare State during Decolonization. Stanford : Stanford University Press.
Palomares, Élise. 2008. « Itinéraire du credo de la “mixité sociale” », Projet, vol. 6, n° 307 : 23-29.
Paris, Myriam. 2021. « La racialisation d’une politique publique : le contrôle de la natalité à La Réunion (années 1960-1970) », Politix, vol. 3, n° 131 : 29-52.
Paris, Myriam. 2020. « Citoyenneté refusée : les employées domestiques face à la régulation du travail à La Réunion (1945-1960) », Travail, genre et sociétés, vol. 2, n° 44 : 49-65.
Pattieu, Sylvain. 2016. « Un traitement spécifique des migrations d’outre-mer : le BUMIDOM (1963-1982) et ses ambiguïtés », Politix, vol. 4, n° 116 : 81.
Pétonnet, Colette. 1979. On est tous dans le brouillard. Ethnologie des banlieues, Paris : Galilée.
Pinçon, Michel. 1981. « Habitat et modes de vie. La cohabitation des groupes sociaux dans un ensemble H.L.M. », Revue française de sociologie, vol. 22, n° 4 : 523-547.
Saada, Emmanuelle. 2007. Les enfants de la colonie. Les métis de l’Empire français entre sujétion et citoyenneté, Paris : La Découverte.
Sala Pala, Valérie. 2005. « Politique du logement social et construction des frontières ethniques. Une comparaison franco-britannique », Thèse de doctorat en sciences politiques, Université de Rennes 1.
Sidi Boumedine, Rachid et Signoles, Pierre. 2020. « Dossier. Les politiques de logement social au Maghreb / Machrek et dans le Sud Global », Naqd, n° 38-39.
Stoler, Ann Laura. 2002. Carnal knowledge and imperial power: race and the intimate in colonial rule, Berkeley : University of California Press.
Stoler, Ann Laura and Frederic Cooper. 1997. Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, Berkeley : Universit of California Press.
Taboada-Leonetti, Isabelle. 1989. « Cohabitation pluri-ethnique dans la ville : stratégies d’insertion locale et phénomènes identitaires », Revue européenne des migrations internationales, vol. 5, n° 2 : 51-70.
Thénault, Sylvie. 2022. Les ratonnades d’Alger, 1956. Une histoire de racisme colonial, Paris : Éditions du Seuil.
Topalov, Christian. 1999. Laboratoires du nouveau siècle. La nébuleuse réformatrice et ses réseaux en France, 1880-1914, Paris : Éditions de l’EHESS.
Voldman, Danièle. 2019. « Éduquer les locataires. Un mandat historique du logement social », Métropolitiques, En ligne : https://metropolitiques.eu/Les-cites-de-transit-le-traitement.html.
Voldman, Danièle. 2010. Désirs de toit : le logement entre désir et contrainte depuis la fin du XIXe siècle, Paris : Créaphis.
Vulbeau, Janoé. 2021. « Roubaix : la construction d’une ville face aux Algériens. Politiques urbaines et racialisation (1950-1990) », Thèse de doctorat en histoire, Université de Rennes.
Vulbeau, Janoé. 2020. « Reloger les familles populaires dans les années 1960, entre gestion des familles “inadaptées” et ethnicisation de la question sociale », Droit et Ville, vol. 1, n° 89 : 147-163.
Attached files
Keywords
- logement, ordre, empire, post-colonial, métropole, colonie
Contact(s)
- Violette Arnoulet
courriel : violette [dot] arnoulet [at] protonmail [dot] com - Janoé Vulbeau
courriel : janoevulbeau [at] yahoo [dot] fr
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons - Attribution 4.0 International - CC BY 4.0 .
To cite this announcement
Violette Arnoulet, Thierry Guillope, Janoé Vulbeau, « Housing policies and social order in imperial and post-imperial France », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Monday, February 10, 2025, https://doi.org/10.58079/13ab9
Author(s)
Violette Arnoulet
Thierry Guillope
Janoé Vulbeau
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