Extract
[...] We therefore grasp that this concept of social mixity is a large open corridor exposed to all winds, and whose vagueness allows in reality not to evoke clearly certain issues. Cyprien Avenel speaks of this concept as a myth. A myth brings together, indeed, beyond the conflicts of representation that traverse a society. We could go even further by speaking of a properly republican myth . The Republic considers that there is only one community, that of citizens. It is an ideal, but is it a sociological reality? [...]
[...] From this encounter was supposed to come out of the amalgamation, sociability and homogeneity. However, this is not what researchers observe then in the large ensembles. On the contrary. They note that, yes, statistics reveal a 'mean', that the diversity of the population of social housing at that time, due to a diversity of selection modalities, mathematically leads to a median result, such as idealized. But in the reality of social relationships, this harmonious homogeneity dreamed of by a certain urbanistic utopianism does not exist Researchers describe to us large ensembles where workers are looked down upon by the higher strata, social differences being tied to issues such as 'noise', which reveal issues of 'distinction' of class, a key concept, which has not yet been created by Pierre Bourdieu, but seems decisive to analyze the difficulties surrounding this notion of social mixity. [...]
[...] Changing the city would thus be a way to reduce social inequalities. A problem that is at the opposite end of Engels' findings. Reducing inequalities, in particular, would involve gathering different populations, as the concentration of difficulties here, of wealth elsewhere, and the reciprocal ignorance of social groups, would be phenomena responsible, in favoring social reproduction effects, the persistence and increase of inequalities, and particular difficulties of certain neighborhoods and their inhabitants. Social mixity has thus imposed itself as a declared and (at least formally) consensual objective of housing policy, with the percentage obligations in social housing, as well as urban policy and urban renewal, particularly in its demolition-reconstruction accentuated since the 2000s and what has been called 'the Borloo plan'. [...]
[...] 62-71) / Loïc Aubrée, « The Evolution of the Population of the Public Housing Park in France », Plural Thought, vol. no 12, no pp. 53-61 / Jean-Claude Chamboredon, Madeleine Lemaire, « Proximity in Space and Social Distance. The Large Housing Estates and Their Population », French Review of Sociology ,11-1 pp. 3-33/ Pascale Dietrich-Ragon, « The Social Network of People in Housing Precarity. Strength and Weakness of Social Ties in Housing Exclusion », French Review of Sociology, vol no pp. [...]
[...] At what scale is it conceived? We can imagine a fairly mixed neighborhood but very specialized according to the staircases, for example. Furthermore, we think of mixity from the address without considering the reality of individual mobility. Mixity is approached from the place where one 'sleeps', which inevitably amputates the analysis, given the diversity of possible social interactions in an agglomeration. It is postulated that a resident of a neighborhood socializes only in their neighborhood, in which they would be somehow locked. [...]
