Metropolitics

Migrants' Occupation of Lycée Jean Quarré: The Refugee Cause and the Cause of a Neighborhood

Isabelle Coutant & translated by Oliver Waine — 2018-11-16T06:00:00Z

The flows of migrants seeking refuge in Europe since the summer of 2015 have led to temporary settlements—legal or otherwise—in various urban locations. What is the impact of their presence on individual neighborhoods and relations with local communities? A study by Isabelle Coutant on the occupation of a disused high school in northeastern Paris sheds light on these impacts and the associated expressions of solidarity, engagement and tension that emerge.
In the summer of 2015, the

- Essays / France, immigration, refugees, public space, working-class neighborhoods, collective action, Paris, proximity, neighborhood, migration, sociabilities, RESF, hospitality, politics, school, migrants, engagement, occupation, local action, asylum

Snowbirds' Gift Economy in the Arizona Desert

David Frati — 2017-11-07T06:00:00Z

Each year, 200,000 retired people spend the winter in and around the small town of Quartzsite, Arizona, in the Sonoran desert. Some 50,000 of them live in informal housing: campers, tents, cars and trucks, and self-constructed cabins. In the field with the most economically marginal of these “desert snowbirds,” David Frati observes the complex gift economy that structures their social lives.
Every winter, retired snowbirds reach the small town of Quartzsite, Arizona, one of the few places in

- From the Field / camps, care, housing, alternative housing, United States, ethnography, sociabilities, poverty, assistance, informal housing, Arizona, money, resourcefulness, desert, gift economy, nomadism, retirement, snowbirds, concern for others, neighborliness

How Children Cope When Home is a Hotel

Erwan Le Méner & translated by Christina Mitrakos — 2016-02-05T06:00:00Z

Emergency housing in social hotels is affecting a growing number of families in the Paris region. How does this experience impact the lives of children? What are the consequences on children's relationship to space, on how they grow up, and on how they learn, make friends and play? Erwan Le Méner shows how school plays a central role in stabilizing an otherwise precarious situation.
---- Series: Children in the City Today, one in five people experiencing homelessness in the Paris region are

- From the Field / France, Paris region, housing, children, public policy, sociabilities, vulnerability, homelessness, precarity, vulnerable housing, emergency accommodation, social emergency, social hotel, school

Democratic public spaces in the face of terrorism

Carole Gayet-Viaud & translated by Oliver Waine — 2016-01-29T06:00:00Z

The collective harm inflicted by the terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday 13 November 2015 results in part from the fact that the perpetrators of these attacks took the specific qualities of urban public spaces and turned them against the city: hospitality, anonymity and the presumption of trust in others. All these characteristics form the foundations of civil exchanges in democratic public spaces.
The terrorist acts of which we were victims in Paris on Friday 13 November 2015 caused both

- Essays / public space, democracy, sociabilities, attacks, citizenship, civility, hospitality, trust, mores, politics, street, terrorism

Social Diversity in Gentrified Neighborhoods: Child's Play?

Jean-Yves Authier & Sonia Lehman-Frisch & translated by Christina Mitrakos — 2015-12-04T05:55:00Z

How do children develop relationships? Do they meet children from socio-economic backgrounds other than their own? What are the effects of (much sought-after) social diversity among adults on the younger generation? This study of children's social relations in a gentrified neighborhood in Paris sheds light on these questions.
---- Series: Children in the City Since the 1980s, many large European and North American cities have been affected by gentrification: upper-middle-class households

- From the Field / gentrification, social diversity, Paris, children, neighborhood, sociabilities, parenting practices

What we can learn from babies' sociability

Carole Gayet-Viaud & translated by Oliver Waine — 2015-10-09T04:55:00Z

The sociability of very young children reveals a neglected dimension of relations and interactions in public, and highlights issues associated with ordinary urban contact that often go unnoticed. Civil interaction exhibits an inclination towards friendliness, a concern for others and the surrounding world, which, while admittedly limited and sometimes disputed, nevertheless contributes to an ordinary sense of belonging to a moral and political community.
---- Series: Children in the City

- Essays / public space, proximity, children, sociabilities, interactions, civility, civil inattention, education, teaching, common good, friendliness, order in public, socialization

Coping with crowdedness in mass transportation

Martin Aranguren & Stéphane Tonnelat & translated by Oliver Waine — 2014-02-26T05:50:00Z

Riding overcrowded metros, tubes or subways with dozens of strangers in varying moods is routinely viewed as a trying experience. Yet we know very little about the discreet but crucial emotional work that passengers do every day in order to facilitate the smooth functioning of urban mass transportation.
In Paris, annual metro ridership increased from 1.2 billion journeys in 2000 to 1.5 billion in 2011, or 5.16 million trips per weekday. [1] This roughly 25% growth in passenger numbers has

- From the Field / France, public space, public transportation, Paris, density, métro, mass transit, metro, subway, tube, underground, emotions, antisocial behaviour, sociabilities, rapid transit