Home Ownership and Residential Vulnerabilities in Working-Class Suburbs of the Greater Paris Region
Thibault Le Corre, associate researcher at the Geographie-Cités laboratory, will speak at the French Institute for Research on Japan
on Tuesday, May 10, 2022
Maison franco-japonaise (IFRJ-MFJ, UMIFRE 19)
from 6 to 8 pm (Japan time)
from 11 to 13 (French time).
The session, organized with the support of CNRS in the framework of the International Emerging Action (IEA) “Inheriting Degrowth? A comparative Analysis of Real Estate Transactions and Dynamics of Shrinking Housing Markets in Japan’s and France’s major urban areas”, will be held entirely online, in English without translation.
Register and receive a connection link: https://www.mfj.gr.jp/agenda/2022/05/10/hibault_le_corre/
Abstract
Encouraged by public-led renewal policies at the turn of the 2000s, private real estate developers expanded their production of large housing complexes, subjected to ownership accession schemes, towards working-class suburbs within French metropolitan areas. These suburbs significantly changed as a result. Our communication focuses on the technical and political frameworks as well as the marketing strategies behind the production of these projects, then analyses individual choices to invest in them.
Relying on the observation of projects located in three low-income, working class municipalities of the Greater Paris region, we conduct a geographical analysis based on real estate transaction data and on semi-structured interviews with a panel of homeowners. We will show how such urban production logics are conducive to a reproduction of urban segregation, which stems in part from the strategies of developers who select households on the basis of an evaluation of financial risk criteria carried out by the mortgage industry. From the purchasers’ viewpoint, homeownership does not always increase residential position, nor guarantee accumulation, so that the specificities of this market segment lead to difficulties for households with scarce resources.