Introduction

This chapter examines the link between gentrification and so-called social mix policies. Based on an analysis of social and urban transformations in progress in Goutte d’Or, a working-class and immigrant Paris neighbourhood, we contend that public policies focusing on social mix often actually serve the ends of gentrification. In the case in point, such policies tend to result in ‘controlled’ gentrification. We demonstrate that the gentrification process launched in Goutte d’Or partly stems from such policies that thrive in a tight housing market and converge with the residential and territorial investment strategies of middle and upper middle-class households. Urban projects sponsored by public authorities help to create pressure on housing and drum up expectations of social change among these households.

Gentrification and social mix policies have long been tackled differently in urban research and public debates due to their different origins and histories. Gentrification is an academic term first coined by Ruth Glass, and in France, at least, its use has continued to be largely restricted to academia (Glass, 1963). Social mix, however, goes back further to 19th-century urban policies and city planning. Its current success can be attributed to the negative social, political and academic representations of working-class neighbourhoods that are perceived primarily as ‘rough’ or ‘problem neighbourhoods’.

Recent research publications have already pointed up the links between mix and gentrification based on analyses of other national contexts (Atkinson and Bridge, 2005; Slater, 2006; Lees, 2008). They share our reservations concerning the assumptions underpinning social mix policies, their effects and the supposed benefits of gentrification (Bacqué and Fol, 2003; Bacqué, 2005). We wish to pursue this debate further here by analysing the manner in which the rhetoric concerning mix has come to dominate public debate in France to the extent of becoming both a postulate and an objective, as well as the way in which it serves as a screen for gentrification projects. Urban research integrates a phenomenon of globalisation that highlights comparable urban transformation processes in very different national and cultural contexts and has also been influenced by the internationalisation process driven by the increasing importance of international English-language reviews and the way in which networks and exchanges are structured. Concepts, notions and theories circulate before being reappropriated and transformed from one context to the next (Lees et al, 2008).