Introduction: The Dynamics of Social Integration and Social Exclusion at the Neighbourhood Level

Abstract

Without entering into the debates about the global city and the thesis of polarization (Mollenkopf and Castells, 1991; Sassen, 1991), no one will deny that the context of economic restructuring has an impact on the social integration of the most vulnerable groups, among them immigrant groups. The industrial European city was loaded with social problems but gradually, towards the end of the twentieth century, an almost full-salaried society was getting more benefits shared by more and more categories of the population, including both nationals and non-nationals (Castel, 1994). The new mutations impacting on cities concern:

• 1. technological developments transforming the job requirements and the modes of living of many populations;

• 2. the expansion of financial, capital and labour flux and their impact on national societies; and

• 3. the obsolescence of a welfare-state model according to which protections against risks and the continuity of social bonds came from the apparatus of the state (Habermas, 1990).

By and large, European states undergo similar trends of hollowing out. They fragment into structured, ramified and de-centred networks.