2 results
twelve - Event history approach to life spaces in French-speaking research
- Edited by Nancy Worth, University of Waterloo, Canada, Irene Hardill, Northumbria University
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- Book:
- Researching the Lifecourse
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 08 March 2022
- Print publication:
- 30 June 2015, pp 215-230
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Summary
Introduction
The study of spatial mobility in European social sciences suffers from institutional and thematic segmentation (daily mobility, tourism, residential mobility, migration). However, a growing number of studies have shown that a comprehensive, linked approach to mobility is an effective way of capturing hybrid practices that fall between residential and daily mobility (such as multiple residences and long-distance commuting: Dupont and Dureau, 1994; Lévy and Dureau, 2002; Kaufmann and Vincent-Geslin, 2012). This approach can be used to focus more on the multi-local dimension of individuals’ spatial practices across the lifecourse. Living in more than one place at once is a topic addressed by a number of Frenchspeaking geographers, who have invented various expressions for it: ‘habiter multilocal’ (Duchêne-Lacroix, 2011), ‘habiter polytopique’ (Stock, 2004), ‘espaces de vie polycentriques’ (Lelièvre and Robette, 2006), ‘ancrages multiples’ (Imbert, 2005), and for multiple residences specifically, ‘système résidentiel’ (Dureau, 2002) are conceptual attempts to capture the attachment of one individual to more than one place. All these conceptual proposals distance themselves de facto from a Heideggerian vision that favours sedentarity and even putting down roots exclusively in one place; this ultimately helped prolong and extend the theoretical and methodological debates in 1970s French social geography concerning the concept of ‘life space’ (for example, Chevalier, 1974; Frémont, 1974).
In this chapter, we show how such a comprehensive linked approach to mobility is useful for understanding the life space of an individual as a set of places that have gradually become incorporated over their lifecourse, often involving changes of function and kinds of attachment to places (for instance, a holiday home becomes a main home, or vice versa) (Poulain, 1983). Using an inventory of 50 years of French research into residential mobility, we focus first on studies that bring a greater understanding of life space dynamics. We take residential mobility to mean any change of dwelling, whatever the distance involved. We show how data collection methods and theoretical frameworks have changed since 1950. Our hypothesis is that empirical experience has improved the theoretical debate concerning residential mobility. The rise of the lifecourse approach has shown that residence may be multi-located, and has also played a key role in understanding residential choices and the mobility they involve.
6 - Social Integration of Immigrants with Special Reference to the Local and Spatial Dimension
- Edited by Rinus Penninx, Maria Berger, Karen Kraal
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- Book:
- The Dynamics of Migration and Settlement in Europe
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 23 January 2021
- Print publication:
- 28 August 2006, pp 133-170
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Summary
Introduction
This chapter deals with the social dimension of integration processes of immigrants. The organisation of work units within IMISCOE defined the social dimension as distinct from the political, the economic and the cultural/religious dimension which are treated in the two preceding and the following chapter respectively. This field is a vast one covering a significant amount of research in the past decades. In surveying the literature on social integration we will focus specifically on its local and spatial expressions for reasons that we will unfold in the next pages.
In the first section, we discuss some of the conceptual issues related to the term ‘integration’ and its use in the academic and policy fields. We discuss the notion of integration as a general sociological concept and propose to use the social environment, in which individuals and groups form interdependencies, as the special unit of study. Focusing on spaces as the locus of developing interdependencies, we emphasise the spatial dimension of immigrants’ social integration processes.
Section two focuses specifically on the spatial dimensions of integration. It reviews the relationships between the characteristics of the housing market and their implications in terms of socio-ethnic segregation, emphasising the spatial dimension of social integration. Immigrants’ and ethnic minorities’ geographical placement and the extent of their mobility condition their access to urban resources (e.g. housing, education, health, jobs and different kinds of goods and services). We discuss the basic concepts of ethnic segregation as well as its advantages and disadvantages by drawing on contemporary literature. The main determinants of residential segregation and the manner in which they are explained and conveyed in the literature are surveyed. Finally, we discuss the issue of accessibility to urban resources, as a spatial expression of social integration and its measurement.
In the third and final section, we seek to synthesise the key ideas and conclusions of the previous sections and present a number of proposals for future lines of research.
From assimilation to integration and back again
If the current use of the concept of integration in social sciences and policy when dealing with immigrant settlement is relatively recent, the associated notions of assimilation, acculturation and accommodation have a longer history.