Introduction

A first difficulty that is encountered in producing a book such as this is the question of definition: what does ‘social mix’ really mean beyond the spatial coexistence of different social and ethnic groups in a given neighbourhood? The least that can be argued is that social mix is not very stabilised as a concept. All societies are mixed one way or another. Social mix could be defined by what it is not: the extreme concentration of some social or ethnic groups, that is, super-bourgeois neighbourhoods, ghettos or ethnic enclaves. As the editors of this book rightly emphasise, the question of social mix is, of course, first and foremost, seen as concerning poor neighbourhoods where the concentration of the upper middle class is more an issue for social mix. In other words, in most neighbourhoods, there are some elements of social mix. In parallel to the notion of social integration or social cohesion, there is a major discrepancy between the way those words are used and put into practice in everyday and/or policy discourse and a more rigorous academic analysis. This, of course, is very often the case, and there is room for extensive analysis of the use of social mix and other such terms by different actors in different contexts. We may have no clue about what social mix is really supposed to mean but at the same time understand that policy makers have to show they are doing something in the face of staggering spatial inequalities – given that politics is supposed to create common good, to give a sense of unity to a society, and to prevent the most obvious threats to social order such as riots (Driant and Lelévrier, 2006).

The second problem for the analysis and for policy makers is, of course, the question of scale. The debate, for example, in the French context between two leading scholars, E. Maurin and E. Préteceille, was very telling. By analysing social mix at the level of very small areas, Maurin (2004) draws conclusions in the case of France about the rise of extreme segregation and the decline of social mix.