Research projects

In a large body of international literature in urban sociology, traditionally “[t]o understand crime has been in many ways to understand the city” (Atkinson, Millington, 2019, p. 2). The converse of this statement is even more important for current scientific research in urban sociology: to understand the city requires to understand better the networks of political, economic, social, and cultural relations of crime, and their association with metropolitan and urban structural contexts of opportunities. If this research program is advancing in terms of analysis of network of actors, the association with the spatial dimension of structural contexts of opportunities is underdeveloped, especially in Europe, and especially in relation to ordinary middle-size European cities (Le Galès, Pierson, 2019).

The project Spatial Analysis of Insecurity (SII) intends to re-launch the comparative analysis of urban segregation in France and mobilise it for a pathbreaking analysis of crime and insecurity across the range of territories in mainland France. This will require a fine meshing based on population density. This project extends the scope of previous analysis of residential segregation in Italian metropolis (Pratschke, Vitale et al. 2021), and of recent research on the Greater Paris region, to explore in a systematic way the potential of National Statistical Institute (INSEE) databases holding the geo- localised confidential variables of the Living Environment and Security (Cadre de vie et sécurité - CVS) surveys.

R-HOME is a research project that addresses specifically the topic of Roma housing. Housing conditions of Roma minorities in most of European Countries is very bad and extremely discriminatory. We have studied housing policies for Roma in France, Italy, Hungary, Romania, and Spain. Four main topics:

1. explicit policy targeting Roma living in slums and shanty towns;

2. anti-discrimination devices for helping Roma accessing homeownership or tenancy;

3. forms of social support to manage conflicts and help very vulnerable Roma individuals and families to integrate their neighbourhood and reduce the risk of housing instability;

4. programs and projects aiming to improve the access to loans and credits in the formal bank system.

Working papers, reports, video, webinars are available here

The project GREENUT (USPC-NUS) has dwelt into the issue of green growth, urban development, utilities and public services provision. The research, has explored the dimensions of sustainability given the current governance and contextual features of Asian cities, with a specific look to South East Asia, and to Singapore, The Philippines and Malaysia; the provision of public services and the principles of efficiency, affordability and reliability; the issue of ownership and Public Private Partnership and its impact on service provision and an integrated management of urban services. Field research carried out in MetroManila (The Philippines) and Iskandar (Malaysia). The empirical research results shed lights about how sustainability and economic growth policy frameworks evolve in the present day in the region.

More info here

A partir du cas des migrants dits « roms » en situation précaire dans quinze villes de France, d’Italie et d’Espagne, le projet MARGin cherche à analyser le rôle joué par les politiques de régulation de la pauvreté étrangère dans les processus d’inclusion et d’exclusion sociale dans un contexte de libre-circulation au sein de l’Union européenne. Il explore notamment les liens étroits entre marginalité sociale et marginalité spatiale en se focalisant sur les inégalités liées au caractère dual des politiques de régulation de la pauvreté (rejet/insertion), à l’allocation inégale des ressources et aux catégorisations institutionnelles.

Les études d’évaluation des politiques de lutte contre la pauvreté se focalisent généralement sur les aspects matériels et objectifs de l’action publique et sur les performances des acteurs institutionnels, mais passent sous silence les dynamiques d’insertion peu quantifiables et peu visibles, le plus souvent à l’initiative des personnes en situation précaire. Ce sont ces dynamiques que le projet veut mettre au jour à partir de données empiriques précises et nombreuses, l’objectif étant à la fois d’apporter un éclairage original sur les politiques de lutte contre la pauvreté et l’exclusion sociale et d’identifier des modes opératoires efficaces dans la durée. Ce projet est soutenu depuis 2016 par l'Agence Nationale de la Recherche.

Une monographie collective est en train de sortir en Français pour le Presses de Rennes. L’Etat et la pauvreté étrangère en Europe occidentale. Trajectoires de ”Roms” roumains en Espagne, France et Italie, monographic edited book, based on the research MargIn. Sous la direction de Olivier Legros, Céline Bergeon, Marion Lièvre et Tommaso Vitale. Presses Universitaires de Rennes. Distribution prévue en Septembre 2022.

This comparative research aims at exploring the dynamic of residential segregation in large Italian metropolises (Milan, Rome and Naples) since 1991. At the core of our framework is the idea that social relationships, attitudes and political behaviour are influenced by the social environment, which comprises both a population structure (a geographical space containing a specific set of individuals/families) and an opportunity structure (opportunities for work, education, health, social capital accumulation, sport and leisure). From this perspective, we look at the most relevant characteristics of metropolitan populations exploring differences and relationships between individuals in a relational manner. Indeed, the key characteristics of the opportunity structure of a metropolis relate to the spatial relations that exist between existing opportunities and specific social groups. The analysis of these spatial relations can help us identify relatively enduring “structural effects”, which are the object of the research.

The Italian case is largely under-represented in the international literature about urban segregation and the social division of metropolitan spaces.

• We do not really know the dynamics of social change in Italian cities. The only case studies currently available are mainly on ethnic segregation (Petsimeris, 1998; Mingione et al., 2008; Scarpa, 2016);

• For instance, we want to understand where the upper and upper-middle classes have gone in the last 30 years: have they moved to the suburbs, in small municipalities highly segregated? Or have they remained in the main city centers? Does it depend of which fraction of the upper and upper-middle classes we are looking at?

• This type of wide-range quantitative research, based on descriptive statistics, also aims to produce hypotheses for subsequent qualitative research.

The Hybridelec research is adressing the issue of the hybridization of electrification configurations in”Southern Cities” fuelled by the emergence of off-grid devices and logics of unachieved “infrastructuralisation”. By hybridization, we mean the coalescence – technically and politically complex – of various technical worlds of production, distribution and power consumption, of different scales, isolated or interconnected at the margin. Such processes are currently overlooked by research foscusing on rural electrification and research concentrating on new technologies implemented in a few spaces in big metropolis of the developping and emerging countries.

The research aims to assess the consistency and sustainability of the emerging energy configurations observed in and at the peripheries of a large number of so-called “Southern cities”, particularly with regard to articulation between conventional grid and alternative solutions. These perspectives inform the analytical framework to be presented below. Anchored in a socio-technical system perspective, it is built to help accounting for and understanding the various features and heterogeneous factors that are part of an electricity supply system working in practice.

See the project’s website

Very Large Cities are a new phenomenon in urban history. The emergence of urbanized areas with a population beyond 8 million inhabitants. One of the most relevant topics for metropolitan development is that of the form of government (governance) of these big cities, encompassing different issues such as urban planning, the creation of governmental bodies and institutions allowing the redistribution of powers, effective intergovernmental coordination, decentralization, the efficient supply of services as well as the fostering of economic development and of a better life quality for residents.

More information here