What has become of slum children?

What do people who have spent their childhood in slums become? Are they doomed to a lifetime of poverty? Are they still stigmatized decades later?
These are the issues that Margot Delon tackled in her thesis, where she explored the paths of the children of slums and transitory neighborhoods* in postwar Nanterre and Champigny-sur-Marne. A field sociologist, Margot has conducted many qualitative interviews and ethnographic ob servations, and combined them with analysis of statistical databases, archives and blogs that keep alive the memory of these experiences today. The quality of this work was recognized by the Prix de la Recherche Caritas – Institut de France.
She went over her research with us: (choose subtitles in english) .

Margot Delon is currently doing a postdoc at Sciences Po’s Center for Studies in Social Change (OSC) and is teaching courses at the University of Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis and the University of Paris 5 René Descartes.

* * The transitory neighborhoods were real estate complexes – plywood huts or low-cost housing with minimum construction costs – which were developed as a “temporary” solution to relocate the families of certain slums.

To learn more:

• View the thesis on “The biographical incidences of segregation trajectories and memories of slum children in postwar France” at Sciences Po’s library
• Life after slums in La vie des idées.fr, 7 November 2017
• The ties of memory. Sociability and visibility through a blog by former residents of Nanterre’s transitory neighborhoods in, Sociologie, vol. 8, n°1, 2017
• All of Margot Delon’s publications