Peri-rural Populations in Search of Territory

Abstract

In the last 30 years increasing numbers of city dwellers have chosen to go and live in the countryside. This housing migration has led to a social redefinition of country living. It has reinforced the individualisation of lifestyles, thus contributing to a social and spatial redistribution of rural populations. Our article aims to analyse how rural residents of all origins relate to their environment and particularly to the different places they frequent. Concentrating on the material and symbolic investments made by families residing in a village located near Toulouse, we aimed to clarify the processes of territorialisation at play and thus to raise anew question of the relations between city and countryside. E ver since the French population census of 1975, housing migrations of city dwellers to the countryside have consistently increased. This movement can be explained by the fact that rural areas afford people the opportunity of acquiring their own property with a garden ‐ a recreational place for adults and children alike ‐ at a lower cost than in the city. Families maintain that in the countryside they have found an environment close to nature, free from pollution and urban stress, while retaining easy access to urban services, thanks to the improvement of transport infrastructure. These migrations have led to a significant social diversification of the urban exodus, and, consequently, to an important remodelling of the rural areas that have become home to former urban residents (Kayser 1993). Yet this generalisation conceals notable differences between places and between people living in the same place. In view of such complexity, this study aims to understand and describe different types of territoriality by analysing the material, emotional and social relationships that the families develop in their daily living environment (Kaufmann 2004). We chose a socio-anthropological approach, as it enabled us to analyse the diversity of practices and to account for individuals’ relations with each other in face-to-face contacts or social distance from each other. This approach also enabled us to show that such practices are indicators of social relations between families and their neighbourhood, while taking into account the history of the different places and the successive waves of migration to them (Auge 1992). Similarly, spatial mobilities are