Emmanuel Macron’s government wants to introduce a new law on asylum and immigration procedures at the beginning of 2023. The first indications on this law show, among other things, a tightening of the access to asylum and a blurring of the lines between asylum and immigration policies. It is also the treatment of asylum seekers in reception centres that seems to be changing. The French government has announced that it wants to put an end to the polarization of the Île-de-France region in migration trajectories by distributing asylum seekers among the regions and placing them far from the major cities: “The conditions for their reception will be much better than if we put them in areas that are already densely populated, with a concentration of massive economic and social problems” (Remarks by Emmanuel Macron collected by French media during an address to the prefects) [Europe1, 21 September 2022]._x000D_
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However, the placement of asylum seekers in rural areas is not new, and has even increased since 2015, resulting in a meeting between stigmatised and marginalised populations and local populations who have sometimes never met foreigners. Faced with these arrivals, we can ask ourselves how the local populations react and how they are organised to integrate, as best they can, the exiled people in their cities. Does the government’s representation of rural areas as supportive and welcoming spaces coincide with the socio-spatial realities? How does the arrival of exiles produce new territorialities?_x000D_
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I propose to answer this question by taking as an example the rural cities of Normandy, studied for my PhD, and in which I carried out participant observation and immersion with exiles and volunteers for nearly four years._x000D_
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I propose to make my presentation in French, with the help of a PowerPoint in English._x000D_

Margaux Vérove
Laboratoire Espaces et Sociétés, Université de Caen

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ID Abstract: 83