Des jeunes de milieu populaire face à la gentrification à Pantin : une dialectique entre présent et avenir.

Based on an empirical, participatory survey of the city of Pantin, which borders Paris’s 19th arrondissement, this article looks at how young people from working-class backgrounds are coping with gentrification. How do young people from these backgrounds react to the arrival of more affluent populations? How do their urban practices evolve with changes in the urban and social environment? Do they manage to appropriate these transformations in their discourse as well as in their practices, and if so, how? After tracing the changes in the city of Pantin and the characteristics of the gentrification process underway, this article documents and analyzes the ambivalence that characterizes the discourses and practices of working-class youth. It shows that this ambivalence is rooted less in attachment to the past than in the uncertainty that the future holds for them. While young people may be deriving certain benefits from gentrification at the time of the survey, they are also wondering about their place in this space in the medium and long term. Their discourse on gentrification is a powerful analyzer of how they construct and project themselves in an urban space, and by extension, in a society, that marginalizes them.