Heterogeneity and instability : Another view on Japanese suburbs

Emergence of critical discussion of the Japanese suburb (ageing, juvenile delinquency, absence of local identity, etc.) has not made inroads into the myth of a homogeneous space populated by nonforeign residents from the middle classes. However, with installation of the "precariat", driven out of the city center by gentrification, a new face of the suburbs appears: social housing for insecure populations (old people living alone, handicapped people, single-parent households) or housing bought by companies for their temporary workers including precarious foreigners make it a space of exclusion characterized by heterogeneity and instability where the whole range of "wasted lives" is concentrated. On the basis of a survey in the Nagoya area our paper will try to describe those changes and analyze them.