Educational Inequality and the Cités Éducatives Initiative: Bridging Gaps or Reinforcing Exclusions?

Originally piloted in 2019 and now widely implemented across France, the Cités Éducatives initiative targets priority urban neighborhoods (French: quartiers prioritaires de la ville), which face social and economic challenges. Its aim is to reduce educational inequalities and improve the living and future conditions of a population already addressed by the so-called inclusion policy. While it is part of the priority education policies that have existed since the 1980s, the Cités Éducatives initiative is distinguished by a stronger emphasis on partnership within the context of growing territorialization of educational policies.

According to official documents, the initiative seeks to transition from traditional territorial "educational programming" to a model of "educational cooperation," involving a broad range of stakeholders (state services, local authorities, associations, national education) and the public (residents, parents, children, and youth) in building a shared vision for education.

However, despite its democratic rhetoric, the initiative faces challenges due to increasing pressure for collaboration and to misleading representations of the target population. Stakeholders often perceive this population as a homogeneous, marginalized group with low cultural legitimacy. In reality, the public is heterogeneous, consisting of individuals with unstable social characteristics and varying needs (e.g., second-generation migrants, working-class populations, and newcomers).

Based on ongoing collective research conducted in six Cités Éducatives in Île-de-France, employing a mixed-methods approach, this paper explores how the new partnership-driven logic and project-based management framework disconnect from the social realities of the target population. It examines how stakeholders and local actors, both within and outside the school system, have (failed to) foster collaboration and illustrates how these dynamics influence, and are influenced by, the distorted and superficial representations of the public and its educational challenges that are embraced, instrumentalized, or overlooked. This results in new forms of domination and further exclusion of the initiative’s target groups.