Displacement and Residential Mobility: The Perverse Effects of Gentrification? the Evolution of Urban Inequalities in Contemporary Paris.

Urban upgrading and gentrification have been some of the most widespread and powerful dynamics transforming cities over the past few decades. Global processes such as the liberalization and retrenchment of welfare state policies, the financialization of housing markets, and the increasing concentration of activities and population in metropolitan areas have contributed to making gentrification and embourgeoisement predominant forces in shaping urban social and spatial dynamics. After nearly eighty years of debate, it has become widely accepted among academics, journalists, and activists that gentrification leads to displacement, often cited as one of its most negative consequences. However, most quantitative empirical studies fail to fully capture this process.

By examining the residential movements of Parisian residents, my research seeks to establish a direct link between gentrification and displacement, aiming to address the challenging issue of "quantification in the battle against gentrification" (Easton et al., 2020). Using geo-referenced panel data from 2015 to 2022, collected from annual census records and public tax agency datasets, I explore whether gentrification in the French welfare regime triggers the displacement of low-income residents. This study has two main objectives: first, to identify the social and ethnic characteristics that drive residential mobility through a multilevel statistical model; second, to trace the mobility trajectories of different social and ethnic groups in both urban and suburban areas, mapping their movements over time and space.

Preliminary results suggest that gentrification and income upgrading in the private housing market contribute modestly to the displacement of low-income and immigrant residents to distant periurban areas and/or undervalued residential banlieues. By offering new insights into the specific mechanisms of displacement within the French context, this research challenges existing narratives and contributes to a deeper understanding of how gentrification negatively impacts vulnerable populations across diverse urban settings.