01.08.2014 Montpellier: integration village will not be realised

Dubault (2014) reports on the status of the planned Rroma integration village in Montpellier. Hélène Mandroux, the reigning socialist mayor of the city until the spring 2014, had initiated the project together with her assistant. The integration village would have cost around 2 million Euros: 20 motivated families, especially willing to integrate themselves would have been selected and been actively supported in their search for work, in improving their language skills, in their children’s education, and in the integration into the community. The newly elected mayor Philippe Saurel and the local council of Montpellier who were voted in the spring of 2014 have shut the project down. The costs are too high, the hoped-for success of the project too uncertain, they stated. Dubault states that stopping the project didn’t cause too much consternation among the collective in support of the Rroma. Most of the other integration projects in the Paris region were also characterised by failure, she concludes. These pessimistic estimates are contradicted by success stories like those of Indre (Loire-Atlantique), which was able to announce almost exclusively positive assessments of its integration project (compare Barbier 2014 Mouillard 2014 I/II). Aid agencies have accused the authorities and politics of deliberately not wanting to promote the integration of the immigrant Rroma, but rather wanting to deport them. In the French media and the French public, one never hears of the estimated 100,000 to 500,000 Rroma living in an integrated fashion, who form part of French society since generations and contribute to it. They are present examples that integration is possible.