Solidarity Towns and Cities in France
Published reviews: France || Spain || Sweden || Italy || Eastern Germany || Coming soon: The UK || Austria || Greece || Portugal ||
In this article on Solidarity Towns and Cities in Europe, The Immigrant Times features a cross-section of French communities, from Paris in the north to Montpellier on the Mediterranean. (Photo: L’Arbre Blanc, or the White Tree, in Montpellier, France. Sou Fujimoto, one of the project’s architects, said it reflects the region's climate, lifestyle, and light. Credit: SFA+NLA+OXO+DR)
Summary
The national picture
October 2026: France is navigating a complex intersection of structural labour shortages, demographic ageing, and intense political polarisation over migration. Immigrants make up about 10.3 per cent of the population. Despite high-profile political debates centred on border deterrence and deportation, the French economy relies heavily on foreign-born labour. Key sectors, including construction, logistics, hospitality, and social care, face acute and persistent labour shortages.
The 2024 Immigration Law fundamentally altered the national legislative landscape. While it introduced a temporary regularisation mechanism for undocumented workers in designated shortage occupations (métiers en tension), it also complicated family reunification, delayed access to state welfare benefits, and accelerated the issuance of summary deportation orders (OQTF).
The subsequent March 2026 municipal elections highlighted a fractured national consensus. Major urban centres and select rural communes have often adopted proactive, unconditional integration policies and joined networks such as ANVITA. By contrast, surrounding peri-urban and rural districts have shown increased electoral support for restrictionist platforms, creating a stark geographic divide in migration management.
Integration and solidarity at local level
An analysis of the eight featured municipalities reveals three primary, cross-cutting realities that shape local integration in France.
First, a profound structural friction exists between state centralisation and the municipal burden. While the national government in Paris retains exclusive control over border enforcement, asylum processing, and residency permit issuance, local authorities absorb the immediate social realities of migration.
The chronic saturation of the national 115 emergency accommodation hotline across all surveyed municipalities forces local councils to manage street encampments, mitigate public health risks, and ensure unhoused children receive schooling, often with inadequate state financial compensation. Furthermore, severe administrative backlogs at regional prefectures routinely push documented workers into irregular status, undermining local employment integration.
Second, grassroots civil society serves as the primary, and sometimes only, integration infrastructure. Institutional support varies widely depending on the local political mandate.
In cities with supportive administrations, such as Paris, Nantes, and Montpellier, civic organisations work alongside municipal funding to provide transitional housing, legal aid, and language training.
In highly constrained or hostile administrative environments, such as the Alpine border at Briançon or the complex landscape of Saint-Étienne, secular charities, tenant unions, trade unions, and citizen collectives step in to provide emergency mountain rescue, challenge predatory landlords, and secure workplace regularisation.
Across all typologies, citizen-led hosting networks remain a vital safety net that prevents mass street homelessness.
Third, housing bottlenecks and spatial segregation are central barriers to successful economic and social integration.
Whether navigating Grigny's degraded, overpopulated co-ownership blocks, Nantes and Montpellier's expensive, saturated private rental markets, or Melle's isolated rural geography, newly arrived residents face acute housing shortages.
This structural deficit traps families in precarious living conditions, delays administrative regularisation, and restricts access to regional employment pools. Consequently, spatial inequality strongly shapes integration in France, where the transition from arrival to long-term stability depends on local property markets and municipal transport links rather than on national policy.
Paris
Île-de-France
Paris is the capital of France, located in the north-central Île-de-France region along the Seine River. The municipality proper has an administrative population of 2.1 million, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE). Its urban density exceeds 20,000 residents per square kilometre, and it forms the core of an urban agglomeration of over 12 million people.
The local economy is driven by high-value services, including corporate finance, professional administration, higher education, and international tourism. This dynamic coexists with a large, structurally dependent secondary labour market in cleaning, construction, hospitality, logistics, and personal care. The regional unemployment rate hovers around seven per cent, yet employment precarity remains sharply concentrated among non-European foreign nationals.
Immigration
Paris remains France’s primary historical port of arrival. Successive twentieth-century labour flows from Southern Europe, specifically Italy, Spain, and Portugal, were followed by post-colonial movements from the Maghreb and West Africa. Under INSEE definitions, approximately 22 per cent of the city’s resident population is foreign-born. Major countries of origin include Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Mali, Senegal, Ivory Coast, China, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. Over the past decade, Paris has also been the main internal metropolitan destination for international asylum seekers, with prominent cohorts arriving from Afghanistan, Sudan, Eritrea, Guinea, Syria, and Ukraine.
Integration
The Paris municipal council is an active member of the Association Nationale des Villes et Territoires (ANVITA) network. Following the March 2026 municipal elections, the administration led by Socialist Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire has maintained the city's policy framework of unconditional municipal access, providing services irrespective of an individual's legal status.
The city coordinates administrative domicile services through the Centre d'Action Sociale de la Ville de Paris (CASVP). This service provides unhoused and irregular migrants with the official fiscal address required to access state healthcare, enrol children in school, and submit regularisation applications under the labour-shortage criteria of the 2024 Immigration Law. The Rectorat de Paris oversees specialised allophone classrooms (UPE2A) for primary and secondary school integration, while the municipality directly funds French as a Foreign Language (FLE) courses across its adult education network.
Solidarity at work
Grassroots civil society in Paris provides essential daily infrastructure alongside municipal programmes. A key operational node is La Maison des Réfugiés, established in 2019 and situated in the 20th arrondissement since 2021. Funded by the City of Paris and managed by Emmaüs Solidarité, it provides a dedicated open daytime hub for co-working, language training, legal consultations, and social mixing between Parisians and displaced people.
Citizen hosting networks offer vital non-institutional shelter. The association Réfugiés Bienvenue coordinates private domestic hosting across Parisian homes, while the national SINGA network operates its J'accueille programme to pair refugees with local hosts for structured three-to-nine-month stays. Independent humanitarian associations, including Utopia 56, Solidarité Jean Bouin, and the specialised refugee school Thot, run nightly food runs, distribute survival kits, coordinate medical referrals, and assist unaccompanied minors whose age declarations have been contested by child welfare authorities.
Friction and strain
Emergency accommodation in Paris is under constant strain. The state-run 115 shelter-referral line is chronically saturated, leaving hundreds of asylum seekers, families, and young people sleeping in informal encampments under flyovers, along the Canal Saint-Denis, and near the Boulevard Périphérique.
National police authorities conduct systematic clearances under state zero-fixation directives, dispersing occupants to peripheral departments or directing them to regional processing hubs outside Île-de-France. Institutional conflict over age assessments for unaccompanied foreign minors (MNAs) remains acute, with many young migrants living in makeshift camps while court appeals proceed. Additionally, processing backlogs at the Paris Police Prefecture, exacerbated by digital-only processing on the ANEF portal, leave thousands of long-term residents in bureaucratic limbo and exposed to summary deportation orders (OQTF).
Grigny
Essonne, Île-de-France
Grigny is a suburban commune 25 kilometres south of Paris in the Essonne department of Île-de-France. INSEE records an administrative population of 27,000, with an urban density exceeding 5,500 residents per square kilometre.
The municipality has an extremely narrow commercial tax base and functions primarily as a dormitory suburb. Local employment is concentrated in municipal administration, retail, warehousing, and construction. Its local job-to-resident ratio is below 30 per cent, so most working residents commute across the southern Paris basin towards industrial logistics corridors, Orly airport, and Évry-Courcouronnes. Median household income is among the lowest in mainland France, and the local poverty rate is close to 45 per cent.
Immigration
Originally a rural village, Grigny underwent rapid urban expansion between 1968 and 1973 under state urban development schemes. This rapid build-out centred on two massive housing complexes: La Grande Borne, a public social housing estate designed by Émile Aillaud, and Grigny 2, a high-rise private co-ownership development of 5,000 flats that experienced financial collapse and infrastructure neglect.
Approximately 49 per cent of Grigny’s residents are foreign-born, rising to over 65 per cent in the Grigny 2 district. Over the past thirty years, inward migration from Algeria, Morocco, and Portugal has shifted toward West and Central Africa, notably Mali, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Guinea, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, along with smaller communities from the Comoros and South Asia.
Integration
Following the 2026 municipal elections, Mayor Philippe Rio's administration has continued to pursue an interventionist social policy, channelling national urban regeneration funding through the National Agency for Urban Renewal (ANRU) and the Cité Éducative initiative.
Due to acute administrative backlogs at Essonne prefectural services, the municipal town hall partners with local community centres to run public administrative clinics. These clinics guide foreign residents through the digital ANEF platform, assist with residence permit renewals, and support access to State Medical Aid (AME). The municipality has also halved class sizes in early primary school cohorts and runs specialised UPE2A units alongside adult French language workshops.
Solidarity at work
Solidarity networks in Grigny focus heavily on housing rights and basic economic survival. In Grigny 2, where private co-owners abandoned buildings to bankruptcy, unlicensed landlords (marchands de sommeil) have historically exploited precarious foreign residents by subdividing unsafe buildings.
Local tenant collectives, supported by the Fondation Abbé Pierre and Droit au Logement, help tenants challenge illegal rental charges, combat predatory evictions, and document building safety violations.
Diaspora mutual aid groups, particularly rotating credit associations (tontines) organised by Malian and Senegalese residents, provide crucial community financing for emergency living costs, legal representation, and family support during administrative delays.
Local charities, including Grigny Solidarité and Secours Populaire, run weekly dry-goods distributions and digital literacy desks to help residents without home computers complete digital government procedures.
Friction and strain
Grigny faces deep urban and structural strains. Grigny 2 remains subject to exceptional state intervention, the Opération de Requalification des Copropriétés Dégradées d'Intérêt National (ORCOD-IN), decreed in October 2016 and running through 2030, which involves the public acquisition, division, and demolition of unviable blocks.
Overcrowding remains acute, with multiple households often sharing two-room apartments. Highway and railway barriers physically cut off the town, making travel difficult. Although the opening of the T12 tramway line in December 2023 improved links to Massy and Évry, daily commutes remain costly and time-consuming.
The town also faces severe medical desertification, straining the municipal health centre, while high teacher turnover challenges the education system. Relations between local youths and the national police remain tense within designated priority security zones (ZSP), marked by frequent identity checks and underlying economic frustration.
Nantes
Pays de la Loire
Nantes is an estuary port city and the administrative capital of the Loire-Atlantique department in western France, located about 50 kilometres from the Atlantic coast. The city proper has an administrative population of 323,000, while the wider Nantes Métropole urban community contains approximately 670,000 residents, according to INSEE data.
The metropolitan economy is based on aeronautics, agro-food processing, maritime logistics, digital technologies, and higher education. Local unemployment has remained below the national average, at around 6 per cent. However, rapid demographic growth and intense pressure on the property market have significantly increased living costs, creating clear economic disparities for low-income workers and new arrivals.
Immigration
Nantes’ historical migration patterns were linked to Atlantic trade and post-war industrial reconstruction, drawing factory and dockside labour from Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Algeria throughout the mid-twentieth century.
Foreign-born residents make up roughly 11 per cent of the municipality's population, with higher concentrations in outer social housing estates such as Malakoff and Bellevue. Over the past decade, Nantes has become a central regional hub for asylum processing in western France. Inward migration has diversified, with arrivals from Sudan, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Afghanistan, and Georgia joining existing communities from Morocco and Tunisia.
Integration
Socialist Mayor Johanna Rolland led the municipal administration and was re-elected in the March 2026 municipal elections. Nantes is an active member of ANVITA and adopted a formal hospitality charter (Charte nantaise de l'hospitalité) in 2019.
The city administration guarantees unconditional local services through its municipal social action centre (CCAS). The centre issues administrative domiciles to unhoused foreign nationals, ensuring access to primary schooling, emergency welfare, and public transport subsidies. Integration into public education is managed through a municipal network of UPE2A allophone classes, and the city subsidises evening French language courses at neighbourhood community centres, alongside vocational training programmes.
Solidarity at work
Civic solidarity in Nantes is characterised by close cooperation among grassroots coalitions, secular charities, and independent citizen initiatives. The local association Accueil d’abord organises collective housing (colocations solidaires) and places displaced individuals with local homeowners, working alongside the national SINGA network’s J'accueille programme to offer stable, three- to nine-month hosting.
Volunteer collectives, notably Le Collectif des Jeunes Exilés and MNA 44, provide direct legal and material support to unaccompanied foreign minors whose minority status has been rejected by departmental child welfare authorities. These volunteers manage emergency housing, provide meals, arrange access to medical care, and fund legal appeals against age assessments.
Long-standing local associations such as Gasprom, alongside Secours Catholique and independent neighbourhood food networks, operate drop-in legal clinics to contest deportation orders, run community kitchens, and provide refurbished bicycles to help residents access jobs in suburban industrial zones.
Friction and strain
Emergency housing remains a persistent source of friction in Nantes. The national 115 emergency accommodation hotline is chronically overwhelmed, leaving families and asylum applicants sleeping in tents in municipal parks, on riverbanks, and around university campuses. Because demand far outstrips emergency shelter capacity, the city has repeatedly occupied abandoned industrial buildings, which police have since evicted, scattering support networks.
Sharp institutional disagreements persist between the Loire-Atlantique Departmental Council and civic networks over the legal responsibility for and housing of unrecognised unaccompanied minors. Furthermore, long administrative backlogs at the Loire-Atlantique prefecture for both initial residence permit applications and renewals leave documented workers vulnerable to job loss and eviction.
Melle
Deux-Sèvres, Nouvelle-Aquitaine
Melle is a rural market town in the Deux-Sèvres department of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, roughly 30 kilometres southeast of Niort and 60 kilometres southwest of Poitiers.
The current consolidated commune was formed on 1 January 2019 by merging five rural villages, raising the population to 6,050, according to INSEE data. The local economy is based on cereal farming, goat cheese production, agro-food manufacturing, regional chemical production, artisanal trades, and local public services. The area faces demographic ageing and persistent labour shortages in agriculture, construction, and eldercare.
Immigration
For decades, Melle saw little international migration, receiving only small numbers of European agricultural workers during post-war mechanisation. The town's contemporary migration profile began in autumn 2016, when the municipal council voted to host relocated asylum seekers after the dismantling of the informal camp in Calais.
Foreign-born residents now make up approximately 3.5 per cent of the local population, a notable figure for a small rural district in west-central France. Most arrivals have come through state-sponsored resettlement programmes from Sudan, Afghanistan, Syria, and Eritrea, alongside Ukrainian families arriving after 2022.
Integration
Melle's municipal strategy is anchored in an explicit commitment to unconditional reception (l'accueil inconditionnel). Following his 2026 re-election, Mayor Sylvain Griffault has kept the town hall an active participant in the ANVITA network. The municipality has renovated vacant public housing and former public facilities to provide secure transitional family homes.
Local municipal officers liaise directly with the Niort prefecture to process administrative paperwork locally, reducing the need for residents to undertake long journeys to the departmental capital. Local schools provide flexible French-language support despite small class sizes, and the municipal library and cultural centre (Le Metullum) host weekly language classes and conversation circles, jointly run by civic groups and municipal staff.
Solidarity at work
Solidarity in Melle is delivered through an established partnership between elected officials and local residents. The citizen collective L'accueil inconditionnel, founded in late 2016, pairs each newly arrived family or individual with a dedicated volunteer support team. These volunteers help with daily tasks, such as driving newcomers to regional hospital appointments in Niort, explaining administrative correspondence, assisting with grocery shopping, and organising shared meals.
Because rural public transport is limited, volunteers have set up a community car-pooling network and a bike-repair workshop that provides refurbished bicycles and driving-theory tuition, enabling newcomers to travel to workplaces and training centres. Local agricultural cooperatives, timber companies, and building firms work directly with civic sponsors to arrange apprenticeships and stable employment contracts, while regular community potlucks and public festivals help prevent social isolation in rural areas.
Friction and strain
Geographic isolation remains the primary practical barrier to integration in Melle. Public transport links to larger commercial centres such as Niort and Poitiers are limited, making it difficult to access vocational training, shift work, and specialised services without a car and a driving licence.
The area also faces severe healthcare shortages, with a lack of general practitioners and psychologists across the rural basin. This shortage makes access to trauma and mental health care particularly difficult, requiring long journeys to regional hospitals, often relying on volunteer drivers.
While recognised refugees generally progress through statutory channels, individuals whose asylum claims are rejected face an abrupt loss of housing and have limited access to legal aid. The issuance of deportation orders (OQTF) causes significant local distress and triggers community protests.
Finally, while the municipality adopts an open reception model, surrounding rural areas show increasing support for anti-immigration parties, revealing a growing political divide across the district.
Strasbourg
Alsace, Bas-Rhin, Grand Est
Strasbourg is the capital of the Bas-Rhin department and the Grand Est region, located on the Rhine River and directly bordering Germany. According to INSEE, the municipality has an administrative population of 291,000, while the Eurométropole de Strasbourg has over 510,000 residents. European institutions, including the European Parliament and the Council of Europe, anchor the local economy, alongside public administration, higher education, cross-border commerce, pharmaceuticals, and manufacturing.
Unemployment has settled at around 7.5 per cent, but the local job market shows sharp disparities between high-income cross-border and institutional workers and low-income service workers, particularly in peripheral districts such as Hautepierre and Neuhof.
Immigration
Strasbourg’s geographical location has made it a historic crossroads for cross-border movement. In the mid-twentieth century, extensive labour migration brought workers from Italy, Turkey, and Morocco to work in the region’s construction and manufacturing sectors.
Foreign-born residents currently make up approximately 14 per cent of the municipal population. Contemporary migration flows are particularly directed towards Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus, and the Balkans, with sizeable communities from Georgia, Armenia, Russia, Albania, and Kosovo settling alongside arrivals from Syria, Afghanistan, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Integration
Strasbourg has a long history of institutional municipal reception, having established a Foreign Residents' Consultative Council as early as 2000. Following the March 2026 municipal elections, Mayor Catherine Trautmann (Socialist) returned to municipal leadership, defeating the incumbent Green administration.
Her administration has upheld the city’s longstanding commitment to the ANVITA network and to its identity as an open city (ville hospitalière). The municipality operates a dedicated reception office that assists foreign residents with residency applications and provides official administrative addresses through the municipal social centre.
Regional CASNAV teams and municipal UPE2A classrooms coordinate educational inclusion for newly arrived children, while the city funds French-language instruction in municipal community centres and supports regional access to vocational training.
Solidarity at work
Civic mobilisation in Strasbourg is notable for its formal civic sponsorship frameworks and multi-faith civil society networks. A central initiative is the Association de Parrainage Républicain, which pairs local volunteers with newly arrived asylum seekers and undocumented residents to guide them through legal processes, practise language skills, and build social connections.
Local chapters of national organisations, including Secours Catholique, Alsace d'Abord, and the Protestant foundation CASAS, provide specialised legal defence against deportation orders and assist asylum seekers with applications to the National Court of Asylum (CNDA). Student and citizen collectives organise winter survival initiatives, providing emergency blankets, warm meals, and temporary shelter during cold spells.
Grassroots initiatives also operate community kitchens and workshop spaces that offer practical support, including bike maintenance and sewing repairs, helping new arrivals navigate everyday life in the city.
Friction and strain
Strasbourg faces severe emergency housing shortages. The national 115 emergency telephone service is overwhelmed, leading to the recurrent emergence of informal tent encampments in central public parks, such as Parc de l'Étoile, particularly in summer and autumn.
These makeshift camps often prompt municipal and prefectural clearances that displace vulnerable families without providing long-term housing solutions. Because many arrivals come from countries classified by the national asylum office (OFPRA) as safe countries of origin, asylum seekers face high rates of procedural rejection, which cut them off from state housing benefits and leave them at risk of expulsion.
Furthermore, administrative backlogs at the Bas-Rhin prefecture for residency renewals create ongoing instability for workers, while peripheral social housing estates continue to face high youth unemployment, poor transport links, and urban marginalisation.
Saint-Étienne
Loire, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
Saint-Étienne is the administrative centre of the Loire department in east-central France, located in the foothills of the Massif Central, 60 kilometres southwest of Lyon.
According to INSEE data, the municipality has an administrative population of 174,000, within a wider metropolitan area of over 400,000 residents. Once a leading industrial centre for coal mining, weapons manufacturing, and bicycle production, the city underwent decades of deindustrialisation, leading to sustained population decline.
Today, the local economy focuses on higher education, medical design, logistics, light manufacturing, and public services. Unemployment remains higher than the national average at about 8.5 per cent, but low housing costs have made it an affordable regional hub.
Immigration
Saint-Étienne’s industrial history was built on waves of foreign labour. In the early and mid-twentieth century, many Italian, Polish, and Spanish workers, and later Algerian and Moroccan workers, moved to the area to work in regional coalfields, metalworks, and manufacturing plants.
Immigrants now make up roughly 13 per cent of the resident population. Recent arrivals reflect humanitarian migration, with families and individuals coming from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Syria, Afghanistan, and Georgia, along with significant numbers from the Western Balkans.
Integration
Following the March 2026 municipal elections, newly elected Mayor Régis Juanico took office, ending a period of political turbulence marked by the December 2025 criminal conviction and imprisonment of former mayor Gaël Perdriau. As the incoming administration establishes its mandate, newly arrived migrants rely on standard administrative channels for institutional integration.
The city's Centre Communal d'Action Sociale (CCAS) provides administrative domiciliation for unhoused foreign nationals, giving them the official address needed to register for public healthcare and enrol children in school.
Public schools run UPE2A reception classes, while civil society and local trade unions guide regularised arrivals into vocational training for manufacturing, construction, and regional transport logistics.
Solidarity at work
Solidarity networks in Saint-Étienne leverage the city's low cost of living and available housing to build community-led integration initiatives. The local association Ami 42 provides ongoing material, administrative, and legal assistance to exiled families, helping them secure emergency shelter and lodge appeals against administrative rejections.
Citizen-hosting networks are well developed, with local chapters of J'accueille (coordinated by SINGA) and JRS Welcome (Jesuit Refugee Service) placing asylum seekers with local families for planned, multi-month stays. The local trade union movement, particularly through the CGT and solidarity labour collectives, plays an active role in defending undocumented workers in the logistics, building, and cleaning trades, organising campaigns for legal regularisation through work under national circulars.
Secular and faith-based groups manage large-scale furniture and clothing hubs that help newly housed families settle into empty apartments.
Friction and strain
Despite the wider availability of housing, much of Saint-Étienne’s private rental stock is old and in poor condition, leaving precarious foreign residents vulnerable to substandard accommodation in neglected central neighbourhoods such as Tarentaize-Beaubrun. Administrative processing at the Loire prefecture is severely delayed, leaving people waiting months for residency appointments and renewals. This backlog pushes undocumented individuals into informal, low-wage work in parcel delivery, building renovation, and agriculture.
The municipal 115 emergency shelter system remains under-resourced, forcing families to rely on civic hosting networks or informal housing. Additionally, the broader industrial valley faces economic stagnation, limiting long-term career prospects for young migrants and fuelling political polarisation across the wider metropolitan area.
Briançon
Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
Briançon is a sub-prefecture of the Hautes-Alpes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, in the southern Alps at an elevation of 1,320 metres. According to INSEE, its administrative population is 11,000.
The local economy relies primarily on mountain tourism, winter sports, high-altitude health centres, and municipal public services. Economic activity is highly seasonal, with labour demand fluctuating between the winter and summer tourist seasons. The municipal budget is modest, and the geographic setting poses significant operational challenges in winter.
Immigration
Historically, Briançon saw seasonal migration from northern Italy, with workers crossing the Alpine passes for timber work, agriculture, and construction. Its modern migration role emerged in 2016 and 2017, when tightened border controls at Ventimiglia on the Mediterranean coast diverted migration flows northward through Alpine passes, notably the Col de Montgenèvre at 1,850 metres.
Briançon quickly became a major Alpine entry point into France. Those crossing the mountains are predominantly young people and families from Afghanistan, Iran, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, and Sudan who travelled through Italy.
Integration
Briançon's institutional integration policy is heavily shaped by national border security priorities. After his re-election in the March 2026 municipal elections, the municipal council, led by Mayor Arnaud Murgia, has maintained a strict focus on public order, municipal security, and public-space management, treating migrant management primarily as a national border responsibility.
Consequently, the municipality has few formal, long-term integration mechanisms. The municipality cooperates with the state only within legal mandates, such as providing emergency shelter during cold-weather alerts and enrolling resident children in school. Regional social workers and civil society organisations provide almost all long-term administrative assistance and integration services, while the Hautes-Alpes prefecture and the national border police (PAF) oversee border control.
Solidarity at work
Because institutional reception is limited, Briançon is home to one of France's most active and visible grassroots humanitarian movements. The central organisation, Refuge Solidaire, is a volunteer-run emergency respite centre that provides warm meals, medical checks, clean clothing, and temporary shelter to individuals who have crossed the Alpine passes.
The collective Tous Migrants coordinates volunteers, including experienced mountaineers, who conduct high-altitude rescue patrols along mountain routes to locate exiles at risk of hypothermia, frostbite, or fatal falls. Volunteer doctors, nurses, and psychologists work through the local hospital and mobile clinics to treat cold injuries and trauma. Legal support collectives document pushbacks at the Italian border, provide advice on asylum procedures, and offer legal defence to volunteers accused of assisting undocumented migrants.
Friction and strain
Friction in Briançon is defined by intense physical danger and institutional disputes over the border.
Crossing the Alps in winter poses life-threatening risks, and local emergency rooms regularly treat severe frostbite and hypothermia, with several fatalities recorded along mountain trails. National and border police maintain an active presence along access roads and bus lines, conduct ongoing identity checks, and carry out summary pushbacks into Italy, actions that human rights organisations frequently challenge in administrative courts.
Relations between volunteer organisations and the municipal administration are strained, marked by frequent disagreements over the location, funding, and operation of the Refuge Solidaire. Additionally, the trial and prosecution of local activists for assisting undocumented migrants have created persistent social tension within the valley, set against a conservative regional electorate that broadly supports strict border enforcement.
Montpellier
Hérault, Occitanie
Montpellier is the administrative capital of the Hérault department in the Occitanie region, on the Mediterranean coast in southern France. The city proper has an administrative population of 302,000, while the Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole urban community has more than 500,000 residents, according to INSEE data. The local economy is driven by higher education, biotechnology, digital services, healthcare, and tourism.
While the city has experienced sustained demographic and economic expansion, unemployment is close to 9.5 per cent and poverty near 26 per cent, creating clear social divides between professional workers and low-income residents in outer social housing districts.
Immigration
Montpellier’s Mediterranean location has shaped its long history of migration. In the mid-twentieth century, the city absorbed large numbers of repatriated European settlers from Algeria, as well as post-colonial labour migrants from the Maghreb, particularly from Morocco and Algeria.
Under INSEE definitions, approximately 15 per cent of the municipal population is foreign-born. Over the past fifteen years, inward migration has broadened to include arrivals from Sub-Saharan Africa, including Guinea, Senegal, and Ivory Coast, as well as from the Middle East, Spain, and Latin America. The city also receives significant numbers of unaccompanied minors arriving via Mediterranean transit routes.
Integration
Montpellier actively participates in the ANVITA network. Following his re-election in the March 2026 local elections, Mayor Michaël Delafosse has continued the administration’s focus on secular, republican integration alongside municipal hospitality.
The municipality operates dedicated reception desks at the Centre Communal d'Action Sociale (CCAS) to manage administrative domiciliation, ensuring that all residents can access municipal services regardless of legal status. Montpellier has pioneered free public transport across its metropolitan network for all registered residents, a policy that significantly supports low-income immigrants and job seekers.
The city works closely with the University of Montpellier to support programmes for displaced academics and students, funds allophone classes (UPE2A) in primary schools, and subsidises adult French language courses delivered through local neighbourhood community centres.
Solidarity at work
A dense network of university activists, secular charities, and neighbourhood organisations supports civil society in Montpellier. Local associations, including La Cimade Montpellier, RESF 34 (Réseau Éducation Sans Frontières), and local branches of the Ligue des Droits de l'Homme, run weekly legal clinics to help residents regularise their status, prepare asylum applications, and challenge deportation notices (OQTF).
Grassroots housing collectives provide temporary housing for young migrants and unaccompanied minors whose age assessments have been rejected by the Hérault Departmental Council, and organise citizen hosting and emergency squats.
The municipal food solidarity network works alongside groups such as Secours Populaire, the food bank, and neighbourhood community kitchens to distribute fresh food, particularly in high-density districts such as La Mosson and Petit Bard. University student collectives also run free language tutoring, digital access workshops, and legal clinics throughout the city.
Friction and strain
Housing availability remains Montpellier's primary structural challenge. The private rental market is tight and expensive, while social housing waitlists are long, leaving the municipal 115 emergency shelter system overwhelmed.
This has led to the persistent formation of informal settlements and squats on the city's outskirts, which are subject to periodic police evictions that scatter vulnerable families. Tensions remain high between the Hérault Departmental Council and child rights groups over the accommodation and support of unaccompanied minors, leaving many young migrants unhoused during the appeals process.
Delays at the Hérault prefecture for residency applications create administrative vulnerability for workers, pushing many into informal jobs in seasonal agriculture and the building trades. Finally, the city’s open municipal reception policy contrasts with the broader political climate of the Hérault department and the wider Occitanie region, where right-wing parties poll strongly, creating lasting tension between municipal inclusion efforts and regional politics.
Key sources and documentation
INSEE (National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies) is the primary state repository for French demographic data, census figures, and labour market statistics, providing the baseline figures for foreign-born populations, urban density, and local economic indicators used in this report.
ANVITA (National Association of Welcoming Cities and Territories) is a national network of French local authorities and elected officials. Its policy charters, municipal guidelines, and public reports outline frameworks for unconditional reception and local solidarity practices.
2024 Immigration law (Loi du 26 janvier 2024) The national legislative framework governing current residency conditions, asylum procedures, and the specific regularisation pathways for undocumented workers in designated shortage occupations (métiers en tension).
OFPRA (French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons) is the central state agency responsible for processing asylum claims and determining refugee status. Its annual reports provide definitive data on asylum application flows, countries of origin, and procedural rejection rates in France.
Fondation Abbé Pierre is an independent housing rights organisation that publishes comprehensive annual reports on the state of housing in France, offering detailed analyses of saturation of emergency accommodation, social housing deficits, and the exploitation of precarious tenants by unlicensed landlords.
About this series
Solidarity Towns and Cities is an editorial project by The Immigrant Times (IMT). The series documents practical, community-level responses to immigration, asylum, and demographic change across European towns and cities. Each report applies five consistent analytical lenses: demographic and economic data, immigration history, municipal integration policy, grassroots solidarity initiatives, and local friction and infrastructure strains associated with demographic transition.
Readers are invited to suggest other European towns and cities that they believe The Immigrant Times should feature.
Published reviews: France || Spain || Sweden || Italy || Eastern Germany || Coming soon: The UK || Austria || Greece || Portugal ||
Further reading from The Immigrant Times: Immigrant city - Marseille || Marseille - Ville immigration || French immigrant footballers ||
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