ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the urban policies that distanced Paris's working-class migrant population ever farther from the centre and eventually 'beyond the city walls', as well as local policies affecting those migrants who remained within Paris. European immigrants began settling in Paris in large numbers from the late nineteenth century onwards, swelling the city's population to 2.9 million by 1911. Paris's Assimilationist-type services policy appears especially outdated when compared to some of the neighbouring municipalities with large migrant populations. The 'distrust of anything that is ethnically-specific', as one official put it translates into a minimalist policy regarding the cultural and religious needs of migrant communities. The prevalent Assimilatiomst attitude also means that inter-ethnic tensions are ignored by the local authorities, despite what the Local Development Team official describes as a 'very, very serious problem of racism between the different communities. In the Spatial domain, there has been no significant change in urban policy under the new administration.
