ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION Montpellier is situated some ten miles from the Mediterranean in one of the poorest regions of France, Languedoc-Roussillon. The city has grown rapidly since the 1960s when it was predominantly a university town with a population of around one hundred thousand, to a core population of 208,000 and a labour market area of 323,000 by 1990.1 During the 1960s population increased by 10 per cent as it became a major area of settlement for French Algerians (les pieds noirs) after Algerian independence. Of the total population of Montpellier in 1990 just over 22 per cent were born outside Metropolitan France.2 Over a third of the resident population have come from outside the city, including from overseas and the surrounding region, since 1982. Montpellier has, therefore, a high proportion of recent migrants. Following French local government reorganisation in 1967 Montpellier became the regional capital of an area dominated by viticulture, producing mainly low quality wines contributing to the European wine lake', and with some nascent tourism. Between 1960 and 1977 the population of the city doubled, as an increasing number of new industries started to locate in the south. IBM set up there in 1962 and was followed by other data processing and electronics firms and by medical technology and medical research industries. From being the least industrialised region of France in 1974, Languedoc-Roussillon attracted the highest proportion of new firms in the early 1980s and most of these were located in and around Montpellier (Aydalot 1986).
