ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the way in which the association, Alentour, is involved in the fight against exclusion in L’Epeule, a former working-class and densely populated neighbourhood of Roubaix, which is the second largest municipality of the Lille metropolitan area, situated in the Nord-Pas de Calais region on France’s most western border region with Belgium. From the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, this region was a major industrial centre, contributing significantly to the growth of the French economy, particu larly through its powerful textile and mechanical industries. Since the end of the 1960s, however, the entire Nord-Pas de Calais has been seriously affected by the decline of traditional industries. As a manufacturing city, Roubaix had also experienced an important influx of foreign immigrants, originally employed in the textile industry, but now hit and fragmented by structural unemployment problems.
