French policy on Refugees' access to housing

This work is the country research report prepared within Work Package 2, focused on housing solutions for refugees and beneficiaries of international protection status in France, delivered under the H2020 project MERGING—Integration for Migrants. The main objectives of this report are to:
• Provide a synthesis of the main legal structures existing in France delineated by targets.
• Classify pol...icies depending on their scope,
• Present the main debates in public policies about access to housing and access to the rest of social rights,
• Identify tools developed in public policies to fight discrimination,
• Describe the main tendencies in public policies devoted to social inclusion for immigrants during the last 10 years approximately,
• Summarize the main ideological changes experienced in the last 10 years.
Our report describes the multilevel governance existing in France regarding migrants’ access to housing, and collaboration existing between national and local institutions. The wide array of existing solutions is marked by its heterogeneity: some offering short-term to long-term stay, being destinated to all or specific migrants, etc.
Our report also highlights the security shift engaged by the successive governments in reaction to the migrations flows. Successive reforms made access to housing and social rights more complex for migrants – increasing the gap between “desirable” and “undesirable” migrants. The quasi absence of tools designed to fight against discrimination is often pointed by the European Court of Human Rights, and the country is often condemned for institutional discrimination.
Interestingly, however, a rising number of initiatives are emerging at the local level to find suitable and sustainable solutions to integrate migrants. The creation of two inter-ministerial delegations dedicated to housing and asylum seekers denote a recent effort of the government to better collaborate with local actors.
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