Re-homing France’s immigrant workers

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1:00It's everything your business needs in one place, saving you time, headaches and serious money. Stop paying for missing pieces. Go to odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com to learn more. It was while I was reading the local council's magazine where I live in Saint-Denis, a Paris suburb, that a small article caught my eye. It was about the demolition of a foyer de travailleurs migrants, housing built for immigrant workers. Once it's gone, it will be replaced with a new residence sociale, social housing, for young professionals and those trying to get on the property ladder, the article said. I was intrigued about what would happen to those who used to live there, and so I decided to find out more.

1:45Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service, with assignment from France.

1:56It's too much. Now they want to throw us old retirees out, says Bayadémou Koulibaly. He's 71 years old from Mali and West Africa, but has been living in France for over 50 years. For most of that time, home has been this foyer, housing built especially for France's immigrant workers. But now he fears he's going to lose it.

2:21I'm Carolyn Lombele, in an underprivileged suburb Saint-Denis where I live, just north of the capital Paris.

2:34There's an important meeting today with the company which owns the building and is pushing through with big changes. They're going to replace this 13-story tower block, Siqueros, with new social housing. But residents like Baademou are worried about what will disappear as a result.

3:01Social housing is no good for us. We should never have accepted it. It's all shenanigans. It's to make us leave, to kick us out. That's their policy. That's what I'm saying. I can't accept the way they're treating us. Either they give us something better or forget it.

3:22What's happening here tells a wider story about France's foyer and the changing attitudes towards immigrant workers. Siqueiros is one of the last standing foyer in the country. Around 700 foyer, or workers' hostels, were built in cities across France in the decades after World War II as the economy grew. Since the 1990s, many of them have been demolished. Under 100 are left.

3:51Because I don't like lifts, I'm climbing up to the 8th floor of Sikeros with Jagiri Conte, the president of the Residence Committee, to see exactly where he lives.

4:11So it's a 7-square-meter room. There's literally just room for a single bed. There's a fridge and a table, and he's put the table on top of the fridge because there's literally no space. Here in the entrance, there's a sink. There's a shoe rack, and just above, there's a microwave. He's got some laundry drying, so it's really quite small. This tiny box room has been Jagiri's home for the past 23 years. It's tidy, but there's no place to even sit.

4:46There are 24 rooms like this one on each floor, he explains.

4:57Like many of the men in the foyer, and it is only men here, Diagiri has an entire family back home in Mali, a wife and six children.

5:10Diagiri too is worried about the plans to demolish this tower and replace it with social housing. A lot gets lost in these transformations.

5:27As Diagiri chats to other residents, there's an obvious sense of community here. Officially, 304 men live in Sikeros But I'm told there could actually be at least twice that There's a prayer room on the first floor And a large common room in an adjacent building And there's plenty of outside space Where some residents set up stalls at mealtimes, grilling meat A woman sells takeaway plastic boxes of food

6:03All this, all these vendors and all these common areas, this is going to disappear, right?

6:12Yes, it'll all disappear, he says. There won't be any of this left with the new social housing. They're going to split us up. And that's his biggest concern, the breakup of the community.

6:35We want to live together. It's our custom. When you come to a country, yes, you need to respect it, respect the republic, that's normal. But we can't change the way we live. It's like birds who flock together. A canary can't fly with a pigeon. It's not possible.

7:10Only some of the official Sikiros residents will be rehoused in the new development here. Others will have to move half an hour away, or even further. On top of that, 50 of the new units are reserved for so-called nouveau public. That means other tenants, not those from the old foyer. The authorities say they need to increase the social mix in the buildings.

7:41So he's saying he's worried because as part of the new plan, a lot of the rooms are going to be actually larger. And basically, those are more expensive. And it's for people who are in a relationship, who have a partner or maybe a child. And that's just not the case with most of the people living here. So they won't be able to afford it. And he says it's basically not for them. Currently, residents pay around 350 euros per month at Sikeros, while the cheapest room in a residence social starts at around 450 or more. Some of these men, especially the retirees, have to live on pensions of only around 1 ,000 euros per month.

8:24It's all rubbish, he says. It's not for us. They're trying to push us back, bit by bit by bit, until there'll be no more Arabs or blacks here.

8:41One reason residents at Sikeros are so worried is they've seen what's happened elsewhere. Another foyer nearby has already been torn down and replaced with social housing. We've just walked into Pina and there's lots of guys milling about. Just sitting on some bunches here in the sun. Mostly elderly African gentlemen.

9:05How are you, Michael? So far so good. Michael Hoare has been in France since 1973. He came as a young student to study film. I've been working in and around the foyer of these sort of hostels or dormitories for immigrant workers in the Paris region for about 50 years. Michael is one of the founders and the current president of a group called COPEF, the Collective for the Future of the Foyer. This was Foyer Pinel. Can you take me back? It was an old industrial warehouse, and it was divided up into dormitories of 8 to 12 beds. And this whole area was a kind of a courtyard. It was a souk. It was a market.

9:54It was full of people selling all kinds of stuff, from chickens to clothes to rings and jewelry. And there were little workshops for tailors, for people who worked metal, particularly silver, for the jewelry and stuff. There were people who would be cutting up meat and selling it on the weekends and so on and so on. It was an African village out here. Could it be more different from today? No, today. Somewhat sanitized, sterilized and emptied environment.

10:32It's a far cry from the hustle and bustle of an old foyer. I'm taking the stairs again, this time with Boubou Soumare. So you haven't lived here in years, right? It's been four years, says Boubou. But you still have a room?

10:55Boubou, who's in his early 50s, is from Mauritania. Although he's moved out, he still has a room at Pined, where his younger brother now lives. But the management company wants to take it away from him, and they've been fighting over it in court.

11:12So I'm just taking off my shoes, and just in front of me there's at least one, two, five, six pairs of shoes. the room is full of people. There are at least two beds here. And...

11:30So there's a lot of people in here. Ah oui, il y a du monde. C 'est comme toujours. C 'est comme toujours. Parce que c 'est une chambre qui ne ferme pas. On l 'appelle comme ça. La chambre qui n 'a pas de porte. This is the room with no doors. It's always open. But it's your brother who lives here now.

11:56With his cousins next door, I see a mattress on the floor. How many people sleep here?

12:05Two people. Two people sleep here.

12:11The room's 26 square meters with a mini kitchen, a shower and toilet. It certainly looks more comfortable. than Sikeros.

12:22But there's a story involving keys. One of the first things Boubou did when he moved into Pinel was to change the lock to his room. That's because residents here are given just one set of keys. And the keys cannot be copied, which makes sharing your room, as many of them do, more difficult. And that's the thing. People often do this to help each other out, and, importantly, to split the costs. Having just one key can cause other difficulties too. I imagine that sometimes this could be really problematic, especially if someone is sick or if they're elderly. There have been deaths. In 2015, someone died here at Pinel.

13:08His body was totally decomposed when they found it. His daughter came over. But the housing company's office was closed that day. It's us, the residents, who called the firefighters. They came, they knocked down the door and found he'd been dead for a while. This issue of the keys is also very symbolic, isn't it?

13:31It's infantilisation. It means a lack of trust. It means imprisonment. And it means that everything we do is under surveillance by Adoma, the management company. I've been advocating for everyone, without exception, to change their lock. If they want to attack us in court, we're ready. We know it's written nowhere in the House rules or in the contract. They know very well they'll lose in court. Among us, there are people managing companies, there are heads of families. If we can manage a company, you'd think we can look after a set of keys, no? The issue of the keys is about control, according to Michael Hoare.

14:15Of course, it's much easier to be able to see who's coming in, who's going out, and keep the control. Plus the fact that they institute the inventory. Every year they sort of put up a little sign around the foyer saying, next Thursday we will take start of what's happening in your room. And what they have, they have a pass which allows them to go into all of the rooms. There are water meters, too. Limit of 165 liters per day. Using too much water implies more than one person is living there. Or beware the telltale sign of different-sized shoes lying around on the floor.

14:51What we're living through at the moment is a kind of a campaign, if you like. The managers of this kind of housing are targeting for eviction. Anybody who doesn't obey the rules and regulations. We have a certain number of people in these foyers, which the French government deems no longer useful for French society. So they will continue to put into place steps and measures that will push them out. The most vulnerable residents, arguably, are those who've retired and would like to spend some of the year back in Africa, as Boubou explains.

15:32Retirees can't go back home and carry on paying rent here. With their measly pensions, they have to leave their room to their son or their cousin, who pays the rent while they're away. But then Adoma comes along and slaps on an eviction order.

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17:23costly mistakes. Listen to Choiceology at schwab.com slash podcast or wherever you listen.