Contenu du sommaire : Marges au coeur de la ville

The fringe at the heart of the city : Introduction and discussion. The notion of "fringe" addressed in this dossier raises methodological questions — the subject of the foreword by Philippe Hugon. In the introduction, Marie Morelle and Laeticia Laumonier lay out the analytic framework used to assemble the case studies, and put into perspective the contributions made by other social sciences towards defining connections between the fringes of society and the spatial fringe. But this position is worth discussing, as Frédéric Giraut and Michel Rochefort do, putting socio-economic power relationships back at the centre of the debate and highlighting the multi-layered imbrication of territorial realities and networking. Bruno Lautier then reminds us that other disciplines were first to use the term "fringe" and points to the ambiguities that result when these unacknowledged inherited meanings are applied to spatial phenomena in search of concepts. The six articles in the dossier complete the presentation.

Migration and marginality : Andean migrants in the fringe neighbourhoods of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia. This research looks at the marginalization of migrants moving from the Andes into Santa Cruz, a city in the Bolivian lowlands. In the discourse of urban planners and political authorities, these migrants are associated with the poor fringe neighbourhoods on the outskirts of the city. Yet, the landscapes of these neighbourhoods are distinguished more by poverty than by the origin of their inhabitants. What is emerging is both an urban citizenry defined by loss and a fusion of Andean migrants and people from the lowlands. Despite their image as poor and violent, these neighbourhoods are the scene of a new kind of hybridization.

Urban renewal and marginalization : The case of residents in downtown Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. In Ouagadougou, State planning for the downtown represents the new urban order. Invited to move out of old inner-city neighbourhoods to a site and service on the outskirts, the inhabitants experience life on the physical fringe, confirming, for some, their status at the fringes of society. But these urban shifts are leading relocated residents to take a new look at the capital and adopt new ways of living in the city and their neighbourhood. The desire to take action so that the neighbourhood will be acknowledged and valorized as part of the urban space may be evidence that a process of citizen-making is underway.

The boss man and the city in Jakarta. Small-time criminal or godfather, the boss man -preman in Indonesia - is a figure on the fringes of society and the city. As a presence in the urban hierarchy and public spaces, he occupies an interstitial place in the power games between formal actors and the population. He thus contributes to the informal regulation of petty crime and even high crime areas. We analyze the importance of this character in Jakarta, and, through him, how life on the edge allows people to integrate civic life and leads to the formation and appropriation of key areas in the city — its public spaces.

Criminal areas in Lagos and Ibadan since the 1930s. In Nigeria's two largest cities, Lagos and Ibadan, urbanist and policing concerns are emerging almost simultaneously but the anticipated links between poor neighbourhoods and criminality are not in evidence : violent crime like delinquency occurs readily outside the geographical boundaries of poverty. This study hopes to show that high crime areas, far from overlapping geographic areas of poverty or poor living conditions, in fact coincide with a wide range of income groups depending on the time period and the charges.

Horizontal affinity and survival strategies among "street kids" : The Solitarios Gang in La Paz, Bolivia. Using ethnographic material collected in La Paz, Bolivia, this article looks at the connections that bind "street kids" together and at the anthropological basis of the gang. The organization of one of these gangs, as well as the strategies used by the "brothers" to survive and to obtain drugs and/or alcohol, are analyzed in terms of horizontal affinity, an original kind of elective relationship. Lastly, how programs intended for children are perceived by them opens up avenues for research on psychological and social rehabilitation as a first step in any meaningful action in this field.

Sáo Paulo, from the poorest spaces to the richest : living with dualism or the Utopia of "diversity". What stands out in discussions of the city of São Paulo is its hypermodernity associated with very high levels of wealth and income at one extreme and the presence of an important fringe group of poor and often underemployed people at the other. In accounting for the urban space, this socio-economic study led to the singling out of the concept of segregation as particularly significant. This article attempts to identify the geographic and social location of this urban split, looked at from the point of view of participation and social programs, and given that there is a significant middle class (clase media) which is part of this hypermodernity but which some observers see as impoverished.

How do we explain the failure to attain high levels of sustained growth in Latin America ? Latin American economies have been showing modest annual growth along with high volatility since the 1990s — less so than in the 1980s but more so than in Asia. This article examines the clear and growing levels of inequality, the pernicious effects of finances, the withdrawal of the State and the lack of a genuine industrial policy. Using the work of CEPAL in the 1960s, the contribution of Kaleckian economists, and the introduction of financialization, the author offers a new way of understanding the trend towards stagnation experienced by Latin American economies over the past fifteen years.

Combatting the idleness of the poor and sharpening their greed : The developmentalist advocacy of mercantilist and classical economists. The mercantilist and classical authors who were the first to look at the causes of economic development privileged, for the most part, social, institutional, political, environmental and moral factors rather than purely economic ones. Thus when taking labour into account, they tended to analyze the attitude towards labour and the conditions that favour it rather than employment numbers alone : a harsh physical environment or demographic pressure can play an important role in national development. They anticipated the contemporary debates on the full range of issues dealt with by the pioneers of development economy.