Paper short abstract:

What will the future of Paris be like? Will Paris be a city "inhabited" by tourists, a Disneyland town or, a global city? From ethnographic research of the everyday life of its immigrants in the districts of Place d'Italie and Belle Ville, we dare to predict what Paris will look like deep into the 21st century.

Paper long abstract:

Paris is a global city, and has been since the 19th century. The eighty seven square kilometers that are often referred to as intramural Paris include increasingly fewer low-income residents. Is Paris gentrifying and opening up to tourists and rich investiteurs while sending to the periphery the French and foreign immigrants who cannot pay the high rents in Europe's cultural capital? Can a city with the elevated population density of more than twenty thousand inhabitants per square kilometer, which is rivaled only by New York and some Asian cities, be transformed into a Disneyland, as once predicted?

Paris has undergone major transformations throughout its history, and its recent past continues this tradition of metamorphosis. The profiles of its neighborhoods are changing because of the waves of immigrants. These are the populations that we want to closely examine to consider the future of the city, immigrants characterized by being owners of their own businesses. We look at how gender, class, generation, sexual orientation and ethnicity influence these migratory processes of entrepreneurs who are owners of ethnic restaurants, clothing cleaners, Internet shops, boulangeries, convenience stores, super-markets, etc. We dare to predict what Paris will look like deep in the 21st century - at least in the districts of Place d'Italie and Belle Ville.