When municipalities find a second life with migrants – Liberation

Struck by the rural exodus, villages have decided to welcome exiles. Their integration was not done without debate and without difficulties, but these initiatives, contrary to identity tensions, have made it possible to revitalize local life. “Liberation” visited four of them.

These are rural villages that were predicted to decline inexorably. For the past fifty years, young people have gone to study in the city and have not returned. There remain their parents or grandparents, graying heads and hips that are packed away, and that this emptiness saddens. They recite with nostalgia the names of the traders who have gone out of business: M. Bouillet, the baker, Mme Petit, the hairdresser, M. and Mme Loton, the butchers. They worry: when the elders die, who to take their place?

This question, the mayors of Luzy (2,000 inhabitants, Nièvre), Ferrette (800 inhabitants, Haut-Rhin), Notre-Dame-de-l’Osier (500 inhabitants, Isère) and Pessat-Villeneuve (650 inhabitants, Puy- de-Dôme) were forced to ask. With the departures and deaths, land became available and we had to act quickly, at the risk of seeing the buildings decay. In Pessat-Villeneuve, the imposing 17th century castle and the premises of an Air France holiday center near the church were put up for sale in 2015. The city councilor offered to buy them back from the city council. “At the same time, I saw on social networks the photo of little Aylan, the Syrian child who died on a beach. It was violent, it hit me like a punch in the liver, it was a real trigger ”, remembers Gérard Dubois (DVG).

In Notre-Dame-de-l’Osier, a village wedged between the peaks and the walnut groves, his counterpart nods. Still in overalls, he points to the do …