How to identify and select citizens entitled to social housing in a postcolonial situation ? Administrative agents facing bureaucratic norms in a French overseas departement

Abstract : When the Comoro Islands gained independence in the 1970s, only Mayotte, out of the islands of the archipelago, remained under French sovereignty. It became the 101st French departement in 2011. Along with these institutional changes, public housing policies have dramatically changed since 2005. The access to social housing is bureaucratized and policymakers intend to redefine the different types of public housing that are being built as well as the way to categorize their target publics. This paper does not mainly focus on the front office interactions between the decreasing number of potential beneficiaries of public housing policies and the street level bureaucrats. It rather aims at depicting trajectories of these intermediate actors. Along with their social, scholastic and professional backgrounds, it analyzes how street-level bureaucrats deal with their duties in everyday work. These agents hold an intermediary position which requires them to play a specific role in the way applicants’ files are set up and how they are followed up. Even if they deplore the decreasing number of constructions which leads a diminishing number of beneficiaries, they also contribute to legitimate this change as they promote more comfortable types of housing that are being offered. Our hypothesis is that despite little room for manœuvre given by the administrative categories that prescribe eligibility conditions, these administrative agents take part in redefining and differentiating the different targets of social housing. In particular, they are able to gain extensive knowledge of local families, and thus give extra value to their counselling activities towards households.