An agronomist engineer by training, Olivier Vassal is a consultant. He has just published
La France au Challenge de ses Territoires
, published by L'Harmattan.
LE FIGARO. - The word “territories”, a catch-all concept, has invaded the public space. Can we create a typology of territories that can reflect their diversity?
Olivier VASSAL. -
This is the challenge of an effective approach in this area if we want to grasp the specificity of the situations and the issues.
Public action requires an objective and non-partisan point of view on the reality of the territories, far from the clichés which, even if they have the force of law in the political and media world, are too biased to reflect a much more contrasted reality than it does. does not appear to be there.
The work that I undertook for three years consisted of restoring objectivity in the apprehension and analysis of territories, as opposed to approaches which consist of nourishing a thesis or a bias with examples chosen on purpose contributing thus feeding the confirmation bias which makes dialogue impossible.
Here as elsewhere, the issue is not to tell the truth, but to tell the whole truth.
This difference is fundamental.
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Typology work consists of segmenting a population of objects or individuals into a certain number of classes whose members share the same characteristics.
In doing so, we carry out a simplification of reality but a simplification which obeys rules.
This work, although simple in its principles, is nonetheless quite technical and requires a good mastery of mathematical tools.
From the start of this reflection, I decided to analyze the municipalities not only through their morphology and the characteristics of their inhabitants, but also as places of work, consumption, even passage, shaped by the daily and seasonal mobility.
In doing so, I was able to distinguish 22 groups which, on a statistical level, stand out as the best summary that we can make of the French territory, without oversimplifying or overcomplicating.
Twenty-two may seem like a lot, but reading the characteristics of each group makes us understand to what extent their differences are anything but anecdotal.
According to you, the weight of the population of rural municipalities has remained relatively stable, but the share of employment has fallen by seven points in 50 years. How to explain it?
Between 1968 and 2018, the share of current rural municipalities in the population remained stable around 25% while their share in employment fell from 21 to 14%.
This is attributable to a phenomenon of polarization and specialization of the productive space which has resulted in the concentration of employment in certain types of territories and the transformation of a majority of them towards an economy with a residential vocation where the employment rate is less than three jobs per ten inhabitants.
Thus, although increasing by 24% across the entire territory, employment fell in 65% of municipalities, fell by more than 10% in 61% of them and by more than 50% in 36%. … It should be noted that this phenomenon was both chosen and suffered: the desire to build efficient productive ecosystems and productivity gains on the one hand, the disappearance of entire sections of industry and agriculture on the other. .
This phenomenon is responsible for the decline in employment in the rural area considered as a whole.
But not all rural areas have been treated in the same boat and this is where the whole point of categorization lies.
In your opinion, rural France has therefore become more residentialized than depopulated?
Clearly yes if we mean the evolution of the relationship between jobs and inhabitants.
As an example, let us cite the rural group of large catchment areas, namely the rural communes located in the zone of influence of a large city, which is the only one among the rural groups to have gained jobs on the period 1968-2018.
Here, employment increased by 150,000 units when the population grew by two million inhabitants…
The gap within metropolises between those which are doing well [...] and those whose economies are stagnating and which are facing persistent underemployment should concern us.
Olivier Vassal
That being said, the first characteristic of rural life is its diversity.
The latter, which we are accustomed to presenting as a homogeneous whole which we summon in support of the national novel consecrating the France of the peasants, the one who works hard and gets up early, is now well divided between areas where we only live, which we leave in the morning to return to in the evening, areas centered on the productive, agricultural or industrial economy, tourist areas which attract urban dwellers in search of authenticity, or others still engaged in an irreversible process of devitalization.
The only thing that all these groups share is their low density of services to the population.
For the rest, everything is different.
The diversity of rural life requires us to renounce any global or “averaging” approach to it.
Conversely, does metropolitan France form a homogeneous whole?
The gap within metropolises between those which are doing well, can claim to become competitiveness poles on a European scale, whose attractiveness is growing day after day, and those whose economy is stagnating and which are facing a persistent underemployment should concern us.
If there is one lesson from my work, it is the divide existing within this ensemble.
To put all French metropolises in the same bag to make them the big winners of globalization is to free oneself from reality.
Just take a look at the differences between Perpignan and Rennes, Saint-Étienne and Toulouse, Grenoble and Mulhouse and you will easily understand what I mean.
And obviously, these opposing dynamics on the economic level are reflected in the profile of their inhabitants: significantly more employed workers, higher education graduates and CSP+ on the one hand, more employees, unemployment, of poverty, retirees and people without diplomas on the other.
The great merit of the concept of “peripheral France” is to have relaunched reflection on the territorial divide by bringing together geography, the economy and the social.
You criticize the concept of peripheral France, popularized by the geographer Christophe Guilluy, which according to you does not correspond to any concrete reality. Isn't this above all a way of naming a malaise that is growing quietly in France's medium-sized towns and rural areas?
The great merit of this concept is to have relaunched the reflection on the territorial divide by bringing together geography, the economy and the social.
Emphasizing that despite all the efforts made by the nation in terms of planning and redistribution, territories are subject to centrifugal forces that nothing seems to be able to stem is both relevant and salutary.
On the other hand, if it is undeniable that alongside a “winning France” where wealth and qualified jobs accumulate, there exists a France that lives poorly, reducing this opposition to that between the metropolises and the rest of the territory is to ignore reality.
Whether we observe the territory from a demographic, economic or sociological angle, the divide between the metropolises considered as a whole and the rest of the territory never emerges as the first dimension opposing the territories to each other, and this, whatever the methods used, from the simplest to the most sophisticated.
To make these oppositions the entry point for any analysis relating to the situation of the territories is to miss the real issues.
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That being said, the fact that the concept of “peripheral France” was adopted so spontaneously by the general public and by the media says a lot about the need to name a malaise that has been growing quietly for almost four years. decades.
Unfortunately, we must recognize that like many oversimplifying but attractive theses, criticizing them is not enough.
Faced with issues which, whatever one may say, speak to the experiences of a certain number of our fellow citizens, what is needed is to propose an argued vision capable of reconciling scientific discourse with the experience of life.
This is what I tried to do with this work.
Olivier Vassal, France challenging its territories, 2023, 236 p., €24.
The Harmattan