Segregation (social sciences)

In the field of the Social sciences, the segregation indicates any evolutionary phenomenon or any state of separation of groups Ethnique S or social, on a scale infra-urban, urban, regional or national, confirmed or supported possibly by the law (segregation of State), legitimated socially, and which leads to the formation of ségréguées surfaces, heterogeneous territories and space-borders.

There exist also forms of sexual segregation (see for example Gynécée) or nuns, but which always fall under space.

In the history

The term of segregation is complex and evolutionary. Its space character is fundamental. The segregation rests above all on a “capacity to exclude” and often results from a “introduction from the economic values into the social reports/ratios produces forms capacity appearing with the favor of their space expression” (Guy Di Méo, COp cit. p. 260).
Before the modern time, the segregation is often difficult to distinguish in the social typography, in particular in the towns of Occident, where Misère and Luxe mixes in many places.

Some exceptions however, with the example of the Italian Communes, such Genoa and Perugia or of the consortes florentine, where is established a distinction between the aristocratic districts and the districts of rural recently arrived, according to a logic of land segregation.

Historically, and in particular of the XVIIIe to the XIXe century S, the segregation could be thought like a social urban development and regulatory instrument within the European cities.

Racial segregation and space segregation

So certain segregations result from a socio-economic logic, the phenomenon also can, and it is generally the case, to have a dimension Idéologique and explicit policy, implicte or. The example more speaking is for this reason the case of the regional policy of the Bantoustan S like that of ex-Rhodesia. The term recovers then the fields of the political sciences and the segregation also extends on the civil laws. Extreme example, the case of the segregation Anti-semite under the Nazi Germany, more particularly after 1941.
But the political absence of segregation does not exclude the forms from space segregations. Thus, if the amendment of the Constitution of the United States prohibits the racial segregation, these States know forms characteristic of socio-space segregation.

The city of the south: ségrégués spaces

Ségrégués spaces have a history which generally fits in the long run. Old the colonial Villes - in particular in Africa - offers as the demonstration as segregations racial and social mark the territory over one important duration. The fundamental division of space is organized then in two subsets: the indigenous village and European districts. Often in the beginning, is, as with Abidjan after a decree of 1909, a land segregation. Another illustration, if the segregation of State were abolished in Southern Africa, the social segregation is always spatially identifiable, following the example that visible with Harare - Chitunguiza and with Johannesbourg - Soweto.

Certain African cities, although having known of municipal administrative recuttings, remain ségrégués spaces. Thus, the Médina of Dakar is in the beginning a “village of segregation” administratively created after the epidemics of Peste and Yellow fever of the 19th century.

The space consequences of the segregation are visible in the landscape: thus, with Kampala, the East-West opposition which mark the “European” city public (hills of Nakasero and Old Kampala ) and the private Ville (Mengo-Kisenyi) is translated it by a differentiation of the types of urbanization.

The towns of North Africa can know, in particular Tunis at the time medieval, a segregation on bases more religious than social; what led to the constitution of homogeneous districts.

Towards the “fragmented city”

The phenomenon of space inequality resulting from the segregation currently is complicated and reinforced by policies of privatization to work in Africa (example of the Matchboxes of Namibia) and in the majority of the Pays in the process of development (example of La Paz - El Alto).
Policies of “Patrimonialisation” of the urban centres, underlain by a representation of the city of the elites , produced new forms of space segregation in the inequitable division of urban space (Mexico City).

Currently, of many emergent cities are on the way to know a new statute, replacing that of ségréguée city , that of “fragmented” or “segmented” city, in particular in Latin America. Because the socio-space segregation, in its uneven and hierarchical principles, preserves at the city its organic dimension.

Spaces and the surfaces ségrégués can also become “spaces in secession”.

Paradoxically, an urban space can be simultaneously a space ségrégué and, on the cultural level, a space of Métissage.

The diffuse segregation

The geographers also use the concept of “diffuse social segregation” to indicate the lack of Solidarité which can exist between the various space components of the urban territory (commune, district, urban small island) and on imbalances which can exist between place of residence and work place, according to the model S center-periphery (model of Burgess or concentric segregation, models of Harris, Ulman and Hoyt, this the last having been shown to have to some extent legitimated a city planning segregative and racial) and the theory of rent.