Abstract

In a deindustrialized town in eastern France, economic crises and emigration leave behind masses of abandoned houses, for which the local community is responsible and incurs in debt. The phenomenon raises the question of the survival of the territorial community per se, its urban decorum, its demographic continuity, the perpetuation of its institutions. Therefore, a challenge arises for these houses and, more broadly, for the places where they are located, that can be analyzed in terms of reproduction, transmission, and succession. The ethnography shows how local elites attempt to manage and redistribute property to reliable owners, and the criteria they use for. It shows how presence, payment of taxes and care of buildings reconfigure social and political relations, creating rights within the realm of ownership and local belonging.