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Spaces of solidarity under constraints: The promotion of volunteering in the management of luggage storage for homeless people in Paris

Louka Herse
Cet article est une traduction de :
Espaces de solidarité sous contraintes : la promotion du bénévolat dans la gestion des bagageries pour les personnes sans domicile à Paris [fr]

Résumé

Based on the results of a two-year ethnographic study, the article analyses the voluntary work policy implemented by the City of Paris to set up luggage repositories for homeless people. Solidarity luggage storage are new forms of assistance that enable homeless people to keep their personal belongings safe. In Paris, which hosts most France's storage spaces for personal belongings, the creation and management of these centres is based on a municipal policy of mobilising volunteers. The City of Paris encourages and supervises free work by residents. As a result, the assistance network for homeless people is better equipped. However, the partnership between the municipality and voluntary associations raises a series of questions about the nature and quality of the municipal service provided, as it is akin to a form of non-profit privatisation of local public action.

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Introduction

1Luggage storage facilities are secure spaces where homeless individuals can leave all or part of their personal belongings for a specified period. According to the French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies, a person is considered homeless if they spent the night prior to the survey in "a place not intended for habitation" (street, park, private parking, squat, etc.) or in a shelter (social hotel, emergency accommodation center, housing provided by an association, etc.). During the second half of the 2000s, recognizing the need of certain homeless individuals for a safe space to store their belongings in the city, neighborhood associations, primarily composed of volunteers, were formed and conceived these new charitable spaces. Between 2000 and 2022, approximately twenty luggage storage facilities were established in France, complementing the traditional network of assistance for homeless people, which consisted of places (solidarity restaurants, day centers, shelters, etc.) that had previously assumed minimal responsibility for the belongings of homeless individuals. These luggage storage facilities are distinctive in that they are managed by small volunteer associations, all located in medium or large cities, in line with the majority of assistance programs offered to homeless individuals (Zeneidi, 2002). In Paris, ten solidarity luggage storage facilities have been created, notably with the support of the municipality. The emergence of these new Parisian assistance spaces and the role of the City of Paris, which promotes them but invites volunteers to create and manage them, is the focus of this article.

2On a promotional flyer produced by the City of Paris in 2022, presenting the city's solidarity luggage storage facilities, the following could be read:

"Luggage storage facilities are the result of the volunteer commitment of residents who wish to engage in a solidarity initiative within their neighborhood. Is there no luggage storage facility in your district? Would you like to participate in a creation project? […] The City of Paris and the Federation of Solidarity Actors of Île-de-France can assist you in your project! Contact us."

3This invitation to "engage" as a "volunteer" and as a "resident" of Paris is a manifestation of a promise made by Anne Hidalgo during her last municipal campaign in 2020. In her platform, the outgoing mayor, re-elected in 2020, set the goal of establishing a sufficient number of solidarity luggage storage facilities to ensure that at least one would exist in every district of the capital by the end of her term. However, as this municipal communication suggests, the fulfillment of Anne Hidalgo's campaign promise follows a unique path. The municipality does not directly provide Paris of with luggage storage facilities; instead, it encourages residents to do so voluntarily, i.e., without compensation. While the new luggage storage facilities created by the City of Paris are subsidized by the municipality, they are not entirely municipal: they are managed by small neighborhood associations, resident associations, and volunteer groups. In fact, Parisian luggage storage facilities are created and operated by private actors.

4Similar to the policy of developing luggage storage facilities in Paris, the deployment of social policies by large municipalities has evolved since the 1990s. Numerous studies in geography and sociology have highlighted the growing involvement of private actors in the construction of the "neoliberal city" (Pinson, 2020) at the expense of public operators. While urban geography has shown that this "new privatization of the city" (Baraud-Serfaty, 2011) is carried out through the delegation of urban public services and the signing of public-private partnership contracts with large corporations tasked with carrying out extensive urban renewal projects, sociologists have observed the increasing use of associations by municipalities to carry out public missions, particularly in the area of care (education, social assistance, etc.) (Cottin-Marx et al., 2017). Since the 1980s, the contemporary privatization of the city is no longer solely the domain of large corporations. It also takes non-profit forms, facilitated by associations, whose nature, size, and affiliations vary. The alliance between local public authorities and large, well-established professional associations with recognized public utility is longstanding and has been well documented (Cottin-Marx et al., 2017), including in the field of assistance to homeless individuals (Damon, 2012). However, the increasing and widespread use of volunteer-run associations to implement municipal policies is a more recent phenomenon, one that has recently attracted scholarly attention.

5At the end of the 2000s, the emergence of a sociology of volunteer work, notably advanced by Maud Simonet, highlighted the new interweaving between predominantly volunteer-run associations and municipalities. Today, both small and large municipalities increasingly rely on volunteer associations to equip their territories with public infrastructure and to implement their social policies (Cottin-Marx, 2022). This process of "volunteerization" (Cottin-Marx, 2022, p. 9) of public action is not limited to cities; it affects public authorities as a whole. Louis Bourgois and Marion Lièvre refer to this as a "progressive institutionalization of volunteer action within public action" (2019), based on the study of the implementation of various local migration policies. The volunteerization of public action is not exclusive to French cities. John Krinsky and M. Simonet (2017), for instance, pointed out how New York City has partially delegated the cleaning of parks and urban gardens to volunteer associations from 1980 to the present.

6This article falls within the field of research concerning municipal volunteer policies. The studies mentioned above have focused on describing how public institutions mobilize volunteer associations to implement their social policies, the changes in public governance and public work resulting from volunteer action, and the blurring of boundaries between private and public sectors in public service. However, the consequences of the volunteerization of public action on the nature of the public service provided and on the populations targeted by these policies merit further exploration. The objective of this article is therefore twofold: first, to analyze the volunteer promotion policy pursued by the Paris municipality to produce the future city for homeless individuals; and second, to observe the effects of this policy on its intended recipients. Since 2006, the City of Paris has relied on the labor of volunteers to expand the network of Parisian luggage storage facilities. In a context of budgetary constraints, the municipality has delegated the creation and management of charitable spaces to private actors, specifically volunteer neighborhood associations. The primary benefit of these volunteers is that they conceive and create assistance spaces for homeless individuals at minimal cost. However, this "volunteer policy" (Simonet, 2010) in Paris is not without ambiguity. Planning Paris for homeless individuals with volunteer actors implies producing the future city for homeless people by relying on the representations and practices of private actors, many of whom often belong to higher social classes. I will therefore examine the nature and quality of the public service provided, as it resembles a form of "non-profit privatization" (Lebon and Simonet, 2017, p. 581) of the city created for homeless people.

Box 1 - Methodology and Field

This article is based on long-term research conducted as part of a social geography thesis on methods for storing personal belongings in the city while homeless. Since Paris hosts the majority of France's solidarity luggage storage facilities and considering the locations of my study sites (Aubervilliers, then Créteil and Champs-sur-Marne), it seemed pertinent to take the capital as the field of investigation. The investigation results primarily stem from two years of ethnographic engagement in a Parisian luggage storage facility: the Tulipes neighborhood luggage storage. As a volunteer working two-hour shifts each week, I conducted numerous observations and informal discussions with members from June 2020 to July 2022. For one year, I also observed the monthly meetings of the board of directors and attended the "inter-luggage storage meetings" organized by the City of Paris and the Federation of Solidarity Actors of Île-de-France. In addition to these participatory observation periods, I conducted a series of semi-structured interviews with various individuals involved in the operation of the luggage storage. In total, 19 semi-structured interviews were conducted, 16 of which were audio-recorded. Most of these were with members of the association: five with users of the luggage storage, five with former users, and three with board members of the association (including two who played a significant role in the founding of the luggage storage). During two other interviews, I met with four social workers responsible for selecting users for the luggage storage. Additionally, I arranged meetings with the two City of Paris agents in charge, at the time of the survey, of managing the "network of Parisian luggage storages" and supporting luggage storage project leaders across Paris. Finally, two interviews with professionals from the Emmaüs Alternatives association helped me understand the challenges of establishing "solidarity lockers" in several cities, offering a critical perspective on the objectives set by luggage storage managers.

7By actively supporting the creation and management of volunteer-run luggage storage facilities, does the City of Paris create a city for homeless individuals at minimal cost?

8First, I will show that the City of Paris supported initiatives conceived by volunteer associations by funding them without seeking to control them. Then, I will explain that, by the late 2010s, local public authorities no longer merely "benefited from and acknowledged volunteer contributions”, but sought to "encourage them" (Cottin-Marx, 2022, p. 7) in order to increase the number of luggage storage facilities in the capital. Finally, I will analyze the effects of this municipal urban planning policy on how homeless individuals are received within Parisian luggage storage facilities.

The First Solidarity Luggage Storage Facilities: New Assistance Spaces Conceived by Volunteers

A Lack of Spaces for Securing Belongings in Cases of Homelessness

9People experiencing homelessness use a variety of belongings to live in the city: clothing, work tools, identity documents, books, items to make the city more habitable (camping equipment, cooking gear, etc.), and other more intimate objects. However, they have very few places to store their belongings. The commercial sector offers storage services, but at high prices, and the charitable sector, more often than not, lacks both the space and the human resources to securely store the belongings of homeless individuals. As a result, the daily lives of homeless people are marked by significant material insecurity: their possessions are regularly stolen and deteriorate quickly, regardless of where they live (public spaces, social hotels, etc.) (Herse, 2022). In response to this insecurity, homeless individuals develop various storage practices, which are generally based on "resourcefulness" and vary in their effectiveness and cost in terms of energy, time, and money. However, increasingly, they can also make use of lockers within municipal solidarity luggage storage facilities.

Illustration 1 - Eight lockers from the Tulipes neighborhood luggage storage (out of 54 lockers, each one cubic meter)

Illustration 1 - Eight lockers from the Tulipes neighborhood luggage storage (out of 54 lockers, each one cubic meter)

Author: Louka Herse, 2021.

10In Paris, the first luggage storage facilities were created at the end of the 2000s through the meeting of people with and without homes living in the same neighborhoods, who recognized that many homeless individuals needed a safe place to store their belongings. These initiatives were spontaneous and were not yet part of a municipal planning policy. However, the City of Paris quickly became an important actor in the emerging network of solidarity luggage storage facilities. Indeed, the city agreed to financially support the first luggage storage projects through operating subsidies or the free allocation of premises. This municipal intervention occurred within a context where the "homelessness issue" became a public problem in the 1990s, and where the visibility of homeless individuals increased due to the gradual rise in their numbers from the 2000s, particularly in large cities and in Paris, where they are concentrated (Damon, 2012).

The Associative Trajectory of the Tulipes Neighborhood Luggage Storage Facility: The Birth and Volunteer-Driven Development of a Neighborhood Project

  • 1 The dates and the names of places and people mentioned in this article have been anonymized.

11The creation and initiation process of the Tulipes neighborhood luggage storage facility1 illustrates the trajectory – unplanned – followed by the first luggage storage facilities and the – passive – relationship that the City of Paris maintains with them.

12The idea of creating a luggage storage facility in the Tulipes neighborhood, a wealthy area of the capital, emerged within the context of a large-scale urban renewal operation involving the redevelopment of several public and private spaces in the neighborhood. Among the planned developments, there was a proposal to establish a new day center for homeless people in order to strengthen the neighborhood’s assistance system.

13The project emerged within “Réaliser,” a neighborhood association composed of parents of schoolchildren living in or near the Tulipes area. The association's 1999 statutes state that Réaliser "aims to improve the quality of life for residents [of the surrounding area] through both civic action and the promotion of social interaction." Within Réaliser, two women played a central role in the design of the Tulipes neighborhood luggage storage facility: Florence and Marguerite (boxed text  2).

Box 2 - Presentation of the Founders of the Tulipes Neighborhood Luggage Storage Facility

Marguerite: Marguerite is one of the iconic figures of the Tulipes neighborhood luggage storage facility. Born in 1948, this executive secretary, who later became a stay-at-home mother, is the daughter of a physiotherapist and a manager employed by a multinational energy company. When she moved to Paris in the 1990s, she became involved, either successively or simultaneously, in several associations fighting poverty and insecurity: ATD Quart-Monde France, La Levée des Croix de Bois, Réaliser, the sociocultural center “Pomme,” and Dos déchargés. A long-time resident of the Epilobes neighborhood, she is accustomed to talking with homeless individuals during her urban walks in the nearby Tulipes area. The trusting relationships she built with these homeless individuals and her many years of activism helped facilitate the launch of the project by the Dos déchargés association, which manages the Tulipes neighborhood luggage storage facility.

Florence: Florence was one of my main contacts on the ground. From the presentation of the association in June 2020 to the preparation for the association's anniversary event in June 2022, I worked regularly with her within the board of directors, during the events we coordinated, and during several interviews. This central figure of the luggage storage facility is never truly absent. During the shifts, it is not uncommon to hear, "If Florence were here, this wouldn’t be happening like this..." For over a decade, she has held various roles within the luggage storage facility: board member, moral guarantor of the principle of inclusion for users, scheduler of shifts and major clean-ups, and organizer of association activities. Born in 1965 to a Basque farming couple, Florence became a freelance writer for associations and businesses after defending her PhD in literature. Living on one of the main streets of the Tulipes neighborhood, Florence was involved in the Réaliser association from 2002 to 2015. She is the first president of the Tulipes neighborhood luggage storage facility and its primary founder. In addition to her association work, she also participated in the Tulipes neighborhood council for several years and ran in the 2014 municipal elections at the head of a citizen list supported by Europe Ecology – The Greens.

14Marguerite is a "woman of the field," actively involved in several neighborhood associations assisting individuals facing precarious situations. In the creation of the Dos déchargés luggage storage project, she played an intermediary role between housed residents and homeless residents of the Tulipes neighborhood. Florence, for her part, with her extensive communication skills and rich network of contacts, was able to gather the goodwill of other neighborhood residents. Furthermore, she gained the trust of homeless individuals, Parisian elected officials, and social workers. Florence has been the central figure of the luggage storage facility since its creation.

15Marguerite, who meets with many homeless residents of the neighborhood every week, is aware of the daily challenges posed by the necessity of managing one’s belongings while homeless: material insecurity, difficulties in moving around or entering certain places in the city (especially in shops), and the visibility of one’s precarious situation. She then conducts a survey among the homeless individuals living in the neighborhood and later presents the results at a "working meeting on the new day center project for people on the street," which includes several active members of the Réaliser association. Following this initial meeting, the luggage storage project is formulated.

16The timeline below summarizes the process of creating the Dos déchargés association and the subsequent establishment of the Tulipes neighborhood luggage storage facility.

Illustration 2 - The Associative Trajectory of the Dos déchargés Association

Illustration 2 - The Associative Trajectory of the Dos déchargés Association

Author: Louka Herse, 2024.

17The timeline shows that, from the conception of the luggage storage project to its implementation, the city plays a secondary role. The City of Paris only intervenes as a last resort in the project, and only on a financial level, when the Dos déchargés association reaches out. Indeed, the moral contract it signs with the Tulipes neighborhood luggage storage facility has no real reciprocal obligations: the city does not aim to regulate the assistance practices established by the first volunteer-run associations creating luggage storage facilities. In this regard, the first luggage storage facilities in Paris enjoy significant autonomy from the municipality.

18From 2006 to 2014, the first luggage storage projects thus emerge in several districts of the capital. Like the project in the Tulipes neighborhood, the volunteer-run associations managing these storage facilities request municipal subsidies, which they receive, without this support being accompanied by any attempt at municipal oversight. The municipality does not supervise the new luggage storage projects initiated by volunteers, does not intervene in their operational implementation, and does not assess their activities afterward.

Suggesting Parisian Luggage Storage to Volunteers: The Development of a Volunteer-Driven Municipal Assistance Policy

Planning the Establishment of Municipal Luggage Storage with Volunteers: The Roles of Achille and Sadio

  • 2 The reasons that led the municipality to shift from a passive support policy to a more active volun (...)

19From 2014, the Paris municipality changed its stance towards storage space project leaders: from a passive financing of emerging solidarity luggage storage facilities, it began promoting the volunteer-driven creation of new luggage storage facilities. This shift2 is evident in the gradual regulation of solidarity luggage storage facilities in the capital. First, in 2014, the City of Paris mandated the Federation of Actors of Solidarity (FAS) to intervene with luggage storage facility managers. Recognized for its expertise in the social action sector, this federation was tasked with "coordinating Parisian luggage storage facilities" and providing "support," "tools," and "advice" to their managers. Then, in 2019, the FAS was joined by the Social Action, Children, and Health Department (Dases) of the Paris Municipality. From this point, the administrative services of the City of Paris began representing themselves to the luggage storage facilities. Thus, from 2019, two agents from the City of Paris – one municipal civil servant from Dases and one employee of the FAS contracted by the municipality – were officially tasked with supporting and developing the "network of Parisian luggage storage facilities."

20However, the promotion of assistance spaces created and managed by volunteer actors brings multiple implications for the nature of the public service provided, as I discovered through interviews with Sadio (a civil servant from Dases) and Achille (an employee of FAS). During the research period, these two agents were responsible for planning the establishment of a luggage storage facility in each Parisian district, working with volunteer associations. A luggage storage facility typically takes about two years to be established, and depending on the progress of the project, Achille and Sadio provide varied support: advising volunteers during the project development, connecting them with local charitable associations, and raising awareness among local elected officials to strengthen the social acceptability of the project.

21Similar to the initial discussions carried out by the residents of the Tulipes neighborhood, creating a luggage storage facility first requires defining the operational modalities of the future assistance space. To do this, Achille and Sadio present various "models" to their interlocutors. Thus, when Achille hears about a luggage storage facility project, he contacts the people behind the initiative to find out what they "want to do," "how they see things," before showing them "how existing luggage storage facilities operate" by visiting them. In this way, he "feeds their reflection" by offering them "different models" of luggage storage facilities.

Illustration 3 - Converting a space into a luggage storage facility: the example of the third location rented by the association Dos Déchargés

Illustration 3 - Converting a space into a luggage storage facility: the example of the third location rented by the association Dos Déchargés

Author: Louka Herse, 2024.

  • 3 The participatory budget is a funding tool created in 2014 by the municipality. Every year, Parisia (...)

22While the two agents are involved in the theoretical development of the project, they also contribute to its institutional setup. This includes, notably, the task of "unlocking the funds" (Sadio) necessary to fit out the future space (Illustration 3) and equip it with lockers (Illustration 1). To finance these investments, FAS has been helping volunteer associations use the "participatory budget of the City of Paris"3 for several years, the results of which are visible in the following table.

Table 1 - History of investment grants obtained by luggage storage facility project leaders via the participatory budget

Table 1 - History of investment grants obtained by luggage storage facility project leaders via the participatory budget

Source: City of Paris, Les consultations citoyennes de la ville [Online]. URL: https://decider.paris.fr/​decider/​jsp/​site/​Portal.jsp?page_id=4 (accessed December 20, 2024)

23Beyond the help provided to write and submit a dossier for the participatory budget, the institutional setup of the dossier also involves "a lot of work to raise awareness among local elected officials" (Achille). According to Achille, district mayors can indeed "be quite reluctant to establish facilities for homeless people" because these facilities "can be seen as points of tension with their residents," particularly in bourgeois neighborhoods. The role of the two municipal employees is to convince elected officials that a luggage storage facility has its place in their district. They do this by interceding directly with district mayors and gaining the support of already established charitable actors in the district.

24By the time of the research, Achille and Sadio play a central role in the development of new luggage storage facility projects in Paris: they assist the theoretical reflection of project leaders; they facilitate the establishment of links with local charitable associations and with the managers of existing luggage storage facilities; they ensure the project is funded and well-received by district mayors; they encourage the establishment of luggage storage facilities by allocating municipal spaces to associations or financing them. However, what stands out in the discourse of my two interlocutors is less the feeling of contributing to the construction of a public service than the feeling of being powerless in the face of associations that independently decide their own mode of operation, since, as Sadio tells me, they are "automatically funded" by the municipality. The inability of these two agents to impose a municipal operating standard is explained by the decision of Parisian elected officials to shape the network of luggage storage facilities with volunteers rather than employees.

Assistance spaces arranged almost for free

25The City of Paris’s assistance policy is, in fact, ambiguous. The creation of new solidarity luggage storage facilities is promoted, funded, and supported by the Municipality. However, the design and management of these assistance spaces fall to private actors–residents organized into neighborhood associations. Since the service provided by the luggage storage facilities relies on various forms of unpaid labor, the Paris municipality is obliged to grant significant latitude to volunteer workers to ensure that the associative projects are not abandoned. In doing so, the City of Paris "widely blurs the boundaries between the public and private sectors" (Lebon and Simonet, p. 576), because this non-profit privatization of municipal assistance has significant implications for the forms of care offered to homeless individuals within the luggage storage facilities.

26In 2021, the treasurer of the Tulipes neighborhood luggage storage facility noted that the work carried out by association members–two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening to staff the luggage storage facility–represented an in-kind contribution valued at 70,000 euros. If we use the association Dos déchargés as a benchmark and examine the services provided by ten luggage storage facilities, the municipality would need to spend at least 700,000 euros annually to operate these associations. However, today, only the rental costs are covered by the municipality. In addition to the value of the premises that the municipality generously provides for three luggage storage facilities, the ten Parisian luggage storage facilities cost the City of Paris, according to Sadio, just under 150,000 euros.

27In fact, the policy of creating new luggage storage facilities, which was implemented in 2014 and formalized in the municipal project during A. Hidalgo’s 2020 campaign, relies on the "free labor" (Simonet, 2004) of volunteers. The promise to expand the network of luggage storage facilities has not been accompanied by a budgetary policy funding the hiring of municipal civil servants or association employees. The City openly depends on the mobilization of "citizens" and "residents" to sustain the public service currently offered in the assistance spaces across the capital. In this regard, the City of Paris is effectively pursuing a true "volunteerism policy" (Simonet, 2019).

Assistance spaces designed and managed by private actors

28This institutionalization of volunteer action within municipal policy is reflected in the missions entrusted to Sadio and Achille by Dases Paris: both are tasked with overseeing the luggage storage facility projects run by volunteers. What is a luggage storage facility? What is its purpose? How does it work? Which public does it serve? How often is it open per week and per day? What place does it offer to its beneficiaries? Without clear directives from their department, Achille and Sadio answer these questions themselves by ranking different luggage storage facility models according to their preferences. On several occasions, they shared their admiration for the values promoted by the association Dos déchargés. The "model of the Dos déchargés luggage storage facility" is a model that "seems very virtuous" to Achille, while Sadio also values it. According to Sadio, it is "the most advanced form of governance" because it is "collegial" and "equal" between volunteers "with housing" and volunteer/beneficiaries without housing. "The fact that the people welcomed in [the luggage storage facility] can actually be decision-makers too, influence the operations, participate... that's what we think is the most accomplished."

29While they appreciate certain rules, Sadio and Achille devalue other assistance practices, such as the one that "only accepts the luggage of people with residence permits" (Achille), or the practice of limiting the duration for using lockers to a few months. Facing me, Achille strongly criticizes the latter approach, which has been adopted in two Parisian luggage storage facilities. He considers the definition of a maximum duration for locker storage to be a "strict" rule based on erroneous perceptions of the homeless situation. He explains that this time limitation is often justified by the idea that "homeless people should not find comfort on the streets: they need to be put into action, into movement." In contrast, he believes it is better to "stabilize people as much as possible, so they can do more than just survive."

30While presenting their preferences, Achille and Sadio explain that they cannot "impose" them on the luggage storage facility managers. Indeed, my two interlocutors ultimately have "very little influence" on the design process of luggage storage facilities, given that these are "volunteer-run" initiatives (Achille). Achille specifies: "Luggage storage facilities are free and autonomous, so we are not in a hierarchical relationship with them." The two employees can assert their views, but they must do so subtly, "sneakily," as Sadio puts it. In fact, their only means of acting toward luggage storage facility administrations is to suggest: to inspire without too much interference, to pass on ideas without openly presenting them, to propose without forcing. Both of them told me that they "try to promote" certain operating principles during inter-luggage storage facility meetings or when advising volunteers wishing to set up a new structure. Sadio, for example, describes how he highlighted the model of the Dos déchargés association when meeting the project leaders of the "luggage storage facility 14": "When I met them, I said: 'Here’s how a luggage storage facility works–I mentioned Dos déchargés–this is really something we would like to see replicated by other luggage storage facilities. It’s not something that can happen overnight, but here’s what you could do, who you could meet.’ We give them the elements, and then they take them or not. But it's also a way." Ultimately, Sadio and Achille both acknowledge that they "don’t have a lot of room to influence the operating model of the different structures" (Sadio). In fact, the administrators of the luggage storage facility in the 14th arrondissement of Paris did not adopt the participatory model of the Tulipes neighborhood luggage storage facility.

31The municipality's volunteer policy leads my two interlocutors to oversee initiatives by Parisians who want to help homeless individuals. At the same time, this policy, because it is "volunteerized" (Cottin-Marx, 2021, p. 9), limits the real influence that the representatives of the City of Paris can exert. Fearing that volunteers might disengage if they feel too constrained by the municipality, the two municipal employees limit their intervention to suggestions. Ultimately, the luggage storage facilities are less managed by the municipality than suggested by it to private actors–here, volunteer associations–that determine their own "model" of operation. Sadio summarizes his perception of the municipal policy: "It’s not necessarily the most interesting thing to know what [homeless people] need. As long as there is a luggage storage facility created, that’s already good."

Spaces of Solidarity under Constraints: On the Discretionary Power of Volunteers Managing Luggage Storage Services

32From a quantitative perspective, this municipal policy has certainly borne fruit. The number of lockers has been increasing steadily since 2020. A new luggage storage facility has been added to the network, and four more will soon be implemented in the 6th, 8th, 17th, and 18th arrondissements (Illustration 4). However, from the perspective of the public service provided, this policy of volunteerism raises several questions, particularly because the relationships that develop within these luggage storage facilities between volunteers and beneficiaries differ significantly from those that usually occur between users and public or nonprofit workers elsewhere.

33"Working with volunteers is not neutral […]. It also raises the question of what constitutes public service. […] Developing it within public action, assigning functions (whether essential or not) to volunteers, is this not taking the risk of challenging the fundamental values that underpin public service, such as service continuity, equal treatment, and neutrality?" (Cottin-Marx, 2022, p. 71-72).

  • 4 Developed by the sociology of interactions at government counters, the notion of discretionary powe (...)

34By delegating the management of luggage storage facilities to volunteers, how does the City of Paris welcome homeless individuals? Like other spaces of assistance dedicated to homeless people (Zeneidi, 2002), the study highlights that luggage storage facilities are sites where practices constantly oscillate between solidarity and constraint. The coercive dimension of the operation of these facilities is partly tied to the volunteerism policy of the City of Paris, because that policy confers discretionary powers4 on the volunteers who run these solidarity spaces.

Illustration 4 - Luggage storage facilities and solidarity lockers in Paris and its nearby suburbs

Illustration 4 - Luggage storage facilities and solidarity lockers in Paris and its nearby suburbs

Map source: IGN, 2022 and APUR, 2022. Author: Louka Herse, 2022.

Spaces of Solidarity that Do Not Include Their Users: "Top-Down" Assistance

35The first effect of the volunteerization of municipal assistance is that homeless individuals are barely integrated into the management of luggage storage facilities due to the class domination exerted over them by the administrators of these facilities. This limited integration of homeless individuals is notably reflected in their lack of representation within the boards of directors, a lack that is linked to phenomena of self-exclusion or exclusion from these boards. While homeless individuals belong to the most impoverished segments of the French or foreign working classes, the sociological profile of Parisians creating luggage storage facilities is that of people from middle or upper classes.

36The luggage storage facility in the Tulipes neighborhood constitutes the only exception in this regard. In this facility, a beneficiary can, if they wish, become a member of the board of directors. This board is composed of three categories: one for users (7 seats), one for former users (3 seats), and one for volunteers (7 seats). In theory, the beneficiaries of the luggage storage facility thus outnumber the volunteers on the board. Each beneficiary can then share their own needs and desires with the other board members, as well as those of the users they represent. In contrast, in other luggage storage facilities in Paris, the role and status of users are restricted to that of "beneficiary," and these beneficiaries do not always have a clearly defined space for expression (Dases and Fas, 2020).

37Thus, the municipal policy of creating luggage storage facilities allows about 600 people each year to benefit from a locker where they can secure the belongings they need to live in the city without a home. However, the development and enhancement of these new urban resources is carried out "top-down," without including the beneficiaries themselves. This approach sometimes risks compromising the urban resource function that these assistance spaces serve, due to the institutional constraints of the luggage storage facilities that weigh heavily on the daily lives of the beneficiaries, as the next two sections illustrate.

Assistance Limited in Time, Unequal in Space

38The second effect of the volunteerization of municipal assistance is the unequal opening hours of Parisian luggage storage facilities, which vary significantly depending on the association. Three luggage storage facilities are open twice a day, 365 days a year. However, the other seven are less accessible: the Luggage storage facility Pélagie is only open for two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening, and only on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; the Association Viens-poser-ton-bagage-ici is open on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, but only in the evening from 6 to 8 p.m.; the Association Pour les bagages des sans-domicile is open only two mornings a week.

  • 5 During the 7th edition of the Night of Solidarity, 3,500 homeless people were counted in Paris, whi (...)

39The unequal opening times of these facilities generally reflect not a difficulty in recruiting volunteers to keep them open long-term, but rather a lack of attention to the needs of homeless individuals. The decision to open the luggage storage facilities several times a day or week rests entirely with the volunteer administrators, who also have the freedom to conduct surveys among homeless individuals to inquire about their needs. Given the systematic lack of spaces to store personal belongings in charitable organizations, the number of homeless individuals living in Paris5, and the results of the survey conducted by Marguerite at the beginning of the Luggage storage facility project in the Tulipes neighborhood (illustration 2), it can be assumed that the need for luggage storage is significant among homeless people in Paris, and that, for the majority of them, this need is at least daily. In some of the luggage storage facilities, there is thus a significant gap between the services provided and the demand: the assistance provided by the City of Paris through these volunteer-run facilities is time-limited.

40In addition to being unequal over time, this assistance is also unequal across space. Luggage storage facilities have, in fact, been deployed more extensively and more rapidly in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods of the capital (illustration 4), fitting seamlessly into the segregated geography of assistance in Paris (Tessonnière, 1993). While several new facilities are currently being developed in the wealthier western parts of Paris, it remains clear that the Parisian municipality has not chosen to structurally alter the spatial distribution of charitable offerings, leaving it up to volunteers to decide where and when to open and manage luggage storage facilities for homeless people.

41Ultimately, whether one looks at the spatial distribution of the luggage storage facilities in Paris or the temporal offerings each volunteer team provides, it is public service inequality that prevails. Indeed, no luggage storage facility offers the same urban resources to homeless individuals, particularly in terms of opening days and hours. Similarly, no luggage storage facility imposes the same coercive regime on its users.

Surveilled Spaces, Sanctioned Users: A Coercive Form of Assistance

42The third effect of the volunteerization of municipal assistance is the regulation of locker usage, which involves varying degrees of control and sanction depending on the luggage storage facility. For instance, in two Parisian luggage storage facilities, the use of a locker is limited to three months, as the administrators of these facilities believe that users should not “settle in too much” (Achille). The assistance provided in these two facilities thus explicitly combines a solidarity-oriented aspect–providing a welcome–and a coercive aspect– the precariousness of this welcome, which is based on an arbitrary (yet conscientized) judgment made by the administrators. This coercive aspect is, in fact, criticized even by municipal representatives themselves. In many observed cases, the operation of the luggage storage facilities seems to be more linked to the perception of the needs of homeless individuals by the volunteers than to the actual needs of the individuals themselves. Volunteers often have their own view of what it means to “be homeless” and what path should be followed to escape this situation of residential precarity.

43Beyond the time constraints that sometimes govern the use of lockers, some administrators impose a frequency of locker use on homeless people. This is the case, for example, with the luggage storage in the Tulipes neighborhood, where lockers are intended to be “places to store everyday items” (Florence). From the outset of the association, using the locker regularly was established as a rule, and today, the regularity of use is the primary criterion used by administrators to distinguish between “good” and “bad” users (boxed text 3). While the homeless individuals I encountered used their lockers more or less regularly (some on a bi-daily or daily basis, others a few times a week), the administrators at the Dos déchargés association did not interpret these varied usages as reflecting a diversity of needs. The administrative management of the lockers is based on a singular view of what a luggage storage facility should provide: “The locker should serve to restore the user’s daily mobility by allowing them to secure their everyday items” (Anne); “The mission is not to offer additional storage. The number one criterion is to restore mobility. That’s the primary goal: ‘unburdening’” (Florence).

  • 6 Anne. Born in 1954. Retired, former teacher and principal of a Parisian middle school. At the time, (...)
  • 7 Ludovic. Born in 1967. Graduate of the École Polytechnique. Business owner (manages around thirty c (...)

44The practices and discourse of the Dos déchargés association administrators reflected a homogenized and prescriptive view of how to exit the homeless situation. By “restoring daily mobility to the user” (Anne6), the board believes it is “contributing to creating a favorable environment” (Ludovic7) for their reintegration into the labor and housing markets. This is why the administrators require users to come to the luggage storage facility, if not daily, at least regularly. If they do not, their “need for a locker” is questioned, and they are sanctioned with verbal or written warnings. The administrators then explain that, in order to keep their locker, users must use it more frequently. If the warned users do not amend their behavior, the board, in accordance with the rules, can decide to “empty” their locker and reassign it to another homeless person.

45In volunteer-run associations that assist unemployed individuals disqualified from other institutions, Alice Lafavre observed a similar class-based dominance. The volunteers working with the unemployed were typically active or retired professionals with a very specific conception of “what a career should be.” This conception, linked to their social and professional status, strongly influenced the way they provided support (Lafavre, 2020), as I observed myself in the Tulipes neighborhood luggage storage, investigating administrators who belonged to the upper classes and held (or had held) managerial roles in their professional or associative careers. Due to their professional and associative habitus, one could assume that Ludovic (a business owner), Anne (a former school principal), and Florence (president of several associations), all members of the luggage storage board during the investigation, had certain dispositions towards overseeing the most impoverished fractions of the working class, sometimes adopting ethnocentric or paternalistic attitudes toward homeless individuals and defining how a locker should be used to “get off the streets.” Therefore, one of the most visible consequences of the Paris municipal volunteerism policy is probably the way it accentuates class relations between volunteers and users compared to administrative or associative work, which is more often performed by people from working- or middle-class backgrounds.

  • 8 According to Christophe Jemelin and Vincent Kaufmann (2008), motility is the ability of an individu (...)

46In fact, the luggage storage facilities of the City of Paris are spaces of assistance under constraint. On one hand, the facilities provide real resources for homeless individuals: they allow them to regain mobility, to navigate the city while maintaining anonymity and greater peace of mind, knowing their belongings are secure. On the other hand, this spatial arrangement imposes heavy constraints on its beneficiaries. Since there are many individuals seeking lockers in each facility, the administrators strive to maximize the utility of the charitable system they manage. As a result, the practices of homeless individuals are closely monitored and controlled by the administrators to ensure they align with the agreed-upon use. The increased “motility”8 (Jemelin & Kaufmann, 2008) granted by the use of a solidarity locker allows for greater freedom of movement, but it is constrained, as emphasized in boxed text 3.

Box 3 - Monitoring Usage, Sanctioning "Bad" Users: One of the Main Roles of the Board of Directors of the Tulipes Neighborhood Luggage Storage Facility

The Dos déchargés association’s internal regulations state: "In the event of insufficient usage, the allocation of a locker may be suspended based on the discretion and decision of the board of directors." The assessment of locker usage is based on review of the attendance sheets filled out by the staff members. Before each board meeting, the association’s secretary compiles the attendance sheets from the past four weeks to determine the monthly usage frequency of each beneficiary’s locker. In practice, the administrators of the association begin to “monitor” users as soon as they use their locker fewer than 15 times per month. Below this threshold, the administrators seek to understand whether the locker holders really need daily access to a locker by contacting the user in question.

The following four excerpts illustrate this process:
Decision for locker #35 (December 2019): "To be monitored. Saïd tells him he needs to come more often."
Decision for locker #23 (February 2020): "Kevin has reportedly gone out of town and no longer needs his locker. Ludovic C. will try to contact him by phone or email to confirm."
Decision for locker #36 (September 2020): "First personalized letter: since [Alexis] is housed, does he still need his locker?"
Decision for locker #5 (November 2021): "Yvan will follow up with Melvin."

The objective of these contacts is twofold. On one hand, it aims to understand whether the user is experiencing a situation that justifies their repeated absences. On the other hand, these contacts serve as reminders. They are intended to "check in" with the user: Do they still need their locker? And, most importantly, have they understood that the locker is intended solely for individuals who use it on a daily basis?
In some cases, these contacts result in a status quo. For a legitimate reason, which was unknown to the board, the user may not be able to visit the luggage storage as frequently as they would like. In this case, the secretary general writes "We’re waiting," "We keep [the locker]," or "To be monitored" in the meeting minutes. This means the user is excused for the time being, but the board will continue to monitor their visits. In other cases, either because the user is unreachable, or because information leads the board to believe they no longer need the locker, the board of directors takes action.

Here are, in the same order, the decisions made one month after the four decisions highlighted above:
Decision for locker #35 (January 2020): "First letter."
Decision for locker #23 (March 2020): "We will send a specific letter informing them that we will empty their locker after the next board meeting if they do not return regularly in the coming month."
Decision for locker #36 (October 2020): "Alexis has housing for the night, but he must leave with all his belongings in the morning, with no possibility of leaving anything behind. First letter because he almost never comes."
Decision for locker #5 (December 2021): "It seems Melvin is sleeping at the airport, and it is difficult for him to come regularly to the luggage storage. Therefore, he is not using the luggage storage as intended (to store belongings needed daily). It seems important to reassess the situation with him, as well as with our partners. First letter."
When a person uses their locker "insufficiently" without a valid reason, two warning letters are sent, questioning their need for a place to store and retrieve their belongings daily. If there is no response from the user, a third letter is sent after two months, inviting them to empty their locker.

47The volunteer-based policy implemented by the City of Paris has clear and significant consequences for the urban environment of homeless people. The Paris experienced by homeless individuals is shaped by volunteer/private actors who design and manage the assistance spaces for people without homes based on their own representations of homelessness, often without fully considering the actual needs and desires of the people they serve. The assistance practices that result from this in volunteer-run luggage storage facilities are not without a strong coercive dimension, evident in the degree of availability of the storage facilities, the regulations governing locker usage, and the inclusion (or exclusion) of the individuals being assisted.

48Would the public service be of a different nature if it were directly designed and implemented by the municipality? And if it were at least framed by a set of principles defined by the City of Paris? While it is impossible to answer this question definitively, the research highlights the limitations of the volunteer-based policy adopted by the City of Paris to support its network of luggage storage facilities. By funding volunteer-run luggage storage facilities, the City of Paris creates assistance spaces where the public service, according to the associations, is fragmented and unequal, while often being coercive towards the homeless individuals who use them.

Conclusion

49As I became more involved with the Luggage Storage in the Tulip neighborhood, I began to question how private actors, such as Florence, Anne, Ludovic, and Marguerite, could have such discretionary power: they had the authority to decide how to treat homeless individuals, even though the Luggage Storage was receiving public funding. This questioning took on a new dimension when I started attending inter-luggage storage meetings. During these meetings, I realized that the nature of the services provided by the ten Parisian luggage storage facilities varied greatly from one association to another, both in terms of their opening days and hours, and in the role assigned to the beneficiaries within the organizations. The public authorities seemed to fund associations indiscriminately, which, while claiming to fulfill the same mission – offering a secure storage space for homeless people – were, in reality, providing services that had little in common. Why, then, did the City of Paris allow the administrators of these luggage storage facilities to decide on the operational mode of their associations?

50Since 2006, the City of Paris has chosen to delegate the creation of new assistance spaces to volunteer-based neighborhood associations. In doing so, the City of Paris increased the number of secure lockers in the capital. However, at the same time, it delegated the management of homeless individuals’ personal belongings and, by extension, the treatment of homeless individuals themselves, to private actors. The lack of municipal oversight of the practices of luggage storage administrators has had a significant impact on the quality of public service offered to homeless people (illustration 5). a fairerBut it is not a fairer city.

Illustration 5 - A Volunteer-Based Policy that Creates Coercive Assistance Spaces

Illustration 5 - A Volunteer-Based Policy that Creates Coercive Assistance Spaces

Author: Louka Herse, 2024.

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Notes

1 The dates and the names of places and people mentioned in this article have been anonymized.

2 The reasons that led the municipality to shift from a passive support policy to a more active volunteer policy were not clearly explained to me by the municipal officers, who were unaware of them. Is this the beginning of a form of "remote governance" (Epstein, 2005, cited in Robelet, 2017) of the luggage storage services by the City of Paris, similar to the forms of remote governance already applied to other major professional associations outsourced by the municipality? Or is it simply a budgetary policy allowing the municipality to make savings by relying on unpaid labor?

3 The participatory budget is a funding tool created in 2014 by the municipality. Every year, Parisians are invited to take part in the development of their city or neighborhood by voting for investment projects proposed by residents or Parisian associations.

4 Developed by the sociology of interactions at government counters, the notion of discretionary power refers to the ‘room for manoeuvre left [by the public authorities] to the agents responsible for implementing [public systems]’ (Spire, 2010, p. 30). It is ‘the power to take decisions with discretion, in the double sense of the term: discretion refers here to the absence of publicity [...] and to the ability to choose between different options, while remaining within the framework of the law’ (ibid., p. 27). This notion is all the more relevant for understanding the variations in administrative practices from one luggage storage facility to another because, as we have just seen, the creation of these structures does not stem from a clear definition of what a ‘municipal luggage storage facility should be. The absence of a municipal framework strengthens the decision-making power of volunteers: having defined the regulations in force in their luggage store facility, they still have a ‘margin of discretion to adapt [these] regulations to each individual case’ (ibid., p. 21).

5 During the 7th edition of the Night of Solidarity, 3,500 homeless people were counted in Paris, while at the same time, 36,000 people were being accommodated in hotels or Parisian shelter centers.

6 Anne. Born in 1954. Retired, former teacher and principal of a Parisian middle school. At the time, she was president of the association Dos déchargés and a former member of the association Réaliser.

7 Ludovic. Born in 1967. Graduate of the École Polytechnique. Business owner (manages around thirty companies in Western Europe). Secretary General of the association during the investigation.

8 According to Christophe Jemelin and Vincent Kaufmann (2008), motility is the ability of an individual or group to move through space. This ability to move is based on mobilisation of social, economic and cultural capital.

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Table des illustrations

Titre Illustration 1 - Eight lockers from the Tulipes neighborhood luggage storage (out of 54 lockers, each one cubic meter)
Crédits Author: Louka Herse, 2021.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/echogeo/docannexe/image/28489/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 275k
Titre Illustration 2 - The Associative Trajectory of the Dos déchargés Association
Crédits Author: Louka Herse, 2024.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/echogeo/docannexe/image/28489/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 382k
Titre Illustration 3 - Converting a space into a luggage storage facility: the example of the third location rented by the association Dos Déchargés
Crédits Author: Louka Herse, 2024.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/echogeo/docannexe/image/28489/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 209k
Titre Table 1 - History of investment grants obtained by luggage storage facility project leaders via the participatory budget
Crédits Source: City of Paris, Les consultations citoyennes de la ville [Online]. URL: https://decider.paris.fr/​decider/​jsp/​site/​Portal.jsp?page_id=4 (accessed December 20, 2024)
URL http://journals.openedition.org/echogeo/docannexe/image/28489/img-4.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 130k
Titre Illustration 4 - Luggage storage facilities and solidarity lockers in Paris and its nearby suburbs
Crédits Map source: IGN, 2022 and APUR, 2022. Author: Louka Herse, 2022.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/echogeo/docannexe/image/28489/img-5.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 963k
Titre Illustration 5 - A Volunteer-Based Policy that Creates Coercive Assistance Spaces
Crédits Author: Louka Herse, 2024.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/echogeo/docannexe/image/28489/img-6.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 274k
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Référence électronique

Louka Herse, « Spaces of solidarity under constraints: The promotion of volunteering in the management of luggage storage for homeless people in Paris »EchoGéo [En ligne], 70 | 2024, mis en ligne le 31 décembre 2024, consulté le 12 février 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/echogeo/28489 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/133h2

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Auteur

Louka Herse

Louka Herse, louka.herse@gmail.com, is a PhD student in geography at the Passages Laboratory (UMR 5319), a teaching assistant in the Department of Geography and Territories at the École normale supérieure in Paris, and an accredited geography teacher. ORCID number: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-9642-8613. He has recently written:
Herse L., 2022. Avoir un endroit où poser ses affaires. Enquête sur une bagagerie solidaire de Paris. Mémoire de Master 2, Géographie, Université Paris-Est-Créteil et Université Gustave Eiffel.

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Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.

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