Gli effetti perversi di un modello di sviluppo performante: i giovani di Montpellier "issus de l'immigration"

The analysis has been realised in the context of an international research on the competitiveness of a series of local economic systems. It is focused on the experience of Montpellier, chosen for the relevance of the urban marketing policies in its recent history; policies that are aimed to attract productive investments and human resources with a high level of qualification. The attention is focused on the initiatives for the integration of the migrants’ children penalised in the access to social and work opportunities because of their ethnic origin and of their condition of residential segregation. According to the majority of opinions, the results obtained aren’t in line with the quantity of the resources expended, because of a lack of coordination among the local institutional actors and because of “exorcisation” of the integration’s problem by denying the existence of a reality of social exclusion, in coherence with the image of a “performing city”. The thesis of the article is that this reality of exclusion is, instead, a constitutive and inevitable element of the Montpellier model of development.