The Experience of Mobility

The Experience of Mobility An anthropological analysis of tenants' displacements in Montreal Jean-Sébastien Marcoux University College London Ph.D. Dissertation in Anthropology February 2001 ProQuest Number: U643661 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest U643661 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 This work is dedicated to all the places in which I have lived in the past and to the people who shared those places with me... All of them except the apartment on Wolfe St., the one with shower in the living room closet. Abstract This thesis explores the experience of mobility through the process of house moving in Montreal. It is a study grounded in an ethnographic fieldwork that took place between September 1997 and July 1999. Data were collected through participant observation, by accompanying people throughout the process of their move, and assisting them in their move. It examines a range of anthropological issues such as the distribution of power in relation to residential groups, the constitution of subjectivity in motion, the relations coming into existence on the move as well as the role of material culture. It also looks at the construction of ageing brought about by mobility. The experience of mobility is situated in its broader context. The political and economic conditions which make it possible are analysed as well as the social categories in the light of which the experience takes on its meanings. As such, the thesis challenges major Western ideological and philosophical preconceptions regarding stability. It demonstrates how stability has progressively been normalised in the Western world against the threat that the moving crisis represents; how, in other words, remaining in place has become a norm of domestic life as well as its condition. The ethnographic evidence recognises that moving in Montreal is often apprehended as a crisis, not to say dreaded. It shows how moving is considered to be a crisis. It also reveals, however, that it is a crisis that is often taken to be worth going through. The thesis thus explores how people use mobility and how they cope with it. In that sense, it acknowledges the role played by objects; those objects with which people move and which are at the heart of the creation and the re-creation of a sense of place. One contribution of this thesis is to emphasises how people in Montreal, tenants in particular, use space and movement across space to construct themselves as subjects. Far from resulting from a lack of attachment to place, moving appears to be understandable as a dwelling practice, not to say rational in the Montreal context. It becomes a means to take advantage of the renting system. At least, it is a attempt to make the best of it. Contents Abstract................................................................................................................... i List of figures ........................................................................................................ iü Acknowledgements.............................................................................................. iv Prologue .................................................................................................................. VÜ 1. Why shouldn't people move?....................................................................... 1 2. The mythification of stability and the moving crisis.................................. 34 3. The moving question....................................................................................... 58 4. Should I stay or should I go?....................................................................... 82 5. Being civil in a mobile society........................................................................ 106 6. The strength to move ...................................................................................... 129 7. Things that move............................................................................................. 154 8. The 'casser maison' ritual.................................................................................. 176 9. Just a matter of time....................................................................................... 202 References.................................................................................................................220 Appendices............................................................................................................. 237 List of figures 1. Map of the Montreal Urban Community's municipalities......................... 11 2. Map of the City of Montreal's neighbourhoods......................................... 15 3. Map of house moves of informants in Montreal during the fieldwork 33 4. People moving themselves in Montreal....................................................... 128 5. Self-movers in Montreal................................................................................. 132 Acknowledgements I wish to thank, first of all. Professor Daniel Miller, my supervisor, for his continuing support, his great availability, his enthusiasm, his challenging criticism and his overwhelming intellectual generosity. Daniel Miller always claimed that the greatest gift that academics could make to each other were genuine and perspicacious criticism. He showed me how rewarding this exercise could be. I also wish to thank Professor Mike Rowlands, my second supervisor, for his help and the very stimulating exchanges that we had. I would also like to thank Professor Rowlands for giving me the opportunity to work with him during the writing up period of my diesis, together with Dr Leonie Kellaher from the University of North London and Dr Julian Hanson from the Bartlett School of Architecture on From Domesticity to Caring, a research project on elderly people's home in Britain funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). This research project which was in straight line with my own work in Montreal greatly helped me. The discussions that I had with Professor Rowlands and Dr Kellaher in particular extended my understanding of the problematic at issue in elderly people's mobility. In fact, my reflection on the issue have immensely evolved through my collaboration to this research. I wish to thank Dr Barbara Bender from the Department of Anthropology at UCL for her help in the early stages of my research as well as Daniel Miller's students for their stimulating interactions. I also wish to thank specially Dr Victor Buchh as well for his comments on a preliminary version of this thesis and for his intellectual influence. My fieldwork in Montreal has offered me with the opportunity to meet and to work with Professor David Howes from Concordia University in Montreal. Professor Howes has supported me during the period of the research. He provided me with very generous advice and comments on the preliminary version of some Chapters. Besides, Professor Howes allowed me to work with him on the research project titledCulture and Consumption funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) during my fieldwork which provided me with a strong understanding of the issue of things' mobihty: an issue central to my work. I also wish to thank the Professor Claude Thomasset from the Department of Legal Studies of l'Université du Québec à Montreal for her help regarding the issues on housing in the province of Quebec. Professor Thomasset guided me in the maze of the Law. She also introduced me to other people who have been of very great help as weU. I wish to thank her for her generosity and her communicative enthusiasm as well for her comments on the preliminary versions of some Chapters. I wish to thank Me. Sylvie Tremblay as well for her advice on legal issues. My research also benefited from the help of organisations and individuals, particularly with regard to the recruitment of informants. I wish to thank the personnel of theCentre local des services sociaux Côte-des-Neiges in Montreal for helping concretely in the conduct of this research, in the recruitment of elderly informants. I wish to thank more particularly Mrs Suzanne Walsh, Directrice des services professionnels, Mrs Nicole Hunot as well as the numerous social workers who introduced me to informants. Unfortunately, I can't name these workers without threatening the anonymity of my informants because of the strong association between them. I am grateful to these people for their help and for the openness that they have shown to my work and my approach. I also wish to thank Danielle Picard for introducing me to the world of real estate. Mrs Picard allowed me to accompany her in the course of work. She helped me to recruit many informants. And she has been a very good informant herself. In the same vein, I wish to underline the contribution of Julie Bourassa and Marie Carrière for helping me recruiting informants. I also wish to thank the Direction of the Hbrary of l'Université du Québec à Montreal for granting

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