Acceso usuarios
Abdelmalek Sayad
Hostels for the homeless. The way in which immigrants are housed is a sad reflection of our attitudes to the immigrant condition and reveals dertain basic facts about the immigrant, or rather certain basic facts about the immigrant such as we have made him. The 'immigrant worker hostels' chief characteristic is that they are a form of emergency accomodation, built on a temporary basis for men who have corne over in urgent circumstances; men who will remain temporary residents and who are without their families. This institution is without any specific legal provisions ; it is effectively neither a hotel, nor a form of furnished lodging. It sets itself up as a community whereas it is merely a grouping-together of individuals or groups of individuals eut off from one another by major differences in their paths of previous experience, the way they got where they are, and by the social background to the trends of national emigration of which they are part. A hostel which is populated according to the dictates of an administrative machine which takes into account only the individuals as separate entities stands in the same relationship to those furnished appartments or rooms taking people of established acquaintance, coming from a same area, often linked by ties of kinship, as does the H.L.M. type of housing, a place for collective accomodation-, to the shanty town - a true community environment. The hostel sets apart the residents from one another within its very confines, and isolates them from the rest of the immigrant population rather than helping to bring them closer and unite them. In addition, it imposes the adoption of a life-style which is not al way s accessible to all its residents. H.L.M. Habitation a loyer modere : high-rise low-rent accomodation, a rough equivalent of the British Council Estate.
