Marseille in uproar: secularism, multiculturalism, and urban degradation in the city of immigrants

The French Mediterranean city of Marseille is typically imagined as a city of unparalleled multicultural diversity. Yet, this view overlooks how Marseillais residents of African, Arab, and Muslim origin are progressively driven out of their homes, since the 1990s, by urban renewal projects seeking to redevelop ‘unsightly’ working-class neighbourhoods downtown into upscale commercial zones. This article offers an account of a central paradox undergirding Marseille’s redevelopment: As working-class minority residents are expelled from downtown spaces, city authorities continue to mine them, as emblematic figures of Marseille’s multicultural diversity, for extractive cultural and economic capital to buttress the city’s cosmopolitan image.