Grand Paris eviction
Touted as Europe’s largest infrastructure project, the Grand Paris Express promises better connectivity and improved public transport for the French capital. However, for Roma squatters and slum residents, the colossal project has meant forced evictions and further exclusion from society. With the Paris Olympics right around the corner, the trend has only worsened.
One morning in April 2016, 27 private security agents arrived on the grounds of a rundown warehouse in Vitry-sur-Seine, a Parisian suburb, to evict the 29 people living there. All of them were Romanian citizens of Roma ethnicity. The agents came with three dogs and no judicial mandate.
Daniel, a 25-year-old migrant, his wife, and their baby were among the residents who were told to leave the premises immediately.
The warehouse was a 20-minute walk from the centre of Vitry, and the site of a train stop on the future line 15 of the Parisian metro. Vitry is just one of 45 towns that will be served by the Grand Paris Express, the first metro line connecting all Parisian suburbs. The southern branch, where Vitry is located, is expected to be the first to open, at the end of 2025.
The warehouse belonged to real estate firm SCI Aten, whose owner had filed a request for the residents’ expulsion a week earlier. The court hearing was pushed to May, and the owner took matters into his own hands to remove the squatters. Before then, Daniel and his family had already been evacuated twice – in October and January 2015 – to make way for the metro line 15.
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