Classifications Used in the Process of Evicting a Squatter

Taking as a starting point praxeological sociology that focuses on the “manufacture” of law, this article attempts to describe the categorization work carried out by various government officials engaged in the eviction procedure for squats. It shows initially that the squatters’ social-economic weakness is generally obscured by the stigma of deviance. But within this general repressive framework, a certain number of differentiations can be observed. The child figure seems more effective in diverting stigma, whereas the fact of being a young, male foreigner is to the squatters’ disadvantage. These ad hoc classifications, which determine how procedures are translated into acts, update the dialectic between “true” and “false” poverty, which is the basis for the reversibility of a social policy ready to change itself into repression against the targeted populations.