Foreign population is concentrated in big cities which offer in the short term better possibilities to find employment in the black market, to meet the community of fellow citizens, to stay in urgency accommodation facilities and to benefit from services of charity organisations.

However, big cities are also characterised by the housing crisis. In France, the Ile-de-France Region (which comprises Paris and the counties around it) is a typical example for such a situation. It hosts 40% of immigrants in France who often have difficulties in finding appropriate housing facilities which have negative repercussions on their possibilities to find employment.

In parallel, other regions suffer from the lack of workforce and the ageing of local population. This offers migrants the possibility find employment on the local labour market and to find appropriate housing. In addition, the “Clef de France” project prevents the concentration of migrants in a specific territory which might lead to communitarism and orients them to an environment offering more favourable conditions for integration.

Migrants benefit from the following services in order to carry out their mobility project. First, awerness-raising workshops are organised with the objective to inform migrants on French regions and on employment and housing possibilities there. Then individual interviews are organised: one to discuss current difficulties and another to set up an individual mobility plan. Finally the migrant is put in contact with employment and housing actors in the target regions in order to accomplish their mobility plan. Migrants are followed up after the relocation. In addition, the “Clef de France” project informs the professionals on relocation possibilities, gives advice regarding to individual situations and offers professional training.

Since 2005, 199 households (586 persons) completed their mobility plan. Out of the 199 households 88 moved by the means of employment, 17 by training and 94 by housing. The process of relocation takes 4,5 months on average. It includes information on the target regions, research of possibilities and the concretisation of the plans.

Evaluation indicators:

• Number of households relocated by the project;
• Number of workshops/interviews organised;
• Number of reception centres participating in the project; 
• Number of professionals trained in the framework of the project.

The project is evaluated yearly. Besides the regular internal evaluation, a yearly external financial control and a performance evaluation are exercised.

The beneficiaries of the “Clef de France” project are newly arrived migrants (refugees, beneficiaries of subsidiary protection, persons arrived via family reunification, legalized immigrants, etc.) who face difficulties in access to employment and housing and who are willing to move to another region to start their integration there. They mostly reside in the Ile-de-France Region but other migrants can also be involved in order to prevent their moving to Ile-de-France. The indirect beneficiaries of the project are social workers who can widen the solutions proposed to their clients by the possibility of geographic mobility to their clients.

The project is co-financed by the European Refugee Fund through the French Ministry of Immigration, Integration, National Identity and Co-development, by the French Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Solidarity through the Val de Marne County’s Social Services Department and the Ile-de-France Regional Council. The direct funding is 250 000 EUR (which is complementary to funding received under other programmes aiming a global accompaniment of persons).