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The Nantes metropolis has begun a vast project to “reabsorb” a camp where 700 to 1,000 Roma live. It promises to be taken into account on a case-by-case basis, but some associations consider the support to be far removed from reality.
Prairie de Mauves, everyone knows the purr of Alexandru’s black Vito van, its Merco star added to the windshield, its silver mirrors which reflect the light. This September 9 is the first day of the harvest in the Nantes vineyards. Advisor France Improvised work from the slum, the thick guy moves from family to family and takes on board the most motivated. “I need twenty people in total,” he assures in a playful tone, sure that he will succeed. Employee of a group of employers in the region, Roma of origin, Alexandru often comes here to recruit seasonal workers. He then takes them directly to work, hunkering down in the muscadet aisles or sorting the lamb’s lettuce under the market gardeners’ large greenhouses. Around him, the Mauves camp has emerged from its summer torpor. Families returning from Romania. The muddy ground swollen from the torrential rains of the day before, littered with wrecked cars and dumpsters of garbage. In the middle of the trail, a dead rat lies, its insides exposed, bright red on the brown slush.
With its seven hamlets and its 700 to 1,000 occupants (a third of whom are minors, three-quarters of whom are not in school), the Mauves prairie camp has inherited a sad record: it is said to be the largest slum in mainland France – even if the figure remains difficult to verify. Located on the former land of a recycling center, hidden between the Loire and a railway line at the foot of a blue chimney
