SUMMARY
This report by the Fondation Jean Jaurès explores the subjective relationship between the French and their territory. To explore this subject, a survey was conducted. It consisted of an online forum attended by 20 participants on July 31, 2025, using a life-story collection method with a diversity of socio-demographic and geographic profiles.
Its main contribution was to show thatterritorial attachment is built less on objective criteria (services, infrastructure) than on sensory cues (smells, sounds, landscapes) anchored from childhood, and on family transmission that charges places with an intergenerational memory. Residential mobility does not dissolve these anchors: it often reveals them even more. Territorial identity is also defined by opposition, as opposed to other places deemed too urban or impersonal. For companies, "going local" implies a concrete commitment to the local fabric (associative, productive, festive) and a coherence between the claimed territorial image and the reality of business activity. The Covid-19 pandemic revealed and accelerated these dynamics. The political challenge is to recognize the diversity of territories experienced as a constitutive reality of French democracy.
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Keywords: residential anchoring, plural belonging, residential attractiveness, local social capital, territorial cohesion, local commerce, local trust, integration dynamics, local economy, sensory experience, local pride, social geography, local identity, territorial imaginary, business establishment, localism, collective memory, residential mobility, multi-locality, pandemic and territory, life story, renewal of territories, rurality, sense of belonging, neighborhood sociability, intergenerational transmission
