Les mères seules et leurs espaces de vie : mobilités résidentielles et pratiques quotidiennes de l'espace des femmes seules avec enfant(s) en Bretagne

摘要

The growing instability of couples, married or not, has largely contributed to the increase of single parenthood. Nowadays, 20% of French families with children are single-parent families. Among these families, 85% are women-headed (Insee, 2006). While several studies have been devoted to understand the poverty of women with children, researches on their living spaces and their spatial practices are uncommon. This is why the model of « social space of vulnerability » (Séchet and al., 2002) offers an interesting framework to support the methodology of the doctoral research. The methodology combines a quantitative method (questionnaire) and a qualitative one (interviews), allowing us to measure the constraints of residential and daily mobilities on single mothers lives. Firstly, it appears that single parenthood involves residential mobility and residential regression because of a limited choice of housing (localisation, status). Secondly, the analysis has shown that residential mobility comes often with a diminution of social networks, time, capacity for mobility and therefore, by a retraction of the living spaces. Finally, the research has revealed various forms of vulnerability (economic, social, spatial) interacting with each other and leading to cumulative risks: poverty, spatial marginalization and social exclusion