Homeownership and Indigenous Populations

This article uses the Bozon and Chamboredon’s notion of “indigenous capital” to understand the importance of homeownership in the collective strategies of social reproduction of a French mason’s kinship group from Brittany: self-built real estate helps maintain social capital and offers a privileged position of indigenousness. Perpetuating the status of the descendants in the local space becomes the cornerstone of a family strategy. By combining this monograph and the analysis of statistical data, we show the articulation between real estate property and indigenousness: having residential roots and having developed real estate are popular assets and, at the same time, are associated with specific social trajectories. This paper also analyses how the accumulation of indigenous capital on family relationships and in particular on the social relations between the sexes occur in the family: husbands and wives, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters are not all real estate owners, do not all live nearby, and do not earn equal salaries.