Abstract EN:

Some rural areas of the Western world, that were until quite recently either left side or mostly abandoned are again experiencing a revival of interest that is not just tourism-related. A "Back-to-the-countrysideʺ movement has been developing for over thirty years with the post-industrial framework of our societies. This "going back" phenomenon is here analysed through two case studies, one in Mendocino county, Northern California, the other in the Gresigne and the Gorges de l'Aveyron regions in the South West of France. Different categories of populations that migrate to the country being in due course identified. Recent territorial restructuring demonstrates a large-scale rural gentrification in the south and west of Mendocino county that is still in its embryonic form in the rural areas under study in the South of France. This trend, at being looked sometimes as a new "free-market" injustice, is now emerging in the countryside and generates a growing appropriation of some rural areas by the middle and upper-middle classes at the expense of more underprivileged social classes. This research calls for thinking more elaborately about the regulation of the rural land market.