So Long Ago, Nancy
If Leonard Cohen was commemorating the death of a former acquaintance when he sang “Seems so long ago, Nancy”, this verse, taken on its own, can also be applied to Nancy, the eponymous capital of the Dukes of Lorraine. Centered around the Place Stanislas and the Ville Vieille, historical neighborhoods that serve as a compass for residents and visitors alike, Nancy has a dual face: while one half is home to the upper middle classes and the affluent, the other half, delineated by a sometimes blurry boundary, is home to the rest of the city’s population, from the lower middle classes to the socio-economically precarious, alongside students and families of immigrant origin. This visible segregation can even be seen on the benches of public parks, where families of non-immigrant origin and families of North African descent sit separately. Nancy’s Janusian character is even more apparent in its internal political divisions: at odds with different visions of society, many residents oscillate between mass mobilization and indifference, unionization and silent disappointment. Adopting a sociological standpoint, I have set out to document these multi-faceted divisions in the series So Long Ago, Nancy.
