Pierre-Antoine Chauvin

Pierre-Antoine Chauvin is a Lecturer-researcher in social policies at the Department of Human and Social Sciences (SHS) at the École des hautes études en santé publique (EHESP), affiliated with UMR 6051 ARENES. His work focuses on the sociology of public action, particularly examining housing policies, administrative practices, and the experiences of marginalized populations.

Chauvin's research interests center on the administration of waiting times in public services, residential trajectories of homeless families, and the implementation of social policies. His work combines ethnographic and statistical approaches to analyze how administrative practices shape social inequalities, particularly in housing allocation systems. He examines how bureaucratic processes, labeling mechanisms, and prioritization criteria create stratification within working-class populations seeking social housing.

His recent publications analyze the unequal administration of waiting times in social housing systems, revealing how the proliferation of priority labels has led to specialization and hierarchization in waiting lists. His research demonstrates that leaving the official waiting queue often results in long-term relegation in the competition for housing, with economic capital playing an exorbitant role in candidate selection. His work also highlights how front-office staff, predominantly middle-class public sector employees, devise placement strategies that prescribe waiting times based on moral expectations and social stereotypes.

Chauvin contributes to the Residhan research project on housing discrimination against people with disabilities and serves as an external collaborator for the Directorate of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics (Drees) within the Office for the Fight against Exclusion. His methodological expertise includes longitudinal studies, ethnographic statistics, and the construction of databases tracking residential trajectories over time.