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The task currently at the heart of policies concerning the elderly is to manage coherently different types of support for individuals: from family and friends, from volunteers, from social services as well as from commercial services paid for the by users themselves. The territorialisation of policies for the elderly in France or Germany is the method adopted by the public services in order to promote a partnership approach amongst the different operators. Furthermore, it seems that the reference to a shared territory as a space for coexistence and for social cohesion may be seen as encouraging volunteering. We wish here to explore the degree of efficiency of this approach, using the examples of two separate cases, in Toulouse and in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg in Berlin.