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Since the start of the renovation work on migrant workers’ hostels in 1997, the managers of such hostels have opposed the accommodation of relatives on grounds of “overcrowding”. Spatially restricted in the new studios that replaced the dormitories and communal rooms, residents have to accommodate to and resist the imposition of solitude and the increasingly strict legal, spatial and technical frameworks surrounding hostel living. What day-to-day tactics and “art of practice” do they used to circumvent the constantly evolving obstacles and constraints imposed by the managing entities? Drawing on the ethnography of a hostel in Saint-Denis, this article traces the trajectory of communal living transformed by the everyday life of migration and the increasingly restrictive management policy of the residence.