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Drawing on an ethnographic study of the eviction of inhabitants of a municipal campsite in the Paris region, this article underlines the central role of residential and status insecurity – and more broadly of sociospatial determinants – in hidering successful collective action by vulnerable people. First, it shows how the unpredictability associated with the legal status of this accommodation becomes a political weapon for the mayor, who manages to divide nascent opposition to rumours of the closure of the campsite; second, it reveals the instruments of symbolic violence that ultimately undermine attempts at resistance, thus ensuring the success of the plan to evict the campsite.