In a given social environment, what is the impact of housing status, of the social perception and identification of residential areas on its actual population make-up? Under what conditions do these perceptions change? These questions have led us to determine four synthetic variables of residential space: the socio-residential status of housing types (symbolic links between the characteristics of the housing unit and the position of its occupant in society); the " housing zones " (impact of the composition of the housing stock on the social markers defining a residential area); the residential areas (actual " social marker "); and the local impact (social markers that are not directly linked to the nature of the housing stock). This article describes the methods and models used to construct these variables. They are used to understand the links between residential movements and changes in the population make-up in the area of Douai (in Northern France), located in a former coal-mining field which was gradually closed, beginning in the 1970s. We used secondary processing of the 1990 partial census surveys of one-quarter of the French population, and we carried out 1,344 surveys with households which had moved in 1994. Results show that mobility is often linked to " crisis " situations: these are moves which do not aim to improve one's socio-residential status. In the end, most households remain within the same housing category, in the same residential area, and in the same housing zone.