Vivre sans cash aujourd’hui. L’expérience des demandeur·euses d’asile en France: Une enquête sur la carte ADA

This report analyzes the concrete effects of the payment of the Asylum Seekers’ Allowance (Allocation pour Demandeurs d’Asile, ADA) in France through a payment card that does not allow cash withdrawals or online payments. Drawing on interviews conducted with around fifty asylum seekers and support professionals, it describes how the ADA card generates everyday constraints for its holders.Deprived of cash and ordinary means of payment, beneficiaries face numerous difficulties in accessing the least expensive goods and services: open-air markets, solidarity grocery stores, informal trade, second-hand purchases, or online promotional offers. The inability to pay in cash or online restricts access to supply channels that are particularly relied upon when resources are scarce. It also complicates the payment of small but ordinary expenses (laundromats, bakeries, deposits, school-related costs), which are central to everyday life.The report shows that users develop adaptation strategies aimed at obtaining cash: relying on relatives or unknown third parties, paying for others’ purchases in exchange for cash, and more or less formalized market-based solutions, among others. Far from being marginal, these practices constitute ordinary arrangements produced by the impossibility of directly accessing one’s allowance. They are frequently accompanied by financial losses, commissions extracted through unequal power relations, exposing cardholders to forms of informal monetary extraction. The monetary extortion to which they are subjected is a predictable effect of the technical restrictions of the scheme, varying according to social isolation, relational resources, and familiarity with local practices.Beyond material constraints, the report highlights the social and symbolic effects of the ADA card: difficulties in “living like everyone else,” increased dependence on one’s social circle, experiences of exclusion at the point of payment, and reduced room for manoeuvre.In conclusion, the report situates the ADA card alongside other targeted welfare instruments, such as U.S. food stamps. Like these devices, the ADA card is based on a logic of disciplining welfare use, aimed at steering and limiting expenditures deemed legitimate. However, rather than ensuring better protection or more efficient budget management, such instruments tend to produce counterproductive effects when benefit levels are low and living conditions highly constrained. By restricting access to money instead of expanding recipients’ capacity to choose, the ADA card ultimately reinforces the vulnerability of its holders.