Policies aimed at adaptation to sea-level rise advocate new approaches, no longer based only on protection but also seeking to reduce the vulnerability of densely-urbanized coastal zones, especially through managed retreat or anticipatory relocation. However, such relocation faces substantial challenges and constraints at all governance and policy scales. This article elucidates some of the social and institutional conditions for putting relocation on the agenda and implementing it in the case of France. It addresses the current situation through an analysis of the multi-level governance processes (national guidelines and frameworks, local experiments and regional strategies) which contribute to the production of “actionable knowledge” for relocation in terms of legitimacy, credibility, applicability and acceptability. The detailed analysis of the stages and types of actors and processes involved reveals the hindrances, in terms of inertia and status quo, found at each level of decision-making and action, as well as the positive role of actors or policy entrepreneurs catalyzing interactions between these different levels. This multi-level governance enables a hybridization of initial standards, information sharing and collective learning which, together with operational proposals derived from studies and experiments, create conducive conditions for coastal relocation and spatial reconfiguration projects.

旨在适应海平面上升的政策提倡新的方法，不再仅仅基于保护，而且还寻求减少密集城市化沿海地区的脆弱性，特别是通过有管理的撤退或预期的搬迁。然而，这种搬迁在所有治理和政策层面都面临着巨大的挑战和制约。本文阐明了将搬迁提上议程并在法国实施搬迁的一些社会和制度条件。它通过对多层次治理过程（国家指导方针和框架、地方试验和区域战略）的分析来解决当前的情况，这些过程有助于在合法性、可信性、适用性和可接受性方面为搬迁产生“可操作的知识”。现状，存在于决策和行动的各个层面，以及行动者或政策企业家在促进这些不同层面之间的互动方面的积极作用。这种多层次的治理能够将初始标准、信息共享和集体学习相结合，再加上研究和实验得出的操作建议，为沿海搬迁和空间重新配置项目创造了有利条件。