This article focuses on the implementation of a territorial integration policy within the specific institutional framework of a metropolis (métropole). Established on 1 January 2015, the Metropolis of Lyon brings together the competencies of the former Urban Community and the Departmental Council in the Lyon territory and the 58 surrounding municipalities. All social action was therefore taken over by a new community with specific competencies. In this respect, the directions taken in integration policy are rather indicative of the political challenges of social intervention in a metropolitan context: the aim is to shape the authority over integration as an employment opportunity, a social investment2 available to local companies in a policy renamed “integration through employment”. This modernised understanding of integration has not been without consequences for territorial social bureaucracies with habitual work practices that are part of local networks of interaction. This article therefore questions the adjustments made by administrations and partners of social and professional integration in view of policy directions and their impacts on the lives of claimants. The argument aims to detail the specific Lyon context, with the emphasis on looking at the recipients who are categorised depending on the direct employability of active solidarity income (RSA) recipients, from the perspective of actors in bureaucracy who are able to demonstrate the forms of opposition through failure to use integration through employment measures, de facto strengthening the hierarchy of claimants.