How do residential mobility and practices of sociability interact when working-class households settle into their new homes? Whether the purchased property is located in a new or traditional residential area, moving is usually motivated by a desire to exit collective forms of housing. Indeed, the act of moving house allows the mobile to distance themselves from the unstable fractions of the working-classes, even when mobility rhymes with leaving dense urban areas and settling in suburban or rural areas. The analysis then shows how practices of sociability in the new environment are influenced by compatibilities/incompatibilities between neighbours and by social connections that the former allow –or hinder. The analysis of the reciprocal effects between residential mobility and practices of sociability hence demonstrates the existence of a considerable gap between a stable, protected fraction of the working-classes and the more vulnerable parts thereof.