The Middle Classes and the City

A Study of Paris and London

M. Bacqué, G. Bridge, M. Benson, T. Butler, E. Charmes, Y. Fijalkow, E. Jackson, Kenneth A. Loparo, Kenneth A. Loparo, Lydie Launay, Stéphanie Vermeersch

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781137332592
• eBook ISBN: 9781137332608
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Demography
• Index: Social Sciences

What does it mean to be middle class in contemporary global cities? What do the middle classes do to these cities and what do these cities do to the middle classes? Do the middle classes engage in social mix or are they focused on 'people like us'? Based on comparative study this book explores middle-class identities across Paris and London.

1

The Middle Classes and the City

The impact of the middle classes on the city has been a focus of considerable academic and political attention, most recently concerning the spread of gentrification through cities across the world. Yet the middle classes are increasingly occupying a diverse range of neighbourhoods across the urban system. Through a comparison of such neighbourhoods in Paris and London, this book seeks to explore the dynamics of these forms of territorialisation and the consequences for understanding the sociology, politics and geography of the contemporary city.

Why write a book on urban research that focuses on the middle classes?

In France and Britain, the question of the “middle classes”, their definition and their social role is currently a significant topic in both the social scientific and the political domain. A number of publications, news articles, essays and research articles (Burrows and Gane, 2006; Butler and Lees, 2006; Chauvel, 2006; Donzelot, 2004; Lojkine, 2005; Savage et al., 2005) have recently analysed their decline and downward social mobility, their secessionist logic (into exclusive neighbourhoods, opting out of public services) or their problems in grappling with the financial crisis. Debates around the nature and composition of the middle class have continued since the Industrial Revolution but most concentrated discussions have concerned the expansion of the middle classes since World War II. These discussions increasingly accorded a powerful role to the middle classes in terms of the reproduction of capitalist relations of production (Baudelot et al., 1974; Lipietz, 1996) – in the UK and the US, the group was discussed as the professional-managerial class (Ehrenreich and Ehrenreich, 1979), the new class (Gouldner, 1979) and the service class (Goldthorpe, 1980, 1982). More recent commentary has involved a discussion about the fragmentation of the middle class into the middle classes (Butler and Savage, 1995), a term “used to define social groups whose income can vary by a factor of four” (Bidou, 2004; Chauvel, 2006; Dagnaud, 1981). They are increasingly detached from upper-class lifestyles and aspirations and, in certain fractions, there is increasing emphasis on the relations with working-class trajectories which themselves are no longer part of a solidaristic bloc (Ehenreich, 1989). It is now increasingly evident that these different trajectories and experiences of the middle classes and their relationship to other classes are being registered in the different settlement patterns of the middle classes in the city (Butler, 1997; Préteceille, 2007; Webber, 2007). For instance, the current urban research literature tends to depict the middle classes as striving to safeguard the urban and educational enclaves they have managed to carve out for themselves (Bridge, 2006; Butler and Robson, 2003; Reay and Ball, 1998).

At the same time, social mix has become a major driver of urban policy whereby the middle classes are seen as the guarantors of social cohesion. An extensive international literature has examined the rhetoric of so-called social-diversity policies and their contradictory effects (Bridge et al., 2012). This issue is not new and has been discussed by the urban literature since the 1950s (Chamboredon and Lemaire, 1970; Gans, 1961) and has been evident in urban policies and housing policies since the turn of the last century. Over the last 20 years, research on neighbourhood effects and the international debate that followed indirectly addressed this question, but from the perspective of poor neighbourhoods. Work on gentrification on the other hand considers the logic of urban middle classes and the consequences of social division or mix. Such representations and policies shed light on the relationship of the middle classes to urban space as well as their basis of political and social engagement.

However, few studies have attempted a more comprehensive approach to the middle classes and their social relations across urban space. That is the goal of this book.

What do the middle classes do to the city? How do they contribute to transforming their socio-spatial logic? And conversely, how does urban space contribute to transforming the middle classes (through classifying and constructing their identities)?

We concur with previous arguments that territorial relations of the middle classes are nowadays relevant to their social identity (Bridge, 2003; Butler and Robson, 2003; Savage et al., 2005). Territorial identity can be seen as a catalyst of their wider relations with the world and their vision of themselves (with political consequences at different scales). What we argue in this book, however, based on the evidence from a range of different neighbourhood contexts, is that the relationship between territory and class identity is highly interactive and transactional. Middle-class practices in urban space are conditioned by the social composition of the neighbourhood but also in relation to surrounding neighbourhoods. Residential trajectories into and out of the neighbourhood have their effects on identity and ongoing practices. There are what we might call marked “localisation effects” seen in practices of social reproduction and, indeed, in normative worldviews.

These observations have to be situated in relation to a range of major theoretical issues that are implicated in the question of the middle classes in the city. There have been a series of debates on the social polarisation of cities (such as Sassen’s dualisation thesis – Sassen, 2001) and the effects on urban segmentation and fragmentation (Marcuse, 1989). They also have implications for more practical political and policy issues of, for example, social-mix policies, as well as welfare policies more generally.

The social analysis proposed here also impacts on various forms of political representation, the direction of public policy and the construction of social issues as highlighted by, for example, the numerous debates concerning social justice, taxation or education. The outlooks and possible affiliations of different fractions of the middle class is a subject of keen interest to politicians on the left and right – a phenomenon that Clinton, Blair, Cameron, Sarkozy and Hollande all grasped. As well as political support, there is the question of the degree to which the middle classes (or their different fractions) continue to subscribe to the concept of a welfare state and the extent to which they themselves use state-funded education, health or social services or whether they rely on privatised provision in a pure or “hybrid” form. The issues of middle-class “voice”, “loyalty” or “exit” (adapting Hirshman, 1970) raise important questions about the future sustainability of the public realm. More specifically, there has been an assumption in urban policy that the middle classes are a “good thing” for poorer neighbourhoods (more “voice” leading to more spending and representation). This assumption of middle-class conscience, self-interest and advocacy is a theme addressed by this book.

Beyond the opposition of secession or social mix; beyond gentrification and peri-urbanisation

We wish to get beyond the stereotypes that either depict the middle classes as the glue that binds urban society or analyse them in terms of decline (whilst accusing them of withdrawal and shutting themselves off), but rather to focus on the many different ways in which they integrate or divide urban space and the political sphere.

For some years now, most of the theoretical and empirical research on the middle classes in urban geography has focused on gentrification, gated communities and peri-urbanisation. This work has been essential in capturing a range of neighbourhood impacts, social and class divisions across the global urban system. And yet middle-class residential mobility and social reproduction continues in a range of suburban, exurban and inner urban neighbourhoods as well as those that are gentrifying or gentrified. How do we understand these different middle-class neighbourhoods in terms of intra- and inter-class distinctions and divisions? To what extent does this reflect a fragmentation of the middle classes and to what extent do their political engagements contrast or cohere across these different locations in the city and in the two nation states? Does this residential expansion represent the historical growth of this class over the long boom, and what are the impacts of the increasing economic and social limits on this expansion? Butler and Savage’s (1995) book Social Change and the Middle Classes came out at a time when the notion of the middle classes was still highly contested. Now would be a good time to examine how they have evolved/developed. What class processes and practices are evident in these different neighbourhoods – in terms of local politics, social mix and social reproduction (such as schooling)? What are the relationships (if any) between these different middle-class neighbourhoods in terms of residential and social trajectories (both within cities and between neighbourhoods of different cities in the world system)? What are the political and policy consequences that result from this investigation in terms of understanding both the impact of middle-class practices for the policies of the welfare state at the local level and their relationship to the main political parties vying for their vote at the national level?

In this research, we developed a multidisciplinary approach that tries to articulate both social morphology and spatial morphology. It seeks to intervene in re-emerging debates on social stratification and debates on urban patterns of urban development (following on from the Chicago, Los Angeles [LA] and New York schools of analysis). How are we to understand contemporary patterns of urban development that are not dominated by analyses of segregated urbanisation (Chicago school) or postmodern suburbanisation and separation (LA school)? The middle classes reveal patterns of both continued suburbanisation and renewed urbanisation (such as gentrification). How do we understand the nature of social stratification and identity in the light of these simultaneous and contrasting paths through the city? Can we examine ongoing debates on neighbourhood effects as “selection effects” in which the neighbourhood simply reflects prevailing social structures into which different social groupings select-in? Or does the neighbourhood itself have an effect, either in terms of local peer effects or in how identities and worldviews are constituted through everyday practices?

Our approach tries to analyse space in its different dimensions as advanced by Lefebvre (1974) in taking seriously the significance of the production of space through material, political and everyday practices and representations. The inter-relationships between perceived and lived space is particularly germane to our understanding of our respondents’ neighbourhood trajectories and forms of activity in the neighbourhoods. We thus put the Lefebvrian categories of spatial practice, representational space and representations of space to work in understanding the interventions of middle-class residents and their efforts to change place. Our analysis is not framed around strict definitions of Lefebvre’s categories, but rather the understandings that these intersect, with the result that space is produced through a range of everyday practices, imaginings and regulatory processes (the governance of space). Whilst Lefebvre mainly focused on how these processes operate in the production of large-scale urban space, demonstrating how this reproduces capitalist society, we examine here processes of production taking place on a smaller scale, examining how these processes roll out in the different neighbourhoods in the study and with what consequences. As we demonstrate, the processes by which space is produced are political in character, conflictual and contradictory; there are winners and losers. The analysis of trajectories and neighbourhood activities is also relevant to an engagement with Bourdieu’s ideas on class that have informed previous work in sociology, geography and urban studies (Bridge, 2003, 2006; Butler and Robson, 2003; Savage et al., 2005). In this study, we see how the neighbourhood context reveals a range of class trajectories and how these influence, and in turn are influenced by, certain localisation effects in the neighbourhoods themselves. The prior trajectories, different mixes of capitals (economic, social and cultural) and the trade-offs between them and the strongly gendered aspects of class reproduction, disrupt the assumed relationships between class habitus, generations and practices. The processual aspects of space are critical for an understanding of these more contingent relationships. The comparison of national institutional contexts, metropolitan systems and neighbourhood practices greatly assists in analysing the relationship between class and space.

The value of comparative urban research

A French–British comparison enables the issues just discussed to be analysed in terms of two global cities and contrasting nation state structures and political cultures. It of course encompasses two national welfare and education systems and two metropolitan environments. Paris and London are the dominant global cities in Europe, and their place in the global urban system and the processes of globalisation have particular effects on the composition of the middle classes, their residential trajectories and potential fragmentation in these cities. Some fractions are drawn into a globalised professional marketplace whilst others are more embedded in national markets and public institutional contexts (Beaverstock, 2002; Hamnett, 2003; Massey, 2007; Sassen, 2001). Paris and London have much higher housing prices than elsewhere in France and the UK and these housing market pressures have diverse impacts on different fractions of the middle class. A comparison of Paris and London also captures the effects of global, national and local processes on the structure and lived experience in these different fractions. To what extent does the city have effects – in processes of acceleration and accumulation or deviation and constraint – on social and economic trajectories of households – that might explain middle-class differentiation and forms of identification? In this context, the book advocates seeing space as a process of differentiated trajectories through the urban system as well as in the ongoing “work” of class in different neighbourhood settings.

The study compared the middle classes in different types of neighbourhood in Paris and London. This typology represents a range of neighbourhoods both in terms of their relationship to the overall urban system and in their different degrees of social mix within the neighbourhoods themselves. The types were inner urban gentrifying (socially mixed); inner urban gentrified (less mixed); suburban; exurban; and gated communities. One of each type of neighbourhood was studied in both cities (ten neighbourhoods in all). Three hundred and eighty-six in-depth interviews were conducted with residents and some key informants across the two cities. The selection of neighbourhoods and the organisation of interviews and management and analysis of data was conducted comparatively by the two branches of the research team throughout. This reflected the bilateral nature of the funding of the project (Economic and Social Research Council in the UK; Agence Nationale de la Recherche in France). As discussed, the study examines the degree of diversity or coherence of middle-class identities and activities in Paris and London and their political impacts. Can these cities reveal the nature and political significance of the middle classes in the contemporary context? Are place and location especially relevant for social identity? Does the fragmentation of middle-class residential localisation reflect the atomisation of this social nebula? Does each stratum find through its form of territorialisation a way to build itself against (or link with) others? How far are these identities and practices limited to the national context or are they more transnational in scope (Favell, 2008)? To what extent do the attitudes, activities and political engagements of the middle classes vary across the different neighbourhood types they occupy in Paris and London? How do other forms of difference (ethnicity, nationality) intersect with class identities? What are the similarities and differences across neighbourhood types in both cities? What are the implications of these variations for policy and politics at the local, city, national and transnational scales?

Alongside these social and political questions, there is a long tradition of social science research that has developed perspectives specific to each national social and cultural context, although there have always been many worthwhile exchanges between the two traditions. Consequently, Anglo-Saxon research into gentrification or the service class has been imported into France (Bidou-Zachariasen, 2003; Fijalkow and Préteceille, 2006) while the approach to social space put forward by Pierre Bourdieu has become a standard reference in Britain (Bridge, 2001a, 2001b, 2003; Butler, 1997, 2003; Savage et al., 2005). These studies look at the relationship between the middle classes and their degree of practical and symbolic dominance of urban space with, for example, Savage et al. (2005) and Savage (2010) making an initial distinction between “elective belonging” versus nostalgic association with neighbourhood, or Andreotti and Le Gales (2008) identifying of locally rooted upper middle-class cosmopolites who, in terms of networks and services, partially exit their cities. There is considerable scope to investigate further these relations between middle-class identity and urban space. This study also brings a comparison of the distinct theoretical and empirical research traditions to bear in the analysis of the contemporary situation of the middle classes in the city.

Key research issues addressed in the book

The book provides first of all a detailed mapping of the characteristics of the middle classes in a comparative context. It also considers their treatment in the respective national sociological research traditions. This involves a re-theorising of the middle classes in relation to the contested nature of space and identity in the context of the economic forces and social diversity of these two global cities. There is an emphasis on the importance of urban structure and space on the particular realisation of middle-class outlooks and activities and whether the dynamics of the global city stretch or consolidate middle-class identities and practices. We also provide a nuanced political mapping of the activities of the different fractions of the middle classes and their relationship to politics and to public services and consider in more detail the possible effects of urban policy in relation to the middle classes in different parts of the city.

In this research context, we investigate the extent to which the middle classes feel that they are on an upward or downward social trajectory. Are these trends the same or different for different middle-class groups? Are the middle classes a coherent group or do they differ politically and socially and what are the implications of this for politics and political parties more generally? Does living in different neighbourhoods in and around the city reflect differences in middle-class lifestyles and outlooks? Do the middle classes mix with others or only people like them? There are also questions that relate to the nature of Paris and London as cities and their impacts on middle-class life. How do London and Paris differ in terms of middle-class lifestyles and politics? In what ways are they the same? Are there particular effects on the middle classes that could be said to be distinct to global cities? A final set of questions concerns the relationship of the middle classes to urban policy and politics. In what ways has their relationship to the provision of key state services (notably education) been changing? Do they continue to subscribe to public services or are they increasingly opting out to private forms of provision? To what extent can the activities of middle-class residents be in favour of the neighbourhood as a whole? This last question provides the opportunity for a critical analysis of the question of neighbourhood advocacy. Finally, in terms of the study as a whole, we ask what the findings of this research mean for understanding class in the 21st century.

The structure of the book

We begin by “locating the middle classes” (Chapter 2) both theoretically (especially in the French and English research traditions) and geographically (their present and recent social geography in Paris and London). This discussion is situated in the context of the changing dynamics of Paris and London as global cities. The chapter then goes on to specify the ten neighbourhoods we selected to study and the rationale and basis of comparison of these neighbourhoods. In Chapter 3 (Being Middle Class) we ask whether, or...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• About the Authors
• 1. The Middle Classes and the City
• 2. Locating the Middle Classes in London and Paris
• 3. Being Middle Class
• 4. Residential Choice and Representation of Place
• 5. Lived Space
• 6. Staying Middle Class
• 7. Changing Places
• 8. Rethinking Class and Space
• Appendix 1: Socio-demographic Profiles of the London Neighbourhoods
• Appendix 2: Socio-demographic Profiles of the Paris Neighbourhoods
• Appendix 3: Summary Profiles of Respondents – London and Paris
• Appendix 4: Indicative List of Occupations for Two Neighbourhoods in Paris and London
• Notes
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index