Generations of gentrifiers

Since its appearance in 2000 by David Brooks, the term “bobos” has enjoyed a certain success. In her book Rester bourgeois, sociologist Anaïs Collet highlights the vague and variable nature of its meaning, and prefers the category of “gentrifiers” grouping together the inhabitants of the middle and upper classes residing in former working-class neighborhoods that were undergoing a complete revaluation. Her book is in line with the work of urban sociology of the 1970s and 80s, which highlighted that old working-class neighborhoods allowed the “new salaried middle classes” of the time (teachers, researchers, trainers, journalists, civil service executives and other young graduates in positions of expertise, advice, or implementation of public policies) to come together around a critical and activist cultural model, and to constitute what some have called the “alternative class.” Based on the study of more recent “gentrifiers” and in an approach inspired by the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Anaïs Collet raises the question of the transformations that have affected, over the last thirty years, the region of social space located on the border of the middle classes and the upper classes, whose members are endowed with cultural capital more than economic and are characterized by rather progressive values. The book has two objectives: on the one hand, to contribute to describing the variety of “gentrifiers” and, on the other hand, to analyze their “work” (p. 31) on the places, that is to say the ways in which they act on their housing and their neighborhood to transform it and appropriate it.

The author chose to focus her study on two neighborhoods: the Pentes de la Croix-Rousse in Lyon, the site of workers’ revolts in XIX^e century and invested by intellectuals and activists in the 1960s, and Bas-Montreuil, a more working-class district of the Paris region, which experienced an influx of educated households in the 1980s and especially in the early 2000s. Between 2005 and 2007, Anaïs Collet conducted a survey by interviewing around fifty households who had participated in the “gentrification” of these two districts and who belonged to different generations. She also mobilizes, more punctually, statistical data from INSEE censuses from 1968 to 2006 at the sub-municipal level and notarial databases on real estate transactions concluded in the two districts studied. Her survey in Bas-Montreuil, which took on a more ethnographic dimension than on the Pentes de la Croix-Rousse, occupies a more important place in the book. Without presenting all the results of the book, we will focus here on two of them.

Portraits of gentrifiers

One of the contributions of this work is first of all the highlighting, within the neighborhoods surveyed, of several “generations of gentrifiers.” By painting their portraits, Anaïs Collet highlights differences linked to generations of belonging, class fractions and social backgrounds of origin.

The “pioneers”, who arrived on the Pentes de la Croix-Rousse in the 1970s and 1980s and in Bas-Montreuil in the mid-1980s, belong to the “alternative class”. Militant activities occupy an important place in their daily lives, and they “claim a way of life oriented by values ​​and a relationship to the world that they are able to explain” (p. 81-82). If they form a heterogeneous group, in particular because of the variety of their trajectories, we observe in most of them “a disposition to criticism and reflexivity” (p. 83) as well as an “interlocking of political, collective and private registers of commitment” (p. 83).

Two “generations of gentrifiers” follow these “pioneers”. The first is made up of residents born in the 1960s and who arrived in Bas-Montreuil between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s. The second includes individuals born in the 1970s and who settled on the Pentes de la Croix-Rousse at the age of 20 or 30.

The first generation is made up of independent and intermittent workers in the cultural sector (artists, graphic designers, actors, photographers, camera operators, layout artists, etc.). They come from diverse social backgrounds and declare themselves very satisfied with their work. At the same time, their employment conditions are strongly marked by uncertainty. They are also characterized by a “distanced and disenchanted relationship with politics and activism” (p. 114) which distances them from the “alternative class”: their work environments favor individualistic and pragmatic behaviors, so few are activists.

The second generation includes two subgroups from distinct social backgrounds. First, those that Anaïs Collet calls the “heirs” (p. 87): from modest backgrounds, they do the same jobs as the “new middle-class employees” 25 years ago. They also share many values ​​with them, including a certain hedonism:

If they are interested in their work, they are not driven by ambitions of success measured in terms of power or remuneration, but rather seek a balance between work and life outside work. (p. 88)

They thus devote a relatively large amount of time to leisure activities. They are also attached to “a morality that bans mass consumption and easy entertainment, and values ​​”home-made”, disinterested effort, simplicity, conviviality, modesty” (p. 88). Finally, their relationship to politics differs from that of the “alternative class”: they are more distrustful of collective movements aimed at transforming social relations. The second subgroup is made up of the children of members of the “new salaried middle classes”. These “descendants” (p. 90) occupy positions in the associative sector. They share the same values ​​of social criticism as their elders and have made it the center of their professional activity. However, unlike the previous ones, they feel little connection to a collective and develop entrepreneurial tendencies.

If, as the author specifies, the “generations of gentrifiers” highlighted in the book do not exhaust the diversity of “gentrifiers” in the neighborhoods studied nor, a fortiori, beyond, they are indicative of transformations that have affected, in the recent period, the social structure, such as the rise of professions in information, arts and entertainment, the multiplication of engineers and expert executives, the increased difficulties of access to public employment, the extension of unemployment, or even the rise of outsourcing.

A commitment to distinction

A second important contribution of the book, developed in the last three chapters based on the case of Bas-Montreuil, is to explore the modalities and the springs of the “material, social and symbolic work” (p. 34) that the “gentrifiers” carry out on their housing and their neighborhood.

Many of Montreuil’s “gentrifiers” previously lived in Paris. It was particularly real estate prices that pushed these middle-class households from the cultural sector to settle in Seine-Saint-Denis. When they arrived in Montreuil in the 1990s or 2000s, some of them chose large and atypical properties in which they carried out major work: they converted disused factories and dilapidated houses into spacious and distinctive homes. The work they did on their homes and the energy they put into them can be understood as a way of limiting the residential downgrading that, in their eyes, moving to the suburbs constitutes, and as an effort to reduce the gap between their aspirations and the fragility of their position. While the pioneers used these vast spaces for their professional activities or specific ways of living (for example, in the context of self-managed group housing initiatives), these “gentrifiers” transform them into lofts and devote much more attention to decoration. According to Anaïs Collet, the use of these distinctive architectural forms allows them to reinforce their social belonging.

Finally, the author shows that part of the “gentrification work” is carried out through collective mobilizations. She emphasizes, here again, that the “gentrifiers” who arrived in Bas-Montreuil at the end of the 1990s do not have the same attitudes as their predecessors:

They do not aim to influence the neighborhood, but rather seek to improve their lives there, while minimizing their interactions with public authorities. (p. 218)

These newly settled residents create neighborhood associations, often socially homogeneous, which can function as resources for their trajectory: they serve as a support for neighborhood sociability and can provide them with valuable networks in their professional worlds. Furthermore, Anaïs Collet argues that these “gentrifiers” are characterized by a much less “enchanted” relationship with social diversity than the “everyday adventurers” studied by Catherine Bidou: while they appreciate living in a neighborhood that is both popular and mixed,

They have a clear perception of the differences in social position and living conditions that separate them from other inhabitants and have no illusions about the nature of their cohabitations. (p. 233)

Overall, this rich, dense and pleasant book helps to think about the diversity of “gentrifiers” and highlights how issues of social positioning can affect the relationship to housing and the neighborhood. It thus shows, in a stimulating way, how a survey of residential space can contribute to the analysis of social stratification.