Gentrification and social classes in Paris, 1982-2008

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the articulation between gentrification and social class, in the context of the debate that opposes the notions of replacement and displacement of the working class. Working from Marxist sociological analyses of the professional-managerial class, this social geography study reviews statistical data spanning over three decades to demonstrate the magnitude of gentrification in Paris, both on the scale of the city and on that of its metropolitan area. The author examines detailed socio-economic categories from French population censuses and focuses on the household population rather than on the sole working population, from the early 1980s onward: through this methodology, the author intends to prove that, contrary to Préteceille’s assessment, gentrification is indeed the main factor of socio-spatial transformation in inner Paris and contributes to the diverse forms of social upgrading that affect the metropolitan area as a whole. This process has brought about a shift in the scale of segregation, which has increasingly acquired a micro-local dimension.

KEYWORDS:

• Gentrification
• Paris
• social classes
• social structure transformation
• statistical analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The metropolitan area had a population of 12,6 m inhabitants in 2017 (Insee, RP 2017).

2. See my PhD thesis (Clerval, 2008) and its updated version published by la Découverte (Clerval, 2013).

3. By convention, the reference person of the household is the man or the oldest active person. This choice of the reference person causes an overrepresentation of male-dominated occupations (blue-collar workers, craft workers, shopkeepers, business owners, managers), while female-dominated occupations are underrepresented (low-skilled white-collar workers and associate professionals).

4. This population excludes only people living in collective accommodation (retirement homes, military compounds, etc).

5. This area, also referred to as “la Zone” (as a reference to the “non aedificandi” zone surrounding Thiers’ fortifications), was long occupied by slums and wasteland, and was urbanized after the demolition of the fortifications in the Interwar.

6. The 1948 law strictly regulated the increase in rents in dwellings built before 1948, while rents were free in dwellings built after that date. In the 1980s, the state wanted to homogenize the rule for all housing, leaning toward deregulation in the context of the implementation of neoliberal policies.

7. Intermediate housing offers rent-controlled accommodation and is accessible under conditions of income, but it targets more affluent households than those that can benefit from social housing.

8. The method used consists in comparing typologies constructed from the data of each census, for Paris on the one hand, and for Île-de-France on the other. Although the inertia of the social structure makes certain types look similar between 1982 and 2008, the social profile and geography of each type is unique to each typology. As the data changes, this implies different groupings of IRIS, and therefore different types, or even a different number of types based on this data. The number of types is chosen according to the dendrogram of the AHC and a compromise between the accuracy of the typology and its readability on a map. We must therefore analyze how these types are recomposed between 1982 and 2008 and what this says about the transformation of Paris as a whole. To some extent, the reduction in the number of types between 1982 and 2008 indicates a simplification of the Parisian social space due to generalized gentrification.

9. This group comprises of students who form a household independently from their parents, and does not therefore represent the totality of the student population.

10. It is notably in these peripheral departments that Type 4 is found, marked by the overrepresentation of farmers (although they remain few in absolute value). This social profile – absent from inner Paris – explains the fact that there are 7 types for the Île-de-France against 6 for inner Paris.