Eventually detached, eventually belonging. A residential narratives' based institutionalist perspective on urban regeneration and the middle classes in Milan and Marseille

Abstract

Notwithstanding major evolutions in both class identity and broader structural processes, generically defined “middle classes” are still a target for both investors seeking effective remuneration strategies and urban governments striving to achieve urban competitiveness as well as increased “social cohesion” and “order” in cities. However, despite this enduring centrality, scholars have yet to truly develop a critical discussion around the transformations involving middle classes' subjectivities within urban regeneration discourses and strategies and how they are shaped/adjusted/filtered through the specific forms that their design and implementation assume within particular contexts. We argue that a better grasp of these subjectivities can be critical for a deeper understanding of these strategies, their rationales, tools, outcomes, and shortcomings. The paper intends to fill this gap by investigating such subjectivities through the collection and discussion of “residential narratives”, by which we mean the collection of discourses and representations set forth by households and analyzed about a series of relevant dimensions: expectations, boundaries, and belonging. The narratives were collected in two European urban neighborhoods - one in Milan (Italy) and one in Marseille (France) - involved in variably governed urban regeneration processes centered on shaping and mobilizing middle-class subjectivities. Based on the presented results, the paper argues for a bottom-up institutionalist perspective on how we study urban regeneration discourses and strategies as class-making governing processes. • The mobilization of the middle classes in urban regeneration strategies depends on the cities' broader regulative contexts • Discourses, governance arrangements, and housing provision systems are key factors in the making of urban regeneration strategies • “Residential narratives” is key for understanding the way in which such strategies filter, shape and reshape middle-class identities