The Politics of Inequality in Globalizing Cities: How the Middle Classes Matter in the Governing of Buenos Aires

Abstract

This paper contributes to the literature on the new politics of social inclusion and spatial justice in globalizing cities. My main argument is that accounts of such politics should focus on the multiple intervening social actors without neglecting or assuming the roles played by the urban middle classes. Focusing on the case of the City of Buenos Aires (CBA) after Argentina's neoliberal crisis of 2001, I show the importance of mobilized middle-class social actors in shaping institutional and territorial outcomes in a globalizing city that is highly polarized and fragmented. This study is based on participant observation, in-depth interviews, and archival research focused on (a) subscribers of state-sponsored citizen participation processes and (b) neighborhood activists with middle-class profiles—middle incomes, relative housing stability, and residency in neighborhoods with middle levels of development. Findings show that, although middle-class politics in the city evidenced a primary concern with place, neighborhood, and local territories, mobilized actors were also responding to deeper transformations brought about by processes of neoliberal globalization. Their repertoires of collective action also moved beyond the local scale and had significance for the wider governing of the city. Finally, it is shown that middle-class politics in the postcrisis CBA departed from the exclusionary attitudes evidenced in studies of other cities, which leads to the question of how such politics may be reconciled into broader coalitions seeking more egalitarian forms of urban globalization. Further inquiries for comparative analysis beyond the CBA are suggested in the paper's conclusion.