Working-class Neighborhoods Research Articles

Social realism and labour strikes in interwar Bombay: what has socialism got to do with it?

ABSTRACT The 1920s and 30s were a period of frequent, industry-wide labour strikes in the cotton mills of Bombay city. Labour upheaval inspired literary production in Marathi, the primary language of many workers in the city. In the early 1930s, the prolific and beloved Marathi writer Bhargavram (Mama) Varekar published a play and a novel set in the mill district of the city (Mumbai in Marathi); social realism was the mode of depiction in these works. The setting, storyline, and many characters in the play and the novel were the same, but the resolution of the central conflict in these works – the tussle between millowners and millworkers – was different. At around the same time, a textile worker from the city, P. S. Sawant, wrote a play when he was on strike; it was performed in the mill district of the city. Both the plays by Varerkar and Sawant proposed co-operation between millowners and workers as a solution to the strike. The novel, though, left the conflict unresolved. Does genre itself account for a different ending? What was the politics of depiction of the working class in these works? What role did the literary history of the region and the politics of the conjuncture play in influencing them? The paper argues that political economic categories deployed by the city’s Marxists at the time inform the play and the novel. But the authors take great pains to skirt a socialist horizon. In its absence, the works reflect the perspective of social reformers who had an important presence in working-class neighbourhoods and imagined the mill district as an insular space where socialists and socialism were intrusions from outside.

Gentrification creates social class disparities in belonging.

Gentrification impacts nearly every major city in the United States, posing a potential threat to lower social class residents' sense of belonging in their neighborhoods. In one survey and three preregistered experiments, we investigated how gentrification affects the belonging of residents across the social class spectrum and how to invest in working-class neighborhoods without undermining lower social class residents' sense of belonging. Studies 1-3 (Ns = 141, 1,085, and 510, respectively) provided correlational and experimental evidence that lower social class residents feel less belonging than higher social class residents in gentrifying neighborhoods. Study 3 showed that this belonging disparity was mediated by lower social class individuals perceiving themselves to be less similar to and less trusting of other residents and higher social class individuals feeling the amenities would better suit them in the gentrifying neighborhood. Nevertheless, neighborhood investment does not always threaten lower social class individuals' sense of belonging. Study 4 (N = 402) showed that lower social class individuals anticipated greater belonging and were more supportive when neighborhood investment was community driven (i.e., prioritized the needs of existing residents) than capital driven (i.e., prioritized economic growth). We discuss implications for equitable urban policy and future directions for a social psychology of gentrification. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Class, migration and masculinity among Syrian and Turkish youths in working-class neighborhoods of Istanbul

ABSTRACT This article describes the masculinity narratives of working-class Syrian and Turkish youths in Istanbul on their lived experiences of socio-economic inequalities, everyday violence, and discrimination. Based on qualitative fieldwork conducted in 2020 and 2021 with male youths in two districts, it emphasizes the common experiences of Syrian and Turkish male youths shaped by their working-class predicaments, but also demonstrates that certain forms of masculinity performances emerge as strategies to tackle the difficulties in their lives. Turkish youths’ masculinity narratives display nationalism and anti-migrant discourses, whereas Syrian youths seek to affirm their dignity against racism through performances of masculinity.

Chinese Restaurants and Neighborhood Change in New York City

This article analyzes the relationship between the presence of Chinese restaurants and neighborhood change in New York City. The core metric used for analysis in this article is a Chinese restaurant index, which is a transformed and scaled percentage of restaurants in a neighborhood that can be classified as Chinese. As an inexpensive and plentiful dining option, Chinese restaurants have an association with working-class neighborhoods, and neighborhood-level Chinese restaurant index decreases over time were associated with gentrification in New York City. This methodology further demonstrates the potential for the use of retail-based analysis as a supplement to conventional gentrification metrics based on demographic and real estate data.

Being a Woman in a Working-Class Neighborhood: Between the Prosaic and the Poetic

Being a Woman in a Working-Class Neighborhood: Between the Prosaic and the Poetic

The 'Discovery' of Gentrification

This paper examines the rise of gentrification in 1970s Amsterdam, based on coverage of the Jordaan neighborhood in Het Parool and a limited number of other Dutch newspapers. Although the term was not yet common at the time, newspaper articles from the 1970s already show a critical attitude toward social change in a working-class neighborhood. Far before policymakers were talking about it, journalists identified the negative effects of gentrification, such as rising rents and a loss of neighborhood identity. The resistance and criticisms of Het Parool and original residents bear striking similarities to contemporary criticisms on gentrification, as visible in the mocking and stereotyping of gentrifiers. Interestingly, developments in American cities were used as a frame of reference for Dutch newspapers in this regard. This exploration of the initial phase of gentrification in Amsterdam shows that both residents and journalists have always viewed the process of gentrification with suspicion.

Ethnic closure and immigrant residential segregation in Spanish working-class neighbourhoods

Given the difficulties of integration of the immigrant population and the demographic importance that this population is set to have in European society, this research uses an initial territorial approach and a subsequent qualitative analysis to study the internal residential dynamics of immigrants in five Spanish working-class neighbourhoods with a significant presence of foreign-born people. The analysis focuses on the role that ethnic prejudice and other factors, such as social class, play in the processes of initiation and maintenance of residential segregation of the immigrant population. Our results show a residential division characterised by advantages for the native population and, especially, by the acceptance of inequality by the immigrant population, which may be contributing to the fact that levels of ethnic prejudice from the native population are, so far, not very high in these neighbourhoods.

“Eating the Barrio”: Gastronomy and urban change in Santa Cruz, Lima

This article explores the impact of the gastronomic boom on gentrification processes in Lima, Peru, during the last two decades. It is an ethnographic study conducted in 2012, 2014, and 2016 in the Santa Cruz housing development, which used to be a working-class neighborhood located in the Miraflores district. The central focus is the analysis of the personal narratives of change and belonging of residents, workers, and visitors, supported by photographic practice. In particular, it is based on the experience of Carlos, a young actor who after living several years in London returns to Peru to start a business and, taking advantage of competitive prices in Santa Cruz, opens a gourmet bakery in the neighborhood. Using the notion of “cosmopolitan imagination,” we show the different ways in which Carlos recontextualizes his experience in London in the specificity of La Mar, negotiating the limits, meanings and values of the places, people, and cultural practices that arise from inhabiting this space of change. Ultimately, Carlos’s bakery becomes a meeting point for linking or negotiating different strategies and experiences of belonging to the area, materializing power dynamics that emerge inside and outside the business, thus shaping the commodification of Santa Cruz.

Dancing Bodies in Zadie Smith's Swing Time

Abstract: This essay reads Zadie Smith's Swing Time (2016) as generating innovative and insightful conversations between literary criticism and dance studies. Smith's novel explores the onstage and offstage performative experiences and challenges of hybridized bodies and hyphenated identities in a transcontinental context. The novel sets up an interactive dancefloor for its leading characters—the unnamed female narrator and her childhood friend Tracey—both of whom are biracial and live in the working-class neighborhoods of Northwest London. Drawing from cultural studies and dance theories, this essay considers the narrator's and Tracey's practices and experiences of dance to discuss the swinging connections and disconnections between selves, bodies, and cultures carried through the protagonists' challenged expressions of agency and mobility in glocal and transnational contexts.

Livin’ on the edge: The peripheral host and the production of a digital tourism space beyond the city center

ABSTRACT This paper examines the physical limits but paradoxically symbolic expansion of the Airbnb model beyond the the touristified historical center of Madrid. We move to the margins of the city and analyzed every host ad and guest comment in the Villaverde district, characterized as a former industrial working-class neighborhood also welcoming various waves of immigrants. Our results reveal a novel figure in the platform model, which we have characterized as the “peripheral host,” who attempts to participate in this business model based on two strategies: first, by constructing an imaginary “digital tourism space” that inserts the periphery into the tourist city; and second, by “platforming host practices” through the provision of a “personalized guest experience” and on-demand tasks. In our study, we propose an explanatory model that sheds light on the ways in which platform urbanism is transforming work, culture and urban society beyond city center.

The impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on child and adolescent active play in Argentina

Child and adolescent overweight and obesity are a multifactorial pandemic social problem; however, there is consensus on its link with a higher caloric intake than expenditure. In this context, it is relevant to analyze the propensity to insufficient physical activity in childhood, and in particular the effects of COVID-19 lockdown on active play. A comparative analysis of the deficit of active play at a prepandemic time and in the period of exit from the strictest isolation in Argentina (2018; 2020) was conducted with 5479 and 3964 observations, respectively, of children between five and 17 years old. The measurements correspond to the Argentine Social Debt Survey (EDSA for its acronym in Spanish) on a national probability sample. First, a descriptive statistical analysis was performed, followed by a multivariate analysis based on logistic regressions. Active play decreased more among females than males as age and socioeconomic status rose. This decline was prominent among those with less physically active parents, a preference for sedentary screen time, and a lower inclination for structured physical activities. Lockdown measures, particularly in working-class neighbourhoods, appeared to shield children's active play. The pandemic and its restrictions harmed children's well-being through diminished play opportunities, affecting their physical, motor, psychological, and social health. Play is widely recognized as a vital bridge between physical activity and energy expenditure. It notably addresses the rising concern of childhood overweight and obesity. Thus, active play becomes a crucial behavior to promote in all circumstances, aligned with a comprehensive health perspective. Keywords: active play, childhood and adolescence, integral health, obesity, COVID-19

From Rocinha to Working-class Neighborhood: The Process of Occupation and Space Formation in the First Three Decades of the 20th Century

RESUMO O objetivo deste artigo consiste em investigar a formação do espaço que conhecemos hoje como a favela da Rocinha, a partir da interseção entre a História Social e a História Urbana, buscando compreender o processo através das experiências dos sujeitos que optaram por ocupá-lo, em meio às dinâmicas de transformação da cidade do Rio de Janeiro no início do século XX. Diferentemente dos estudos que atribuíram ao loteamento da fazenda da Rocinha realizado pela Companhia Castro Guidão na década de 1920 o marco desse processo, busca-se demonstrar, por meio da análise de jornais, documentos oficiais e fotos, que a sua possibilidade de efetivação era parte da ocupação anterior de uma diversificada força de trabalho na área. Em contrapartida, ao viabilizar o acesso à moradia para tais indivíduos, o empreendimento proporcionou uma acelerada ocupação e aglomeração de habitações modestas naquele espaço. Como resultado, a localidade começou a ser conhecida como Rocinha, consolidando assim o seu processo de invenção social e histórica como um bairro operário no início da década de 1930.

Identity Building through a Sense of Injustice for Housing Estate Kids Historical Transmission, Segregation Processes and Radical Stances

Made up for the most part of children of blue-collar workers and immigrants, the youth of French housing estates is yet denied the social organization of the labor community. The legacy of its working-class past is all the more heavy to carry that its present is as uneasy and uncertain as ever. This is why these young people have developed, over two generations, a way of life that is partly specific to them, from creating their own “street culture” to practicing Islam with varying degrees of assiduity, to starting a career in petty crimes – the latter aiming to counteract unemployment and general precariousness. While most are not delinquents, they are faced, as the “inheritors of the working-class neighborhoods,” with economic hardship and discrimination, making them the scapegoats of a country that yet is a democracy. That is why within less than 30 years, as a response to both social frustration and the contempt shown by elites and administrative institutions alike, a sense of collective injustice permeates the youth-and those who are now adults-in these neighborhoods.

Bourdieu and Working-Class Neighbourhoods: What Place for Ordinary Aesthetics?

Abstract Today, an extensive body of research has been produced on the history of mobilisation by residents of working-class neighbourhoods in France and by those who identify with them. These analyses have changed our understanding of contemporary mobilisations, but the existing discourse should not prevent us from reflecting on the alternative modes of engagement that are emerging in these neighbourhoods. These commitments contribute to the “making” of a distinct political culture, rooted in practices and discourses hybridised within working-class lifestyles. Is there an elective affinity between Bourdieu’s theoretical framework and the mobilisations of working-class neighbourhoods? If so, how can this framework provide a productive interpretation of the ordinary actions interwoven into the daily fabric of these social spaces? One way of answering these questions is to consider these actions as a form of political knowledge that reveals alternative ways of considering politics.

Aguapuntura: a water-sensitive approach to revitalize informal settlements in the city of Asunción, Paraguay

In the last decades, rapid urban development led to the birth of informal working-class neighbourhoods. This phenomenon refers particularly to big cities of the developing world, where the slum’s expansion is uncontrolled and has caused a lack of basic services, drinking water and adequate sanitation facilities, generating open sewers, pollution and landslides due to runoff. The present research, focused on the Chacarita district of Asunción (Paraguay), proposes a multiscalar strategy to manage the water resource, address environmental risk and urban and landscape redevelopment. The study proposes the regeneration of public spaces in one of the sectors that compose the Chacarita Alta neighborhood. The proposed design strategies aim at enhancing its natural and urban heritage through punctual interventions on water involving its collection, purification and reuse. Results underline the potential of the designed prototypes in improving the living conditions of the Chacarita residents.

Shoutings, Scoldings, Gossip, and Whispers: Mothers’ Responses to Armed Actors and Militarization in Two Caracas Barrios

AbstractHow do mothers deal with chronic violence and the constant presence of guns in their neighborhoods? How do they build situated meaning and discursive practices out of their experiences and relationships with armed actors? We compare the experiences of women in two poor and working-class neighborhoods in Caracas. Through this comparative ethnographic project, we aim to show how, in the midst of state-sponsored depredation and with an overwhelming presence of guns in their lives, women use their cultural roles as mothers to perform everyday forms of resistance vis-à-vis the different armed actors that impose their presence in the barrios. In the mothers’ daily struggles, dramatic discursive actions—from more openly oppositional ones, such as shouting, scolding, and talking, to more hidden ones, such as both “circulating gossip” and “captive gossip,” to more vulnerable ones, such as whispering—are main resources in the micropolitics of their neighborhoods. Our findings suggest that strategies are context dependent and most likely vary according to numerous factors, including the history of civic organizing, policing practices, and the type of armed actor with whom they cohabitate in their neighborhood.

Urban projects, stigmatization, and territorial disputes in the Independencia neighborhood of Monterrey, Nuevo León, México

The city of Monterrey has become a space of great inequalities and increasingly notorious socio-spatial phenomena. Its different problems have been used by the government and the private sector to justify interventions in working-class neighborhoods, as is the case of the “Independencia” neighborhood. This article looks to analyze the aspects that turn this neighborhood into a disputed space and identify how this is reflected in the territory through the (in)action of public and private actors. It uses a qualitative methodology supported by interviews, informal talks, and non-participant observations that were made in 2019 and 2020. The paper shows how abandonment and a lack of government investment in working-class neighborhoods is part of an urban revaluation process that seeks to attract private investment to these sectors and end the presence of those "others" who are considered a threat to the urban order.

Mapping Municipal Colonialism: Counternarratives of Neighbourhood-as-Home in Strathcona, 1968–69

Recent scholarship on neighbourhood organizations and their attempts to stop urban renewal focuses on the agency of citizens and the difficulty in defining the boundaries of what makes a neighbourhood. This article contributes to the scholarship on neighbourhood activism by examining the formation of the Strathcona Property Owners and Tenants Association, in Vancouver in 1968, through the lens of decolonial performance studies to illustrate the differing definitions of home and domesticity during the postwar period. The City of Vancouver’s justification for demolishing the neighbourhood of Strathcona followed a colonial progress narrative, which conflated home and housing as an economic commodity, whereas for the residents of Strathcona home was more than an investment as it also encapsulated their feelings of belonging to their dwelling, each other, and the surrounding commercial areas. This article challenges the view that urban renewal is a different phase of urban development, but instead highlights the continuity between early settler-colonial and postwar ideas about housing to argue that colonialism is a structure embedded in civic attitudes and language in discussions of housing, homemaking, and domesticity that are then reinforced through zoning, by-laws, and neighbourhood regulations. By drawing parallels between early settler-colonial use of maps, surveys, land-use guidelines, and urban renewal plans, this article explains how the same tools and ideas implemented to justify the dispossession of Indigenous people from their lands were reanimated as tools of expropriation in the post-war period to justify the demolition of a multicultural working-class neighbourhood. The residents in Strathcona successfully countered the City of Vancouver’s view of their neighbourhood by creating their own maps, surveys, and suggestions for how land could be used to justify rehabilitation and preservation of their sense of home, thereby illustrating that there is nothing neutral or objective about urban development practices.

Seeking refuge? The potential of urban climate shelters to address intersecting vulnerabilities

Climate shelters are critical urban infrastructures to support adaptation to extreme weather. They offer spaces – e.g., parks, libraries, and civic centers – where residents can take refuge during episodes of extreme temperatures. With over 200 public spaces designated as “Climate Shelters”, Barcelona (Spain) serves as an emblematic example of whether these emerging spaces are meeting the needs, expectations, and everyday experiences of the most vulnerable residents. By applying an intersectional climate justice perspective and mixed-method approaches rooted in a survey of a particularly climate-exposed working-class neighborhood (La Prosperitat), we found that the intersecting vulnerabilities of marginalized populations remain poorly addressed, largely due to differences in access to coping mechanisms that overlap with intersecting social positions, exacerbating vulnerability to climate risks. We also found that housing inadequacy and energy poverty experienced by low-income residents and those originally from Global South countries made them the most affected and least able to cope with extreme temperatures. Women were also more affected by climate impacts and more concerned about current and future risks. We argue that unequal lived experiences of thermal (dis)comforts inform heat and cold inequalities, which, in turn, are attributed to intersecting social positions and structural vulnerabilities. These uneven lived experiences shape – and are reshaped by – limited adaptive capacity, culturally inappropriate approaches, and insufficiently inclusive public spaces, thus complicating an equity-driven provision of refuge infrastructures. Results call for developing refuge infrastructures that address the intersecting social and climate needs of residents who need them the most.

Pinter and Stoppard: A Director’s View

Pinter and Stoppard: A Director’s View