Interviews with middle class residents in the city: a comparison of Paris and London

Bridge, Gary (2017). Interviews with middle class residents in the city: a comparison of Paris and London. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-851501

This comparative study investigates the contemporary social and political characteristics and activities of the urban middle classes in Paris and London. It investigates a range of neighbourhood types in each city: inner city gentrified (not socially mixed); gentrifying (socially mixed); suburban; exurban and gated communities.

Aim was to ask to what extent the middle classes compare or contrast across these different locations in terms of their social relations and political attitudes and engagements, including, for example, schooling, use of public services and neighbourhood activism.

The research consists of depth interviews with middle class residents and elite actors in each neighbourhood as well as an analysis of relevant documents that discuss middle class identity and activity in these cities.

The study will to draw out the implications of the findings for urban politics and policies (compared with the role the middle classes are assumed to play in these policies) at the neighbourhood, city, national and transnational scales.

This is a fully comparative bilateral project with colleagues in Paris who are equivalently funded by the Agence de Nationale de la Recherche.

Data description (abstract)

Transcripts of 154 in-depth interviews with middle class residents of inner urban gentrifying (Peckham), inner urban gentrified (Balham), suburban (Berrylands) and exurban (West Horsely and Effingham) neighbourhoods in London. Interviews include discussions of reasons for moving to neighbourhood; previous neighbourhood histories; schooling strategies; attitudes to and involvement in neighbourhood; attitudes to social mix; political and social outlooks.

This forms part of a study investigates the contemporary characteristics of the 'new urban' middle classes in France and Britain by comparing Paris and London in terms of the different types of neighbourhoods in which middle-class people have settled, particularly over the last 25 years: gentrified, gentrifying, gated communities, suburban and exurban neighbourhoods.

The study investigates to what extent middle-class attitudes and activities vary across these locations and the impact of Paris and London as global cities on these activities. The study finds that neighbourhood location is a strong factor for distinguishing social identity and activities and social norms of different middle-class fractions. Strong gender distinctions persist across the different neighbourhoods that are further distinguished by generational differences in the fortunes and aspirations of the middle classes. The degrees of investment in and identification with neighbourhood varies - within and between London and Paris - as do the responses to social mix, sometimes in unexpected ways. All the neighbourhoods show specific types of what we call 'selective neighbourhood advocacy' by middle-class residents. This neighbourhood-specific selective advocacy challenges the assumptions of nationally-based urban and neighbourhood policy that sees middle-class residents as advocates in socially-mixed neighbourhoods helping to improve services and political responsiveness to these neighbourhoods.

The study of middle-class attitudes and activities within these neighbourhoods and the political and social implications of these affiliations and engagements are explored at neighbourhood, city, national and transnational scales.

Data creators:

Creator Name	Affiliation	ORCID (as URL)
Bridge Gary	University of Bristol

Sponsors:

ESRC

Grant reference:

ES/H041273/1

Topic classification:

Social welfare policy and systems
Housing and land use
Social stratification and groupings
Society and culture

Keywords:

middle classes, neighbourhood, social mix, London and Paris

Project title:

The middle classes in the city: social mix or just 'people like us'? A Comparison of Paris and London

Grant holders:

Gary Bridge, Timothy Stephen Close Butler

Project dates:

From	To
1 April 2010	31 May 2013

Date published:

09 Oct 2017 13:00

Last modified:

09 Oct 2017 13:00

Coverage and Methodology

Temporal coverage:

From	To
1 October 2010	30 September 2014

Collection period:

Date from:	Date to:
1 April 2010	31 May 2013

Geographical area:

Greater London

Country:

United Kingdom

Spatial unit:

Administrative > Greater London

Data collection method:

The methodological approach for this study was agreed by both French and British research teams and cross-verified and approved at all stages of the research. The French team (ANR funded) were responsible for the Paris fieldwork and the British team (ESRC funded) for London. An initial comparison of possible neighbourhoods using statistical sources to satisfy the neighbourhood typology was supplemented by ‘on the ground’ checks of the neighbourhoods including housing aesthetics, the social characteristics from street and public activity, the retail and commercial infrastructure. Target neighbourhoods (and alternatives) were then cross-verified by the British and French in which both teams visited each of the neighbourhoods in Paris and London. Neighbourhood monographs (comprising neighbourhood statistics, narrative descriptions and photographs) were produced to inform further stages of the research. The core of the research was in-depth interviews with middle-class residents in the five neighbourhood types in each city (up to 35 in each neighbourhood) – with 171 resident interviews completed in the London study. In London recruitment was achieved by hand-delivered letters (supplemented with mailed letters where necessary). No follow-up visits were necessary to obtain the target numbers in each neighbourhood (allowed for in the proposal). The letter was checked and verified a number of times to ensure ethical robustness over consent as well as to the sensitivities involved in asking middle-class professionals to respond to mailings sent to specific streets that, in a limited number of neighbourhoods (mainly gentrifying socially-mixed), comprised different socio-economic groups. Interviews were mostly confirmed by email. The majority of the interviews were conducted by individual RAs who informed each other when they were interviewing as a precautionary measure to enhance interviewer safety. A risk assessment of the fieldwork was conducted as part of the ethical review by the social science Faculty ethics committee at Bristol. A further 23 interviews were conducted with key informants with knowledge of the neighbourhoods in which the same procedures were followed. Interviews were professionally transcribed and entered into NVivo 9

Observation unit:

Household, Geographic unit

Kind of data:

Text

Type of data:

Qualitative and mixed methods data

Resource language:

English

Access and Administration

Data sourcing, processing and preparation:

Interviews were professionally transcribed and entered into NVivo 9. Thematic codes (nodes) were composed by taking agreed theoretical categories and comparing them with an initial sweep of the data. Several iterations across the English and French teams were needed to refine a common set of nodes for the project as a whole (indicative common nodes - for example - being middle class, gender, social reproduction, generation and lifecourse; taste and aesthetics; social and ethnic mix; mobility; residential and employment trajectories; feelings about neighbourhood) . Common access to the data across the two teams and five institutions was ensured by lodging the NVivo project and other project materials on a restricted-access Blackboard site at Bristol. Census and other neighbourhood data were used to provide background to the neighbourhood profiles. The key informant interviews along with other documentary and media material were collected to provide some context in the form of the discursive positioning of the middle classes in the individual neighbourhoods. Cross-city and neighbourhood analysis across all the nodes was conducted and reported in two city monographs which formed the basis for future dissemination. One of the five neighbourhoods we studied has not been submitted to the data archive. It was, on the whole, a very difficult task to anonymise the transcripts for all of the neighbourhoods. For the fifth neighbourhood, a small gated community, a reasonable level of anonymisation would have rendered the transcripts meaningless. This is because of the size of the community and the type of information collected through the interviews, which included extensive reference to place names, but also to well-known people living in the community. In addition, a condition of access into this community was precisely that the location was kept anonymous. Certain geographical features of the neighbourhood make it identifiable in the transcripts in ways that we think would compromise the assurances that we gave to our respondents.

Rights owners: