Le Goût des Autres: Gentrification Told by Children

Abstract

If the gentrification literature has considerably expanded in recent decades, few works have attempted to understand the relationship between the ‘gentrifying’ households of the middle classes and the ‘gentrified’ households of the working classes, as seen through the eyes of the children. However, in many cases, gentrification involves families and children are then actively involved residential co-existence. This is the issue at the heart of this article: to examine the experiences of social diversity of children from different social backgrounds aged 9 to 11, living in a gentrified neighbourhood in Paris. This is done by investigating successively their representations of and activities within the neighbourhood, their usage of a public space which occupies a key position (the local park) and their sociability. On the basis of these analyses, it is shown how, within this gentrified neighbourhood, the children ‘play’ with social diversity.