Neighbourhood attachment revisited: Middle-class families in the Montreal metropolitan region

Abstract

Migration, mobility, globalisation and individualisation have transformed the way people relate to space by affecting their physical, social and emotional bonds to place. Yet, does it mean that place attachment is due to wane and that the neighbourhood does not matter nowadays? The article is tackling this question by addressing the underexplored neighbourhood attachment and the residential choices of young middle-class families in Montreal Census Metropolitan Area. Empirical results are drawn from in-depth interviews with immigrant and non-immigrant households in a comparative perspective between a peri-urban and near-suburban neighbourhood in recent ethnic transition. We explore three types of neighbourhood attachment: physical and social as underlined in the literature, but we also suggest the importance of accounting for the symbolic dimension of neighbourhood attachment. Findings reveal how families display neighbourhood attachment through an extensive use of neighbourhood amenities (physical), embedded social ties (social) and distinctive lifestyles convergent with the representations of middle-class family life (symbolic). Unlike narratives of middle-classes’ place detachment and withdrawal from neighbourhood life, our case study of ‘middle’ middle-class neighbourhoods suggest that the neighbourhood preserves its importance, but that neighbourhood attachment takes different forms and that these forms differ among urban and suburban families. It is argued that what residents believe urban and suburban life should be and their values and identities associated with it needs further investigation, given their considerable role in neighbourhood attachment and residential choices of middle-classes families.