A Housing Complex with a Swimming Pool: Class, Housing, and Social Reproduction in New Residential Neighborhoods

Abstract

The financial-real estate bubble cycle (1995-2007) gave rise to new suburban developments across the territory, which became the privileged building typology of this accumulation period. These housing products also began to spread among sectors of the working class, promoting their access to homeownership. This article starts from the representations that have become widespread in recent years about these new urban extensions, especially the PAUs (Programas de Actuación Urbanística) in Madrid, to critically review their assumptions about urban space and social class. To do this, I rely on ethnographic findings from the PAU of Carabanchel and point out two elements that are crucial for a more complex reading. First, I aim to reinstate some elements of the political, economic, and social context in which the move to the PAU and the purchase of a home occurred, interpreting these decisions as family strategies of social reproduction. Second, I address the social class experiences of its protagonists. Here, evidence reveals changing and contradictory bonds, dispositions, and position-takings, which signal class experiences that are far from being reduced to a simple adherence to the middle class, and which rather reflect a universe of multiple connections.