Living in the Bubble: Gentrification and its 'Others' in North London

Abstract

The article examines aspects of middle-class life by a group of 75 gentrifiers in Islington in north London. The study demonstrates that in their day-to-day lives almost all the respondents lived quite apart from non-middle-class residents in Islington. This was demonstrated by their educational strategies which involved finding schooling for their children out of the borough in both the private and state sectors. Their children had almost no contact with children from other social backgrounds. It is suggested that, despite a strong rhetoric in favour of social integration, the current gentrifiers of Islington, unlike the pioneers of the 1960s and 1970s, are unwilling to invest social capital in the area and that their relationships are almost entirely with 'people like us'. It is suggested that this is likely to lead to an increasingly polarised social structure in which the middle classes and their children inhabit entirely separate social spaces from other, and more disadvantaged, groups. The long-term consequences of this are uncertain but are unlikely to lead to greater social cohesion.