Urban Geography

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Veni, vidi, gentri? – Social class change in London

and Paris: gentrification cause or consequence?

Chris Hamnett

To cite this article: Chris Hamnett (2021): Veni, vidi, gentri? – Social class change
in London and Paris: gentrification cause or consequence?, Urban Geography, DOI:
10.1080/02723638.2021.1936412

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2021.1936412

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URBAN GEOGRAPHY
https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2021.1936412

Veni, vidi, gentri? – Social class change in London and Paris:

gentrification cause or consequence?
Chris Hamnett
King’s College London, and School of Public Policy, Renmin University, Beijing, China

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This paper is a commentary and response to Anne Clerval’s paper Received 18 December 2020
Gentrification and social classes in Paris, 1982–2008, which is published Accepted 25 May 2021
in this volume. While agreeing with many of her conclusions regarding KEYWORDS
social class change and gentrification in Paris, and highlighting the Urban social class change;
parallels with London, the paper argues that both London and Paris gentrification; replacement
have become more middle class cities in the last 40–50 years, not and displacement; Paris;
wholly middle-class cities. Second, it argues that Clerval is wrong to London
suggest that gentrification is the principal cause of social class change
in Paris. The causation is likely to be the other way round. Third, it
argues that Clerval is wrong to criticize the replacement thesis as
ideological and she herself accepts that displacement and replace­
ment go hand in hand. But overall, her paper raises a number of
stimulating and important issues regarding the relationships between
urban economic change and gentrification.

Introduction
Gentrification has become one of the hot topics of urban geography in recent
decades. There are now literally thousands of papers on the subject ranging from
Beijing to Bogota and from London to Los Angeles and Lima. Almost all these
papers rest on a basic premise: that gentrification involves a process of neighbor­
hood social class change from working class to middle class whether it involves
displacement or replacement or both. So, to the extent that gentrification is seen as
a significant process of urban social class change, it might be expected that cities
which experience widespread gentrification may also be becoming more middle class
over time. Or, certainly that gentrified areas become more middle class even if some
(peripheral?) areas move in the opposite direction as lower income groups move in.
In other words, there is likely to be a relationship between the extent of gentrifica­
tion and the overall class structure of cities. Leaving aside, for the moment, the
important question of class definition, this raises the important question of where
do the middle classes come from and where do the working classes go? We can
safely ignore the possibility that there is some secret Brave New World style
laboratory producing alphas, beta’s, gamma’s and delta’s, a dystopian Soylent
Green class recycling facility, or a Blade Runner replicant termination programme

CONTACT Chris Hamnett chris.hamnett@kcl.ac.uk King’s College London, and School of Public Policy, Renmin
University, Beijing, China
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any med­
ium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
2 C. HAMNETT

though all films are worth watching. So, the question remains of the underlying
causes of urban class change and their relation to gentrification. Is gentrification
a cause of these changes or is it a consequence and how significant are they?
It is in the context of these important general questions that I want to comment on
Clerval’s (2020) stimulating paper on gentrification and social class change in Paris. Her
paper compares the occupational class structure of Paris and the Ile de France between 1982
and 2008, a 25 year period during which Paris witnessed major changes in its industrial,
occupational and residential structure, including the expansion of gentrification, particu­
larly in the inner city. Using IRIS census areas she examines the expansion of the manage­
rial and professional class across the city. Paris appears very similar to the experience of
London which has undergone a similar process of class and residential transformation
(Hamnett, 1995, 2003a) and to a number of other cities such as New York (Mollenkopf &
Castells, 1991), Los Angeles (Scott, 2019), and Tokyo which have seen growth of the
managerial and professional class, the growth of gentrification and the contraction in the
number and extent of the working class (see van Ham, 2020 et al. for a comparative review
of class change and segregation in New York, London and Tokyo). Clerval’s paper has two
objectives. The first is to “contribute to gentrification studies by mobilizing the concept of
professional-managerial class, which designates a class occupying an intermediary position
in the social relations of production between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat” (p. 1) and
the second is to show “ how gentrification has reshaped the social geography of inner Paris
and is now spilling over into the former working-class peripheries” (p. 1).
Clerval convincingly shows the dramatic changes which have taken place in the occupa­
tional class structure of Paris over the period in question: a rapid expansion of the managerial
and professional class and the shrinkage of the traditional working class. She also shows, with
her mapping of various area types at both time periods, the eastwards push of gentrification
out from the “beaux quartiers” of inner western and left bank Paris, into hitherto, predomi­
nantly working class areas and beyond the city of Paris into some parts of the wider Ile de
France. She also undertakes a detailed and valuable analysis of class change in Paris, focusing
on the differences between the bourgeoise, who she sees as the owners of the means of
production, and the managerial and professional classes who she sees as having a relation of
domination over the working class. While it is possible to question some aspects of her
Marxist class analysis, Clerval is right to focus attention on the managerial and professional
class (Cunningham & Savage, 2017; Ehrenreich & Ehrenriech, 1979; Ikeler & Limonic, 2018)
rather than a more loosely defined “middle class”. As she states:
“This paper aims to enlighten the class relation between the professional-managerial
class and the working class, which is at the heart of gentrification. . . . . In the residential
space, this class is highly concentrated in large cities with metropolitan functions and is
divided between more or less exclusive areas of wealthy households and former working-
class areas by gentrifying them. Thus, the relation of domination between the profes­
sional-managerial class and the working class also involves competition for space and the
appropriation of working-class areas” (p. X).

Gentrification and upwards social class change in Paris and London

I am in considerable agreement with Clerval regarding the changes which have taken
place in Paris that is also parallel to those in London, not least the growth of the
 URBAN GEOGRAPHY 3

professional and managerial class and the shrinkage of the working class, and their link to
gentrification. They have wider implications regarding debates on urban social change
(Davidson & Wyly, 2012; Manley & Johnston, 2014; Hamnett and Butler 2013) as
notedabove. But I want to question three of her specific claims. The first is her suggestion
that Butler et al. (2008) claim that: “London has turned into a middle-class city, where the
share of the working class was in reverse proportion to the rest of England” (p. x).
The second is her claim that gentrification is the dominant process of social change in
Paris and the third is her argument that a focus on replacement rather than displacement
marginalizes the working class. I will deal with these in order focusing on claims 2 and 3.
Taking her first claim, Clerval is clearly correct that: “Professionals and managers
represent the core of the professional-managerial class and the Parisian metropolis (like
London in England) is their main stronghold in France” (p. x). But while London,
particularly inner London, now has a much higher proportion of professional and manage­
rial workers than the rest of England, Butler and myself have never claimed that London has
become a middle-class city, in the sense that the working class have largely or wholly
disappeared. Rather we argue that London (like Paris) has become a more middle-class city.
The difference is only one word, “more” but it is a very important one. Both cities still have
a significant working-class population even if they have increasingly become pushed out or
priced out of the inner city and pushed into high cost private renting and what remains of
social housing (Hamnett, 2010). This is not the most important point, but it is often subject
to misrepresentation. The working class have not disappeared but there are fewer of them
than before in both cities.
The definition of class is very important in this context. While Davidson and Wyly
(2012) criticized Butler et al. (2008) on the grounds that they defined the middle class too
broadly in occupational terms, all my previous work looking at socio-economic change
from 1961 to 1991 (Hamnett, 1995, 2003a, 2003b) focused, like Clerval, on the professional
and managerial categories, showing that the occupational structure of London experienced
a significant process of “professionalization” in this period, with the proportion of econom­
ically active males in managerial and professional occupations increasing sharply by
11.8 percentage points (16.7 to 28.5%) from 1961–91, while the share of other white collar
groups (seg’s 5 and 6 were largely unchanged and the skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled
working-class groups collectively declined by 13.2 percentage points). The 1981–91 data for
females show similar growth in the professional and managerial groups and a decline in the
semi-skilled. This is why I claim that London has become increasingly professionalized
rather than polarized in terms of occupational class structure. Van Ham et al. (2020) reach
a very similar conclusion in their comparative study of New York, London and Tokyo. It
should be said, however, that in London this shift took place over a 40-year period from
1961 to 2001. From 2001 to 2011, as Manley and Johnston (2014) and Hamnett (2015)
show, the continuing growth of the professional and managerial class appears to have
stalled in London and it will be interesting to see what the 2021 census shows.
These changes are very similar to those shown by Clerval for Paris and it’s important
to note that her data are for households and the household reference person is commonly
male so her data are very comparable to those for London. She shows that in 1982 about
22% of the household population of Paris consisted of professional and managerial
household members, 16% were members of low-skill white collar worker households
and 17% were members of blue collar households. By 2008, this had changed to 34%, 12%
4 C. HAMNETT

and 8%, respectively. These are dramatic changes. The professional managerial house­
hold population grew by about 12% points and working-class household population
shrank by about 15% points. Technicians and associate professionals increased by about
2% points. In terms of her IRIS spatial units 24.6% of the household population were
classed as professional and managerial in 1982 compared to 39.5% in 2008 while the
working-class groups shrank from 41.8% to 26.3%. Again this shows a massive upwards
shift in class composition. Radical critics like Davidson and Wyly (2012) or Watt (2008)
may not like it, but the changes are clear cut. Paris, like London and New York and some
other world cities, has become a much more middle-class city over the last 40 years.
Clerval even states that viewed from the perspective of the Ile de France as a whole, “it
appears that there are almost no working class areas left in Paris” (p. xx).
But there are methodological questions with her data. Instead of using data on the
occupation or economic activity of adults of working age or data solely on the “head of
household” or household reference person, Clerval takes a much wider approach. She
states “The data analyzed here capture the household population: all the individuals who
live in one single dwelling are classified according to the socio-economic group of the
household reference person. It is thus possible to measure the weight of each socio-
economic group, depending on the number of individuals per household” (p. x). By using
this method, if I understand it correctly, Clerval includes both children, the retired and
any other household members. The inclusion of the retired is justifiable as it arguably
provides a full picture of all households. She says “By only taking into account the
working population, one is bound to underestimate the weight of the working class,
a significant part of which is retired” (p. x). But the inclusion of children is unusual and
introduces unknown potential biases. Put crudely, a large family of two adults and four
children equates to 6 one person households in terms of number of people. If, for
example, in a gentrifying area, working-class families with children are gradually
replaced by one and two person gentrifying households her method could overstate the
working class loss and understate the middle-class gain. Conversely, if small one and two
person working-class households were replaced by larger middle-class households this
could understate the working-class loss and overstate the middle-class gains. These
important caveats aside there is doubt that the direction and scale of class change is
upwards as Clerval tellingly shows.

Veni, Vidi, Gentri? Is gentrification a cause, a consequence or a correlate of

urban class change?
The second disagreement concerns Clerval’s claim that contra Préteceille (2007) gentri­
fication is the most important process of class change in Paris. She says: “ While the
gentrification of working-class areas is not the only process that explains the overall social
upgrading of inner Paris from the 1980s onwards, it is certainly the main one”. There is
no doubt that gentrification has been very important but Clerval’s analysis has a problem
of causation. While she shows very clearly that the occupational class structure of Paris
has dramatically shifted upwards and that the professional and managerial areas have
expanded in number and pushed eastwards into more traditionally working class areas it
is not clear why gentrification should be seen as the principal cause of class change in the
 URBAN GEOGRAPHY 5

city rather than a consequence of underlying industrial and occupational change gen­
erating more professional and managerial jobs.
Put another way, it leaves the important question of the source of the gentrifiers
unanswered. The professional and managerial class has spread across Paris. But where
do they come from and how were they produced? Clerval’s analysis seems to imply that
the gentrifiers of Paris came, saw and conquered, rather in the manner of Julius
Caeser’s famous, “Veni, vidi, vici”. But Caeser’s conquering legions came from the
Roman empire: where did the Parisian gentrifiers come from? The answer is largely
from the long-term process of industrial and economic change which provided them
with jobs in Paris even if some of them originally came from elsewhere in France. As
Scott (2019) argues in his analysis of gentrification in Los Angeles, the gentrifiers
constitute one “urban expression” (p. 506) of a set of more fundamental changes in
industrial and economic structure as a result of the growth of what he terms the
cognitive and creative sector in the city. In other words, changes in urban economic
and occupational structure come first, followed or accompanied by gentrification.
Gentrification may be the proximate cause of upwards area social change but it is
not the ultimate one. Indeed, Clerval herself points to the leading role of economic
change in the transformation:
“From 1982 to 2008, Paris” social singularity became more evident with an over­
representation of managers and professionals and a clear underrepresentation of blue-
collar workers compared to the region and the country . . . The overall transformation of
the social structure followed that of jobs, matching the shifts experienced by industria­
lized countries in the past few decades. This transformation is due to the growth of
immaterial work within production processes, to the rise of the service industries, and to
the reconfiguration of the international division of labor under the effect of globalized
free trade. For instance, manual jobs decreased in former industrial countries while they
increased in other parts of the world. In contrast, former industrial countries increasingly
turned to the immaterial functions of production and peri-production (such as finance,
insurance and real estate) (pxx emphases added).
Although she states that the middle-class growth of residential areas is greater than the
growth of professional and managerial jobs, she accepts that transformation of the jobs
structure is decisive. There are two possible ways of trying to bridge this explanatory gap.
The first is to say that while the transformation of the job structure represents a major
underlying or indirect cause of gentrification, the growing number and spread of the
professional-managerial class “on the ground”, particularly in more working-class IRIS
areas represents the proximate or direct cause of gentrification. A second approach is to
suggest, following Filion (1991) who argued that gentrification can be seen as both
a cause and consequence of changes in social-class structure. He argues it is
a consequence of a shift from industrial to postindustrial society but also operates
causally through the changes it can bring about in the structure of social and geographical
advantage and disadvantage and opportunities. I think Clerval’s argument is that the
growth and spread of the professional-managerial class is the proximate cause of gentri­
fication rather than the underlying cause.
Finally, I turn to her argument that my focus on replacement as an important cause of
urban social change is misguided. As she puts it: “The thesis of replacement (Hamnett,
1991, 2003a) takes for granted and accentuates the disappearance of the working class
6 C. HAMNETT

from the public debate, and its symbolic deprecation”. (p. x). I strongly disagree. Given
the working class in London and Paris have shrunk in number over the years it is surely
important to try to ascertain the reasons for this. Is it because they have been directly or
indirectly displaced by professional and managerial gentrifiers able to outbid them in the
housing market or is it because the industries where they worked have shrunk in size and
importance along with the number of old working-class jobs or is it some mixture of the
two? Simply dismissing the role of replacement as ideological is not scientific. For those
not familiar with this argument it should be noted that if an individual’s working life is,
hypothetically, 40 years, that means that over a 40-year period the entire labor force is
replaced (or a quarter every 10 years). If at the same time large numbers of workingclass
jobs are disappearing to be replaced by professional and managerial jobs, then it is
entirely possible for the labor force and occupational structure of a city, or an area within
it, to be entirely replaced even without gentrification and displacement simply by
retirement, death and differential in and out labor migration. In reality of course, both
are likely to be operative and displacement in residential space may parallel or reflect the
effects of replacement in the labor market.
In fact, Clerval’s own analysis is contradictory. Although she criticizes my focus on
replacement she herself says: “The term ‘gentrification’ refers to a social upgrading
process affecting working-class areas, which involves a material transformation of
space (housing, shops, public space) and the replacement of the working-class population
by households belonging to the professional-managerial class”.(p. 1, my emphasis).
While this may simply be a linguistic slip, it indicates a more fundamental issue with
her critique of replacement. Indeed, after some discussion of labor market change and
residential social change in Paris she concludes her paper by stating that:
“we assert that replacement (understood as a transformation of social structure) and
gentrification-related displacement do go hand in hand. As we have seen, the transfor­
mation of the job market’s structure is not the sole reason for the exceptional prevalence
of the professional-managerial class in Paris, which is greater than the prevalence of jobs
in this category.”(px emphases added).
I agree with Clerval that replacement and displacement go hand in hand. I have
never disputed this and I am pleased that she accepts that both have a role to play in
urban social change (see Atkinson, 2000; Hamnett, 2003a). The problem is with those
who fail to understand the role of replacement, that is to say the long term transforma­
tion of industrial, occupational and social structures leading over time to the expansion
of some groups and the shrinkage of others. It is not possible to argue, for example, that
a growing number of professionals and managers in an area and a shrinking share of
working-class residents is simply evidence of displacement. That is an empirical
question. It could equally be the result of replacement. As a very different example,
Northern Ireland has recently seen its Protestant population fall below 50% and it is
likely that Catholics will soon become the majority religious group in the province.
This is not a result of displacement (the Protestants have long been the dominant
political group in the province and Catholics were marginalized in the labor market)
but of differential birth rates and the aging of the Protestant population. Elderly
Protestants are being slowly replaced by Catholic children and this may, over time,
result in changes in residential structure though not via direct displacement (see Clark
 URBAN GEOGRAPHY 7

(1987) for a more general argument about the importance of demographic change in
urban restructuring).
Where I think Clerval is stretching her argument too far is her claim that the
transformation in industrial structure: “is in itself a form of displacement, as deindus­
trialization involved the mass relocation of industries rather than their elimination . . .
With the support of public authorities, industries were relocated in the periphery and
later in other regions of France, in the name of equitable territorial planning (a policy
referred to as ‘industrial decentralization . . . ’Replacement” is therefore the product of
hostile class policies geared against the working class that were rolled out years before
neoliberal policies came into play” (p. x).
Not only is regional industrial policy generally seen an example of liberal interven­
tionist policy to rebalance job distribution and benefit older industrial areas, rather than
a hostile-class policy, but to argue that this is also a form of working-class displacement is
a simple conceptual overstretch which weakens the value of displacement as a concept in
understanding the effects of gentrification. One could equally well argue that globaliza­
tion is a form of displacement as jobs are lost but this would be so broad a claim as to be
almost meaningless.

Conclusions
To conclude, Clerval’s paper is a valuable contribution to our knowledge of occupational
class and residential transformation in Paris. It is clear that Paris has undergone a major
transformation in its industrial and occupational class structure and that, like London
and other cities, this transformation has been accompanied by large scale gentrification of
the inner city. Gentrification and upwards social class change are often two sides of the
same coin. It is difficult to simultaneously argue that gentrification is taking place on
a large scale in a city while at the same time arguing that the working classes have not
shrunk and the professional and managerial classes have not grown. Acknowledging
these trends exist does not necessitate venerating them.
But, although these processes have made both cities much more middle class,
they have not entirely replaced or displaced the working class. As Clerval says:
‘Although the gentrification of Paris did not annihilate the working class, this class
has become more vulnerable, poorer and more foreign, and it still accounts for 23%
of the household population (against just under 40% in the Île-de-France) (p. x).
More generally, what Clerval’s findings highlight is that replacement, like displace­
ment, is an important element of urban social change which does not in itself
marginalize the working class. Finally, it is also crucial to look at the long-term
change in industrial and occupational job structures of which gentrification is more
of a consequence than a cause (Scott, 2019). Although gentrification may be
a proximate cause of the upwards class shift of some residential areas, it has not
caused the deindustrialization of Paris or of London: it is more a consequence of
their positions as leading world economic centres and associated long-term changes
in their industrial and occupational structure. I hope Clerval’s stimulating paper
generates further debate about the nature and direction of change in other cities.
8 C. HAMNETT

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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