Metropolitics

Visible Minorities, Visible Risk: Toronto's Unequal Eviction Burden

Prentiss Dantzler & Khalil Martin & Abigail Meza — 2025-09-16T05:00:00Z

In Toronto, who gets evicted isn't random—it follows the city's racial and economic divides. Canada's data practices hide crucial details about who is most at risk.
Evictions are a leading cause of housing insecurity in cities worldwide, disproportionately affecting lower-income households and non-white racialized groups. In Canada, although attention to evictions is growing, there is limited research available. As the most populous city in the country, Toronto is home to a diverse set of

- Essays / evictions, social class, poverty, housing, tenants, rental, rental housing, minorities, precarity, Canada, Toronto

Using Cross-Class Politics to Challenge Urban Housing Inequality in Islamabad, Pakistan

Hafsah Siddiqui — 2025-04-01T05:00:00Z

When redevelopment schemes target a city's poor for removal to provide opportunities for the privileged, how can poor residents assert a right to their home? With Islamabad as a case study, Hafsah Siddiqui shows how cross-class politics can be the basis for collaborative efforts for the poor to maintain a right to the city.
---- Series: Horizons in the Housing Struggle Islamabad is touted as Pakistan's loveliest city, with lush greenery and clean public spaces. The slogan “Islamabad the

- Essays / Global South, Asia, Pakistan, Islamabad, housing, right to housing, informal housing, urban services, social class, mobilization, urban inequality

Migration and Inequalities: The Importance of Social Class

2021-11-19T06:00:00Z

Since the 1990s, Anne-Catherine Wagner's research has focused on migrants from the most affluent classes in society. In this interview, she returns to the notion of international capital, which she used in her work to shed light on inequalities relating to mobility, particularly in her pioneering survey of “expat” executives in France.
Where does your interest in upper-class migration come from, and what do you see as the contribution made by work on this subject?
When I began my PhD

- Interviews / mobility, expatriation, globalization, social class, upper classes, migrants, immigration, migration, school, education, inequalities

Europe and the Question of Social Class

Gilles Laferté & translated by Oliver Waine — 2020-05-29T05:00:00Z

A recent French work addresses the issue of social class in Europe, considering the different profiles and distribution of working, middle and upper classes across the continent. Gilles Laferté contends that, by posing the question of whether a unified European social space exists, this study stimulates debate on the most relevant geographical scales—local, national, transnational—for analyzing social structure.
Étienne Penissat, Cédric Hugrée and Alexis Spire's book, Les Classes sociales en

- Reviews / social class, working classes, middle classes, upper classes, Europe

Unlikely Inter-Class Cooperation in Urbanizing Rural Colombia

Sebastián F. Villamizar Santamaría — 2020-02-25T06:00:00Z

Sebastián F. Villamizar Santamaría examines a case of rural gentrification outside of Bogotá, Colombia, and shows how long-time peasants and former factory workers and upper-middle-class newcomers collaborate across class lines to manage fundamental resources, such as water, and pressure the state to provide necessary infrastructure and services.
“A new neighbor welcomes you; your neighbor, nature,” claims a billboard on the road between La Calera, a small town, and Bogotá, the Colombian

- From the Field / Colombia, Latin America, Global South, South America, rural, Bogotá, gentrification, rural gentrification, urbanization, suburbanization, rururbanization, water, urban public service, urban services, urban technical networks, utilities, infrastructure, social class, networks, water access

Right(s) to the City in Hanoi

Divya Leducq & translated by Oliver Waine — 2019-10-11T05:00:00Z

Over the past decade, urban change has accelerated and transformed the physical, social and symbolic landscapes of Hanoi. Taking as her starting point a survey in the Vietnamese capital, Divya Leducq identifies three key means in which residents express their right to the city which, in a context of multiple aspirations, reflect a shared desire for high-quality urban planning.
In recent years, urban transformation processes advocated by proponents of “top-down” planning built around

- From the Field / Hanoi, Vietnam, right to the city, inhabitant, civil society, urbanization, urban planning, urban development, social class, globalization, associations

Reinventing Segregation in Northern California: An Interview with Alex Schafran

Alex Schafran & Darian Razdar — 2019-05-14T05:00:00Z

Darian Razdar interviews Alex Schafran about his new book Road to Resegregation: Northern California and the Failure of Politics. They discuss a new form of segregation called “resegregation” and the roots of this manifestation of unequal geography that impacts poor and racial-minority residents in Northern California's peripheral cities.
Over half a century since the Civil Rights Era, cities and urban regions in the United States remain divided and rife with inequality. Alex Schafran's new

- Interviews / segregation, resegregation, housing, race, social class, inequalities, California, Bay Area, Northern California

Masculine Sports and “Respectable” Men in Working-Class Neighborhoods

Carine Guérandel & translated by Oliver Waine — 2019-03-12T06:00:00Z

In a work rich in ethnographic material, Akim Oualhaci questions how socialization through sports contributes to the reconfiguration of masculinities in working-class neighborhoods in France and the United States.
Studies on the social construction of masculinities—a quite recent but very productive field of research—often focuses on the world of sports, considered an effective space for gender-based socialization. Akim Oualhaci's book is a continuation of this work and specifically analyzes

- Debates / sport, working classes, working-class identity, working-class neighborhoods, social class, ethnography, youth, masculinity, gender, socialization, suburbs, banlieue, ghetto, Paris region, New York, France, United States

The Educational Fortunes of Children of Immigrants in France

Mathieu Ichou & translated by Oliver Waine — 2018-07-06T05:00:00Z

How can the attainment gap between children of immigrants and children of native-born parents be explained? While some underline the role of an implausible “culture of origin”, Mathieu Ichou shows that differences in academic achievement are linked above all to social origin, and in particular to the social positions occupied by immigrant parents both in their host country and in their country of origin.
Despite many nuanced contributions from sociologists, the theme of academic failure among

- Essays / immigration, culture, children, education, school, social class