Relying on detailed census data to study the transformations of the Parisian metropolis, Anne Clerval and Matthieu Delage show that a dynamic of becoming more bourgeois should not mask the strength of the social division in the space of the Ile-de-France, especially at the intracommunal scale.

The discourses that refer to the suburb and the periurban area in the singular sense are very numerous today. They reify them into a homogenous and monolithic whole. The suburbs are reduced to certain popular neighborhoods, which are very stigmatized and mediatized. Seine-Saint-Denis is seen as a whole without any nuance; the periurban area would be so homogenous that it could be distinguished through the specific way in which it votes. Because these mediatic images, that one sometimes finds in the work of researchers, are part of a vast movement that masks social questions to the benefit of pretend "spatial questions," it's important to deconstruct them.

Here, we want to broach the question of the socio-spatial disparities and their reconfiguration in the Parisian metropolis, without prejudice about the social gaps between the centre and the outskirts, the agglomeration and its periurban ring. In order to accomplish this, we will rely on a statistical analysis of detailed census data, several dates and several different geographic levels, and we will present in particular the results of data that still remains unpublished and have emerged from the renewed 2008 census. This analysis subscribes to the research program Habest, "Habiter l'est pariesien d'hier a ajourd'hui," (Inhabiting the Parisian east from yesterday to today), financed by the Paris-Est-Marne-la-Vallee University. The statistical analysis on the entire Ile-de-France region was completed through a question-based survey in several communes in eastern Paris.

The statistical analysis that we are presenting here allows segregation dynamics (at all levels of social space) to emerge, as well as of gentrification and pauperization. This reality collides with important social stakes, notably in terms of the vulnerability of the people evicted from spaces that are becoming gentrified and for those who inhabit territories that are becoming poorer.

Methodological Note

The characterization of the detailed social geography of the Parisian east rests on an analysis of the working population according to the socio-professional category of the reference person according to his work (by default, the Insee chose the male of the household), apprehended at a refined level (42 places). In comparison to the active population that this kind of analysis generally regards (Préteceille 2003), the household population allows for taking into account children and retirees (retirees represent 19% of the population aged over 15 in the Ile-de-France, Insee, 2008 [RP] census).

The results of the 2008 census are compared to those from 1990 and 1999. At each point, a typology allows for exacting the social profile of the communes and differentiates several types of communes, starting from the "managers and liberal professions" to the "worker" types. Moreover, in order to account for the internal social diversity of the communes in the Ile-de-France, we have also conducted our investigations at the more refined scale IRIS for 1999 and 2008.

In order to analyze refined social data both through the socio-professional categories and the studied territorial network (the commune or IRIS), various statistical treatments were implemented (analysis factoring in correspondences – AFC – on the entirety of the data tables, ascending hierarchical classification, starting from the five primary AFC factors). The social profiles of the communes or IRIS that emerged can be understood in terms of the average social profile of the Ile-de-France at the date when they were under study. Ultimately, the region continuously became more bourgeois from 1990 to 2008.

The social profile of Ile-de-France evolved between 1990 and 2008. In 1990, two socio-professional groups dominated: qualified workers and artisans – inheritors to an ancient Parisian tradition – and those at the middle and senior management levels of the private sector and engineers, who did not stop growing after the 1980s. Then, the intermediate professions of the private sector present a portion that is a little bit larger than that of the qualified industry workers, old workers, old employees and employees of the private sector. We should note, nevertheless, that the intermediate professions in the private sector employed more women and therefore are under-represented among the reference household people (like employees.)

In 1999, the relative balance between managers and workers disappeared and a significant domination of private middle and senior managers and engineers took its place. Industry workers saw a major decline (artisanal workers fared better). This dynamic reinforced itself in 2008 and was accompanied by an increase in the already strong portion – in the preceding censuses – of the intermediate professions in the private sector in this average profile of Ile-de-France. In parallel, active workers saw a net decline, but there were more and more retirees, especially worker and employee retirees. The popular classes are therefore still well-represented in Ile-de-France, but they are aging. We note that this acknowledgement legitimizes taking into account the social position of the retirees: an onward approach by the active population would have hastily finished in the very pronounced diminishing of these categories.

The Social Division of the Ile-de-France in the 1990s

In 1990 and 1999, the social profile of the communes of the Ile-de-France presented an opposition seen between a bourgeois west and a popular east, speckled by the middle classes. This opposition was inherited by the way in which the Parisian space was structured between refined and worker neighborhoods, even if this dichotomy tends to disappear on the inside of Paris because of the capital's intra-muros gentrification (Clerval 2013). In the west, the communes of the "managers and liberal professions" or "engineers and managers" make up a continuous whole that reinforces itself and extends across most of the Hauts-de-Seine and from north to south of the Yvelines. In the east, on the contrary, we distinguish two very popular wholes, marked by an overpronounced representation of workers: the first in the north, covers the essential parts of the Seine-Saint-Design and flows into the adjacent departments, notably into the Val-d-Oise around the airport Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle; the second, in the south, is much less extensive and includes what we call the Seine Amont in the Val-de-Marne.

At the intersection, a more heterogeneous space emerges, between the south of Seine-Saint-Denis, the north of Val-de-Marne and the northwest of Seine-et-Marne around the new town of Marne-la-Vallee. It includes worker communes, such as Clichy-sous-Bois, Montfermeil (Seine-Saint-Denis) or Champigny-sur-Marne (Val-de-Marne), but also communes marked by engineers and managers for a long time now, like Le Raincy (Seine-Saint-Denis), Saint-Maur-des-Fossés and Vincennes (Val-de-Marne), and others that have become like this more recently, like the section starting from Sucy-en-Brie (Val-de-Marne) to Férolles-Atilly (Seine-et-Marne) to the southeast of Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, or still certain communes of the new town, Marne-la-Vallee. Most of the communes of this Parisian east are of the type "middle-popular," close to the average profile of the Ile-de-France, and therefore mixed enough.

The Reconfiguration of the 2000s

As the Ile-de-France became more and more bourgeois, this process touched all the communes, but not equally, something that tends to reinforce the gaps between the types. If we look at how the communes that formed their own types in 1990 evolved to 2008, we observe that it's in the old type of "cultural professions" that the portion of managers and higher intellectual professions (CPIS) increases the most and that that of the popular classes decreases the most, under the effects of gentrification; it's in the two old types "middle-popular" and "worker" that the portion of CPIS increases the least; and it's in the old type "agricultural" that the portion of the popular classes decreases the least.

In 2008, the type "managers and liberal professions" is still reinforced and considerably widespread in the western space, followed in this aspect by the "engineers and managers" type. This "conquest of the west" of the Ile-de-France is accompanied by a social reconfiguration of these types: "managers and liberal professions" and "engineers and managers." If in the type "managers and liberal professions" of 2008 (16% of the working population of the Ile-de-France), the portion of the managers and high intellectual professions is more pronounced than in 1999, the part of employees and intermediate professions was also more pronounced, which made them a less exclusive type socially. This does not mean that the older bourgeois communes were diversified, but on the contrary, that the overall "bourgeois becoming" of the communes of the type "engineers and managers" in 1999 made some of them enter into the type "managers and liberal professions" in 2008, even though they still made up a part of the intermediate categories, more important than the refined Parisian neighborhoods. The type "engineers and managers" (19% of the working population) followed the same internal social reconfiguration by integrating communes that had a "middle-popular" profile in 1999: so, the portion of managers and higher intellectual professions is always dominant but a little bit lower, while that of the intermediate professions and popular classes is a little bit higher. Then still, this was due to the entry of less socially exclusive communes into this type and not to the social diversification of the communes that were already there in 1999.

In the Parisian east, certain communes now reveal themselves as being of the type "managers and liberal professions" comparable to the west of the Ile-de-France – for example, Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, Férolles-Atilly, or still Bussy-Saint-Martin, Guermantes and Gouvernes (the last three being located in Seine-et-Marne). The urbanization of the fringes of the new town of Marne-la-Valee during the period under consideration favored the implantation of engineers and managers, with the new town appearing as an emerging factor and as the consolidation of a well-off pole to the east.

Save for the refined neighborhoods that reveal themselves as being of the type "managers and liberal professions," most of the Paris arrodisements belong to a distinct type that is specific to the centre-city, characterized by an overrepresentation of information-based professions, arts, theatre and students, and a portion of managers and higher intellectual professions that is more and more pronounced between 1990 and 2008. This "cultural professions" type represents 16% of the working population of the Ile-de-France and its specificity is the result of an overall gentrification of the old popular neighborhoods of Paris.

Despite the expansion of these three higher types, we have to admit and emphasize the permanence of those communes that reveal themselves as being of the "middle-popular" type. They reflect the average profile of the Ile-de-France, while being less and less popular. This type constitutes the most significant modality, as Edmond Preteceille has already emphasized in 2003 (it includes 29% of the working population), but we should recall here that the larger part of the population of the Ile-de-France lives in communes with less heterogeneous social profiles. Moreover, to the extent that this "middle-popular" type extends to the less populated communes of the outskirts of the region, the portion of the population living there is small. This displacement to the outskirts of the "middle-popular" type happened above all to the detriment of the communes that had been previously marked by an overrepresentation of agricultural peoples. This tipping point allows us to recall that the rural communes of the periurban spaces on the outskirts are often popular and worker-based (Mischi 2013), even if the portion of managers and higher intellectual professions and intermediate professions are growing there. Nevertheless, the social heterogeneity of the greater Parisian ring emerges, joining other statistical work done on this space (Berger 2004).

In the end, the communes emerging as "worker" type are less and less numerous, and make up a lesser part of the working population (18% in 2008 as opposed to 23% in 1999 and 26% in 1990). At the heart of these communes, the portion of managers and higher intellectual professions is slightly decreasing, that of workers is falling as in the rest of the region, and this is not compensated for by the increase of employees, even if they allow for a glimpse at the reconfiguration of the popular classes at the heart of these communes. They present a more popular social profile than the French average, and they are distancing themselves more and more from the average profile of the Ile-de-France (mainly because this average profile is becoming more bourgeois, and is not followed by the "worker" type). Besides the two poles of Seine-Saint-Denis and Seine Amont, there are isolated communes or smaller groups of communes, in particular in Seine-et-Marne. Noteworthy cases are the Gaul-Roman or medieval cities of de la Brie and Gatinais, like Meaux, Coulommiers, Melun, Nangis, Provins or even Nemours.

So, the elevation of the regional social profile masks a selective becoming-bourgeois of the communes. More pronounced in the already most bourgeois communes, this explains the reinforcement of the gaps between the different profiles of the communes, but also the persistence of segregation despite an apparent fading away of popular spaces.

Even More Pronounced Contrasts at the Intracommunal Scale

The social division of space is still neater if you take into account the more refined geographic level of IRIS, which allows for the emergence of more acute social profiles that are more distinct. In the Parisian east, for example, this translates into a more and more heterogeneous social mosaic. In Seine-Saint-Denis, one can make out, on the one hand, very homogenous communes, like the most popular ones in the northwest of the department (Villetaneuse, Pierrefitte-sur-Seine and Stains) or the notable exception of Raincy (with the "engineers and managers" profile) and among others, communes that are becoming more and more heterogeneous at the intracommunal level in the south of the department. Among these communes, the emergence of the IRIS type of "engineers and managers" or "cultural professions" does not prevent the persistence of the IRIS of the type "worker." So, the type "cultural professions" characterized by an overrepresentation of the cultural professions and students, has significantly grown in Montreuil (from a single IRIS in 1999 to 30 in 2008.) This spatial takeover marks the progression of gentrification, which already surpasses the Bas-Montreuil studied by Anais Collet (2010), having swallowed neighborhoods located outside of its municipal boundaries. The neighboring communes of Lilas and Bagnolet show the same reconfigurations.

The other communes to the south of Seine-Saint-Denis show the emergence of a heterogeneous territory socially between IRISes linked to the "middle" type and IRISes of the "popular" or "worker" types, like in Fontenay-sous-Bois. This heterogeneity is also found in the northern communes of Val-de-Marne and in the northwest of Seine-et-Marne, in particular in the new town of Marne-la-Vallee. So, while the net "popular" type contracts in the Villiers-sur-Marne and Noisy-le-Grand communes, it keeps decreasing around de Lognes and Noisiel, and is nearly absent from the Bussy-Saint-Georges  and Serris communes, where on the contrary the "engineers and managers" type increases.

Finally, if we consider communes of the "middle-popular" type at the fringes of the Parisian agglomeration like Ozoir-la-Ferrière (Seine-et-Marne), stark internal contrasts emerge, between IRISes of the type "managers and liberal professions" made up of single-family residential plots to the west and southeast (near two golf courses), and IRISes of the "popular" type to the northeast and east (around the industrial zone and the RER station), and finally IRISes of the "middle" type between the two, like the old bourgeoisie.

So, the analysis of the detailed socio-professional categories in the Ile-de-France shows that the social division of space is still pronounced at the regional level, and that it's becoming more and more of a factor at the intracommunal level. This analysis allows for showing the growing social heterogeneity of the territories that are becoming more bourgeois and pleads for a refined analysis of these reconfigurations, while avoiding a total territorial amalgamation. It shows that we cannot speak of the suburbs, of the periurban territory or Seine-Saint-Denis as if we were dealing with homogenous wholes. Finally, it invites additional complementary studies, both on the  housing conditions, local politics, daily trajectories and practices of the inhabitants in this social mosaic that is the Parisian east.

How is gentrification playing a role in your community? What does this study allow us to glean about eastern Paris?

Original article, originally published in French, here.

Credits: Data and images linked to sources.