Download full text
(external source)
Citation Suggestion
Please use the following Persistent Identifier (PID) to cite this document:
https://doi.org/10.17645/si.v9i2.3849
Exports for your reference manager
Trends of Social Polarisation and Segregation in Athens (1991-2011)
[journal article]
Abstract This article investigates social and spatial changes in the Athens metropolitan area between 1991 and 2011. The main question is whether social polarisation - and the contraction of intermediate occupational categories - unevenly developed across the city is related to the changing of segregation pa... view more
This article investigates social and spatial changes in the Athens metropolitan area between 1991 and 2011. The main question is whether social polarisation - and the contraction of intermediate occupational categories - unevenly developed across the city is related to the changing of segregation patterns during the examined period. We established that the working-class moved towards the middle and the middle-class moved towards the top, but the relative position of both parts did not change in the overall socio-spatial hierarchy. The broad types of socio-spatial change in Athens (driven by professionalisation, proletarianisation or polarisation) were eventually related to different spatial imprints in the city’s social geography. Broad trends identified in other cities, like the centralisation of higher occupations and the peripheralisation of poverty, were not at all present here. In Athens, changes between 1991 and 2011 can be summarised by (1) the relative stability and upward social movement of the traditional working-class and their surrounding areas, accounting for almost half of the city, (2) the expansion of traditional bourgeois strongholds to neighbouring formerly socially mixed areas - 25% of the city - and their conversion to more homogeneous middle-class neighbourhoods through professionalisation, (3) the proletarianisation of 10% of the city following a course of perpetual decline in parts of the central municipality and (4) the polarisation and increased social mix of the traditional bourgeois strongholds related to the considerable inflow of poor migrants working for upper-middle-class households.... view less
Keywords
Greece; metropolis; social structure; gentrification; segregation; proletarianization; social change; polarization; social mobility; social class
Classification
Economic and Social Geography
Sociology of Settlements and Housing, Urban Sociology
Free Keywords
Athens; occupational structure; residential segregation; segregation patterns
Document language
English
Publication Year
2021
Page/Pages
p. 117-128
Journal
Social Inclusion, 9 (2021) 2
Issue topic
Vicious Circle of Segregation: Understanding the Connectedness of Spatial Inequality across Generations and Life Domains
ISSN
2183-2803
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed