In the last decades, the Latin American middle-class is growing in size while becoming more heterogeneous. Sustained economic growth explains its increasing size. Nevertheless behind its heterogeneity there is not only the diversification of life-styles, but also the crystallization of a large process of upward social mobility of second and third generation migrants to capital cities and their incorporation into middle-class positions. In the last decades, these individuals have assimilated different spheres of socialization formerly occupied by the traditional middle-class: private schools, college and universities, middle-class jobs and occupations, and traditional middle-class neighborhoods. <br/><br/> In this dissertation I study Residencial San Felipe, a quintessential traditional middle-class neighborhood in Lima, Perú, which is currently receiving an important influx of upward mobile families. Precisely, the case of San Felipe shows that inside the contemporary middle-class a strong boundary between the "traditional middle-class" and the "new middle-class" permeates the everyday life of the neighborhood. However, though this difference between the "traditional" and "new middle-class" is recognized by all residents of San Felipe, its relevance as well as the elements at the basis of this distinction varies according to cohorts' trajectories. <br/><br/> Classic approaches to social phenomena as "group," "class," and "neighborhood" (generally considered as static and taken for granted) are not helpful to understand this tension inside San Felipe. Here I propose a relational-fluid perspective that puts emphasis on inter-group relations and mobility at different levels (in individuals' daily lives in routines, in their life-trajectories, and in the transformation of the social space itself). I found that the transformation of the social space generated different trajectories into middle-class positions; that trajectories in the social space (and not only positions in it) shape the symbolic boundaries that individuals use to classify others; and that daily routines affect the extent to which the neighborhood is relevant for their lives. In San Felipe, all these elements plus an intense work of organization makes the senior old-timers the more consolidated "practical group," who make their point of view of how things should be prevail, and with consequences for the other groups in San Felipe.
Pereyra, Omar,
"Residencial San Felipe: Contemporary Latin American Middle-Class Groups Meet"
(2013).
Sociology Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0VX0DV9
