Conference Program

This study investigates the role of gentrifying families in Barcelona’s public schools, examining how their school choice practices intersect with broader processes of class reproduction and urban transformation. Drawing on the concept of a gentrifier habitus we argue that middle-class families’ decisions cannot be reduced to pragmatic calculations of school quality. Rather, they engage in complex moral reasoning and risk management, navigating perceptions of safety, school reputation, and social fit while simultaneously constructing narratives about what counts as legitimate participation in school communities. These rationalities of school choice (Bonal et al. 2024) are deeply embedded in culturally and socially informed dispositions that reproduce class advantage.

In gentrifying neighbourhoods, families actively assert elective forms of belonging, assuming the authority to represent the school and to define the norms of inclusion within both the educational community and the wider neighbourhood (Reay et al. 2011). This elective belonging generates a sense of entitlement for gentrifiers while simultaneously masking and reinforcing exclusion and displacement among long-term residents (Lipman, 2011). The paradox is striking: gentrifiers seek integration into local schools and neighbourhoods, yet their claims to representation and influence often undermine the participation and voice of historically established communities (Saporito & Sohoni, 2006).

These dynamics illustrate how gentrification shapes public schooling beyond mere demographic shifts. While the presence of middle-class families may diversify urban schools numerically, the social and cultural influence they exert through elective belonging can entrench inequalities, privileging certain values, expectations, and forms of participation over others (Posey-Maddox et al., 2016). The interaction of risk management, moral reasoning, and classed rationalities in school choice highlights the subtle mechanisms through which urban inequalities are reproduced, even within institutions nominally open to all.

By integrating insights from school choice, class reproduction, and urban sociology, this study underscores the paradox of integration and displacement. Inclusion for some—defined through self-authored belonging and assumed representation—coexists with marginalization for others, resulting in differentiated access to educational opportunities and reinforcing broader patterns of urban inequality. Understanding the elective rationalities of gentrifiers is thus essential for both research and policy aiming to address inequities in public schooling under conditions of rapid urban change.