Globalising European Urban Bourgeoisies Rooted Middle Classes and Partial Exit in Paris, Lyon, Madrid & Milan

This book aims at empirically testing the role of urban upper middle classes in the transformations experienced by contemporary European societies, linking our analysis to the debate on the emergence of a transnational bourgeoisie. In this book we argue (and try to provide empirical evidence to prove) that these groups are becoming at the same time more cosmopolitan AND more locally rooted. European urban upper middle classes have to be analysed in relation to their strategies to gain resources from the international world, and to escape the constraints of national society, while remaining part of it (we call this “partial exit”). MEANWHILE, they are also part of urban societies, remain deeply rooted at the local level, and develop strategies to mix with other social and ethnic groups in some domains, while staying away and increasing distance in some others. Beyond simple analysis of secession or gentrification, this book makes sense of this “partial exit” logic both from the national and from the urban point of view. We argue that European urban middle classes are becoming more mobile, partially “exiting” from the national society, and we bring evidence of this (friends, networks, children, jobs, holidays, values). They also invest resources in the cities and neighbourhoods where they live, they only look for secession or gated communities strategies in certain contexts, but remain in control of the social and spatial distance they want to keep in relation to diverse social and ethnic groups.  Is a new European managerial service class in the making in European metropolis in relation to European/global processes?  Is there some pattern of social differentiation emerging, is this segment of the population adopting “exit” or “partial exit” strategies in respect to the nation state?  Is this segment of the population adopting “exit” or “partial exit” strategies emerging from urban practices and attempts to “exit” from the urban fabric? "