Paper long abstract:

In recent years, fashionable bars have burst into Es Barri, the once working-class neighbourhood par excellence, and later red-light district, of the historic centre of Ciutat de Mallorca (Spain). Along with them, and the odd tourist, trendy neo-bohemians, committed eco-consumers, philanthropic civil servants and lovers of the past have also settled there. As one local poet says, he himself, the gipsy chord, the prostitute, the drug dealer, the pensioner widow, among many others, have mostly left, either pushed out or evicted via public-led regeneration. Meanwhile, neighbourhood unionism, initially working-class-driven, has come to equally embrace the cultural turn and the politics of demand. Based on ethnographic research, this paper stresses the importance of residence, understood as non-workplace, in defining class. Whereas the focus on regeneration allows us to coax class conflicts out of the closet, the update on earlier working-class-driven neighbourhood unionism traditions offers a field for further opposition to gentrification.