Paper short abstract:

This paper address how ‘social mix’ is experienced among newcomers on a gentrifying urban frontier. As that frontier is not yet fully established, liminal spatio-temporal dimensions will be highlighted providing an opportunity to study tactics of place belonging and struggles over space.

Paper long abstract:

The concept of “compulsory social mix” is offered to describe the ambivalence gentrifiers experience towards their new locality when meeting vulnerable agents seen as representing marginality in the city as well as a barrier for its transformation. While most studies have focused on tensions based on ethnoclass disparities created in the gentrification of poor neighborhoods, less attention has been dedicated to how social mix is experienced among newcomers on a gentrifying urban frontier. As that frontier is not yet fully established, it carries liminal spatio-temporal dimensions and provides an opportunity to study tactics of place belonging and struggles over space between newcomers and vulnerable locals. This conceptualization is twofold as it captures (1) gentrifiers’ views of social mix as a social process forcing them to deal with contested urban spaces; and (2) their use of economic and symbolic power to claim ownership on the transformed locality. This study is based on anthropological fieldwork (2019-2021) in a gentrifying Tel Aviv frontier named Gan HaHashmal located between the higher-income neighborhoods of central Tel Aviv and the poorer neighborhoods to its south. Its findings reveal that while gentrifiers advocate diversity and express a humanist approach towards the homeless and drug addicts in the area, in practice, their daily interactions and discourse exclude these Others as part of the production of a “White”, wealthy neighborhood. While the conceptualization was developed based on a particular gentrifying urban frontier in Tel Aviv, it can be applied to interpret other contested urban spaces of social mix elsewhere.