Territories Caught Between Rise and Decline: Social Trajectories in the Peri-urban Mosaic

In the recent sociological literature, suburban and peri-urban areas tend to be seen as less affluent places. Yet these areas reflect not only the difficulties faced by homebuyers of modest means, but much more widely the diverging trends in different sections of the middle classes. The challenge here is to reveal the diversity of trajectories—of territories as well as of their inhabitants—that help build the peri-urban mosaic. In this perspective, this article emphasizes divergent social processes, starting from the places occupied by the middle classes. The analysis places particular attention on the contrast between the trajectories of two suburban territories of the Île-de-France: the “village” of Châteaufort, on the edge of the Chevreuse valley (department of Yvelines), and the private housing estate of Port-Sud, built in the 1970s at Breuillet in the department of Essonne. The changes observed in these two areas are analyzed in relation to the social and residential situations of their middle class inhabitants, to capture and understand the processes of change in social class position.