Shifting paradigms? Towards a qualitative sociological approach for international comparative gentrification research

The lack of comparative gentrification research on a global level is regularly addressed by the scientific community. Moreover, the prominent call by human-geographers for a “geography of gentrification” maintains a problematic status quo: we are currently confronted with a multitude of isolated case-studies in various scientific journals, but we can only refer to very few papers or books, where a global selection of gentrified neighborhoods is compared.

It is hypothesized that to a large extent the lack of international comparisons is based on the limits of quantitative secondary data. Besides the problem of availability of data, the diagnosis also detects an insufficiency in comparability, which affects the definition of boundaries of neighborhoods as well as indicators for social change.

To face this challenge, a research project with a qualitative focus was designed to develop an analytical scheme of categories as an instrument for international comparisons. As it was intended that the categories should emerge from actual field work in different urban contexts, a theory-based actors-model was formulated. The actor-analysis was conducted in three gentrified neighborhoods in Vienna, Chicago and Mexico City from 2008 to 2011.

The 36 semi-structured interviews were analyzed in a qualitative content analysis and afterwards linked again to the theoretical gentrification-framework. The outcome of this synthesis is an analytical scheme consisting of 14 categories.

First, the paper will therefore summarize the argumentation for the specific methodological approach, which was chosen for the research project. Secondly, the scheme of categories will be presented and its potential for application in comparative gentrification research on a global level will be discussed. It is emphasized, that this instrument can provide a perspective to face the significant lack of comparisons, which is moreover assumed to be responsible for the current stagnation in gentrification research.