Symbolic Capital and Symbolic Power: Understanding Coexistence and Conflict in Vienna’s Social Housing through a Bourdieusian Lens

Based on my ongoing dissertation project, this paper applies Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical framework to analyze the conflicts between migrant families and long-established residents in Vienna’s Gemeindebau. Once emblematic of working-class solidarity, these social housing estates are now sites where different habitus, shaped by distinct social and cultural backgrounds, come into conflict. Everyday disputes—over children playing or the use of communal spaces—often reflect deeper meanings, revealing struggles over symbolic power, symbolic capital, and the maintenance of established identities.

Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic capital is critical to understanding how long-established residents, though not part of the ruling class, view themselves as guardians of the Gemeindebau’s historical ethos and resist the housing of migrants. They perceive newcomers as threats to both the physical space and the symbolic order of the community. In doing so, they attempt to assert control over communal norms, wielding whatever symbolic power they have to resist the changes that migrant families represent. Despite their disadvantaged position, these residents enact symbolic violence—often invisible, yet powerful forms of exclusion manifesting in seemingly trivial interactions.

At the same time, migrant families, often with limited social and cultural capital, navigate a complex social field where their presence challenges established power dynamics. Bourdieu’s critique of how dominated groups internalize the logic of the dominant class is key here. Both conflict parties are disadvantaged; yet, in their efforts to secure their place in the Gemeindebau, they inadvertently replicate broader hierarchies of exclusion defining their marginalized status.

The Gemeindebau becomes a contested space where different forms of capital—economic, social, and cultural—are continuously negotiated. This presentation argues that these micro-level conflicts reflect larger structural inequalities. By applying Bourdieu’s theories, it sheds light on how power, habitus, and symbolic capital shape the lived experience of both migrant and non-migrant residents in urban settings.