School gentrification and social reproduction: a Bourdieusian approach to urban education

Marcel Pagès, Pablo Neut Aguayo, Andreu Termes and Nur Garcia-Borés Moreno

Chapter 11 in Gentrification and Schooling in Global Cities, 2026, pp 234-254 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Although the relationship between gentrification and urban change has been widely explored, its implications for education—and particularly the internal dynamics of schools—remain underexamined. This chapter investigates how the influx of local and European middle- and upper-class families into historically marginalized neighborhoods reshapes school communities, producing both material and symbolic displacement. Moving beyond accounts that treat schools as passive recipients of urban change, we conceptualize school gentrification as a distinct process embedded within the educational field. Drawing on a Bourdieusian framework, we examine how educators, families, and school leaders navigate tensions between diversity and distinction, integration and social closure. Our analysis shows how struggles over social and symbolic capital reconfigure social relations and practices within schools. While actors promote a rhetoric of diversity, school gentrification manifests in symbolic violence and hierarchized diversity, reinforcing social reproduction. These dynamics offer new insights into the intersection of gentrification, schooling, and inequality.

Keywords: School Gentrification; Urban Education; Educational Inequalities; School Segregation; Bourdieu (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035346677
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