Unstable Foundations: Class Realignment, Class Formation and Its Political Articulation in an Urban Working-Class Periphery

This thesis grapples with how contemporary post-Fordist socio-spatial dynamics occurring in urban peripheries are reshaping what is collectively understood by working-class identities, their boundaries and markers, and what limitations social democratic political organisations face when appealing to them. The underlying processes affecting class realignment of the working-class, understood as the reshuffling of partisan loyalties characterising classes at certain periods and places, are addressed through focusing on unpacking the way class formation, meaning the process of shaping the collective class identity, occurs through and across geographic space; and what strategies are deployed by political organisations to articulate resulting class identifications. The need for this research stems from perceived limitations of existing literature when thinking about the role that Space, Class, and Political articulation have. This thesis, therefore, focuses on developing and testing a framework which combines political sociology, political geography, and critical urban studies to study the socio-spatial foundations of class realignment, emphasizing intra-class and intra-place conflicts through space, and applies it to interpret the crisis of social democracy, through a case study of San Jeronimo in Seville (Spain). Located in an urban periphery undergoing socio-spatial changes, hitherto considered a bulwark of social democratic politics, San Jeronimo shows signs of political change. Results indicate that the theoretical framework is successful in shedding light on the underlying transformations in class formation and the limits it puts on political articulation under social democracy. Specifically, intra-class and intra-place conflicts appear as animating a secular crisis of social democratic organisations. Resolving this requires tackling competing class identifications and place-frames existing in urban peripheries. Although focused on processes more relevant to contemporary European urban contexts, the analysis speaks to broader issues relating to the way geography, class and politics interrelate to shape collective understandings of political subjects which are foundational to political dynamics in different historical and geographical settings, bringing Space into political sociology.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

PhD

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

De Montfort University

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Candela, Miguel Bravo

Licence

• https://dora.dmu.ac.uk/bitstreams/467dfdcf-f369-4f3f-ae01-12b00932601b/download