Beyond Space: Spatial (Re)production and Middle Class Remaking Driven by Jiaoyufication in Nanjing City, China

Wu, Q, Edensor, T and Cheng, J (2018) Beyond Space: Spatial (Re)production and Middle Class Remaking Driven by Jiaoyufication in Nanjing City, China. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 42 (1). pp. 1-19. ISSN 0309-1317

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Abstract

As an extension of gentrification, high quality education-driven jiaoyufication not only displaces previous lower class as jiaoyufiers, but also replaces former jiaoyufiers with newcomers, as well as blenching former blue collar neighborhoods. New middle class communities are emerging as spatially limited education-apartment zones attract social groups who attempt to occupy these spaces to facilitate social mobility and consolidation, causing tension between them. Consequently, jiaoyufication has narrowed down opportunities for intra-generation-based social mobility and exacerbated social polarization, gradually replacing traditional social hierarchies with an intergeneration-based neoliberal stratification.