Housing pathways, elective belonging, and family ties in middle class Chileans' housing choices

- Middle class Chileans access housing via diverse pathways depending on access to economic, cultural, and social capital.
- Upper middle class families choose neighborhoods based on aesthetics, access to social capital, or school availability.
- Middle class families' housing choices reflect the pattern of elective belonging in some respects but not others.
- Extended families are central to housing access and housing decisions in Chile as is the case in many wealthy societies

Much of the research on culture and stratification has focused on cultural consumption. In contrast, this paper addresses the housing field, an important arena for the reproduction of social inequality. Models of housing choice often assume individuals are rational actors functioning in free markets. In contrast, scholars combining the concept of “housing pathways” with a Bourdieusian framework demonstrate that the state shapes housing markets, and families deploy different forms of capital to access housing. Additionally, scholars use the concept of “elective belonging” to understand middle class housing tastes and identities. This analysis of 68 interviews with 77 middle class adults in Santiago, Chile, finds that middle class families' differential access to family wealth and state subsidies sorts them into distinct niches in the housing market. Further, middle class families that are richest in cultural capital alternatively choose neighborhoods to display aesthetic taste, accumulate social capital, or reproduce cultural capital through children's education. Some of these patterns reflect the concept of elective belonging while others illustrate traditional strategies of social reproduction. For Chile's middle classes, extended family is an important source of housing wealth and a key influence on housing decisions