Should I stay or should I go? The association between upward socio - Economic neighbourhood change and moving p ropensities

Previous research on gentrification almost exclusively focussed on either the gentrifiers or those who are displaced. A third group of those who manage to avoid displacement and live through gentrification remains understudied. To shed new light on those stayers, we link upward change in low-income neighbourhoods, measured by the changing socio-economic composition of the neighbourhood, to the propensity to move of both lower or middle-educated people and higher-educated people living in these neighbourhoods. We perform binary logistic multi-level analyses on the Liveability Monitor of Ghent (N=1,037), a midsized city in Belgium. We find that upward neighbourhood change is associated with the propensity to move based on dissatisfaction with either the home or the neighbourhood for higher-educated respondents, but not for lower and middle-educated respondents. Focussing solely on dissatisfaction with the home, we find that lower and higher educated stayers are both more likely to express moving propensities than their socio-economic peers in non -improving neighbourhoods. We conclude that social displacement seems unlikely based on these results but that caution is necessary when considering displacement based on rising housing prices. We furthermore conclude that both lower and higher educated inhabitants of improving neighbourhoods deserve academic attention.

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