Research Framework: In a French context of widespread access to home ownership since the 1980s, rental property has long remained neglected in sociological analysis, in favor of owner-occupation analysis.

Objectives : This article aims to measure the ways in which working-class families accumulate rental assets across generations and genders, and to assess the effects on social trajectories.

Methodology: The article is based on a statistical analysis of Institut National de la Statistiques et des Etudes Economiques (Insee)’s “Histoire de Vie et Patrimoine” survey (2017-2018) and on interview material from 30 upper-, middle- and working-class landlords in Lille conurbation. This article focuses on 10 respondents from working-class backgrounds, one of whom is experiencing a strong upward social mobility towards the middle classes: 5 women and 5 men, aged between 43 and 75, mainly of North African immigrant origin.

Results: The analysis shows the importance of hard work on self-rehabilitation and division of dwellings that unabled them to become owners and then landlords. Rental income appears as a means of stabilizing the family group’s economy, as a form of “subsistence work” (Collectif Rosa Bonheur, 2019). Being a landlord is a marker of social success for immigrant families, supporting the social mobility of their children. Equal property rights serve, after separation or death, the autonomy of women who have managed to defend their share of the estate.

Conclusions : This article helps to understand the mobilization of kinship group in the context of working-class household savings, and the role of deindustrialized urban space in the creation of real estate wealth and rental income.

Contribution : This article contributes to the sociology of working-class and immigrant property ownership and to the renewal of analyses on social strata.

• landlord
• working class
• rental housing
• family
• gender
• immigrant

https://journals.openedition.org/efg/19704