Abstract
This study explores the ramifications of local economic differences on entering adulthood in the context of globalization. The effect of globalization on patterns of entering adulthood is usually perceived as filtered by particularities at the national level and as differentiated mainly by class. However, economic differentiation within the same country at the regional and municipal level is mostly overlooked. To address this gap, the authors compare the achievement of first homeownership among middle-class households in two Israeli cities differing in the concentration of economic sectors and in housing prices. Utilizing in-depth interviews (n = 60 [cases]; n = 106 [interviewees]), the study shows how unstable forms of employment and exponentially rising housing prices in one city, and stable employment accompanied by still affordable housing costs in the other, support non-traditional and traditional patterns of entering adulthood respectively. The authors then analyse the Israeli census to confirm different patterns of entering adulthood among educated residents of the two cities. Thus, the study demonstrates how local economies shape different patterns of entering adulthood within the same country and among members of a similar class, suggesting that the relationship between globalization, class and the life course is also mediated by place.
Introduction
In this article, we examine local patterns of transition to adulthood among middle-class households in two Israeli cities. Changes in the traditional pattern of entering adulthood have been documented in many countries around the world (Buchmann and Kriesi, 2011; Mills and Blossfeld, 2006; Shanahan, 2000). These have been explained by the proliferation of non-stable forms of employment due to globalization, neoliberalization and the post-industrial economy, which have increased economic and social uncertainties, ‘disrupting’ the traditional life course (Bradley and Devadason, 2008; Golsch, 2003; Mills and Blossfeld, 2006). More recently, rising housing prices around the world, also an effect of globalization, have been shown to delay and destabilize the achievement of traditional markers of adulthood such as marriage and family formation (Bleemer et al., 2014; Bruce and Kelly, 2013; Hughes, 2003; Lauster, 2008; Lennartz et al., 2016; Shanahan, 2000; Smock et al., 2005). Thus, current explanations rest heavily on the effects of globalization on labour and housing markets at the national level.
In this article, we focus on the regional concentration of economic sectors (Storper, 1995; Whitford and Potter, 2007) as an instance of the way the globalized economy creates localized economic and social forms within the nation-state (Roudometof, 2019). Economic sectors differ not only in jobs availability and income levels but also in terms of employment (Kristal and Cohen, 2017), which serve as a key factor in shaping entrance to adulthood (Blossfeld et al., 2006; Golsch, 2003). The local concentration of economic sectors, along with other global factors (e.g. Haramati and Hananel, 2016), can also contribute to the rise of housing prices in certain areas more than others within the same country (Butler and Lees, 2006; Florida, 2017). However, to date, only a handful of studies (Hughes, 2003; Moos, 2014) have explored the effects of local economic structures, and those have focused only on job availability and income levels.
To address the gaps in the current literature we utilize both qualitative and quantitative methodologies to compare patterns leading to first homeownership among middle-class households in two distinct Israeli cities – Tel-Aviv–Jaffa, Israel’s central metropolis and the ‘local capital’ of the post-industrial economy, and Beersheba, a peripheral metropolitan city characterized by a concentration of the petrochemical industry. Drawing on in-depth interviews, we show how the local labour and housing markets underlie the prevalence of traditional patterns, leading to homeownership in Beersheba and the diversification of ‘non-traditional’ trajectories in Tel-Aviv. We then use the Israeli census of 2008 to compare young educated people in Tel-Aviv and Beersheba. We estimate several life events and trajectories – buying a home, marriage and having children. We find a consistent delay among tertiary educated people who live in Tel-Aviv in comparison to their peers in Beersheba.
Most scholars today view the link between globalization and life course as mediated by the state and by class positions. Our article supports this view but also considers how globalization creates a localization of living conditions and experiences within the same country, thus making the relationship between globalization, class and the life course one that is mediated by place.
The changes in life course transitions
Since the 1980s, scholars have shown that the transition to adulthood is becoming prolonged, fractured and de-standardized. Traditional markers of adulthood, such as stable employment, homeownership and family formation are postponed and achieved in more diverse patterns (Billari and Liefbroer, 2010; Bradley and Devadason, 2008; Brückner and Mayer, 2005; Buchmann and Kriesi, 2011; Golsch, 2003; Shanahan, 2000). Furthermore, the meaning of adulthood is also changing, and becoming more a manner of individual conception (Arnett, 2000; Benson and Furstenberg, 2006; Blatterer, 2007; Silva, 2012).
More recently, scholarly attention has shifted from universal explanations to more nuanced accounts of various patterns of entering adulthood in different countries (Brückner and Mayer, 2005; Buchmann and Kriesi, 2011; Mayer, 2009; Shanahan, 2000; Yopo Díaz, 2018). Mills and Blossfeld (2006), for example, suggested that the uncertainties created by globalization are filtered through national welfare regimes and specific employment, educational and family systems. As young adults respond to specific uncertainties in their countries, class and country-specific patterns of entrance into adulthood emerge.
Based on this well-accepted explanatory framework we address the way global forces and processes manifest themselves differently not only at the national level, but also within the same country.
Globalization and localization within the nation-state
Current discussions of globalization acknowledge a complex relationship between the local and the global, however localization is still viewed as secondary to globalization (Roudometof, 2019). In order to avoid this reductive view, Roudometof suggests exploring the local, and processes of localization, by using the concept of place. The importance of place is also stressed by recent theoretical approaches. Such approaches argue against the view of place as a simple manifestation of social structure (Gieryn, 2000), suggesting instead that place is a site where external forces and local characteristics ‘lash-up’ with each other (Molotch et al., 2000), creating a local variation of social structure and reality. Building on these conceptualizations, we argue that since the economy is also physically embedded within concrete places, the encounter between global economic forces and local conditions results in contingent local economies, which are made manifest in localization of the social, also within the nation-state. Three decades of studies of regional economies support this view.
Repeatedly, studies have demonstrated that globalization actually increases regional concentration in various economic sectors, especially within the post-industrial economy (Combes and Overman, 2004; Sassen, 2006; Storper, 1995; Whitford and Potter, 2007). Similarly, globalization is also linked with significant spatial differentiation of housing markets (Ben-Shahar, 2015; Bleemer et al., 2014; Florida, 2017; Hughes, 2003). Hence, we can see that globalization contributes to the creation of localized economic structures, differing in factors such as: job availability, income level, stable or flexible terms of employment, housing prices, and housing regimes. While the importance of these factors to the process of entering adulthood have been thoroughly demonstrated, only a handful of studies have investigated the effect of such regional differentiation on life course patterns.
Comparing metropolitan areas in the US with different income opportunities and housing costs, Hughes (2003) found variations in the choice of alternative domestic arrangements other than marriage, In Canada, Moos (2014) found a higher level of income inequality among young adults residing in cities, where the local job market has a ‘more pronounced post-Fordist composition’. Hence, Hughes’s study demonstrates the effect of local economies on life course transitions, without discussing the role of local differentiation in economic sectors. Moos’s study discusses the latter, but focuses on inequality among young adults rather than on life course transitions.
Taken together, the saliency of regional economies in the global economy and their effect on young adults point towards a new understanding of the localization of life course patterns not only among, but also within countries.
Transition to adulthood in Israel
Israeli society is divided by ethnicity, nationality and religiosity. It is thus important to note from the outset that our analysis pertains to young adults from the Jewish population who are not religious. Other groups, such as Arabs and Orthodox Jews, exhibit distinct patterns of entering adulthood due to their unique structural position and/or cultural characteristics (Bar-Haim and Semyonov, 2015; Okun, 2013).
The literature on young adults in Israel is scarce (but see Almog and Almog, 2013), however, general trends are similar to those in many western countries. Although there are no contemporary studies of the timing of finding meaningful employment in Israel, Israel’s job market has experienced changes that in other countries have prolonged and hindered it (Rosenhek and Shalev, 2014). With regards to other significant markers of adulthood, studies show that though Israel is a familial society, there is a steady rise in the age of first marriage (Okun, 2013), in cohabitation (Manor and Okun, 2016) and in singlehood (Lahad, 2017). There has also been a decline in homeownership among the younger generation following a national housing crisis starting in 2008 (Raviv, 2019). The existence of three years of mandatory military service should also be noted, since it delays the start of higher education and the entrance into the job market for most Israeli Jews (with the exemption of the Ultra-Orthodox).
Thus, its unique characteristics notwithstanding, the general pattern of entering adulthood among young, non-religious, middle-class Jews in Israel is echoing that of other western countries. We therefore use data from Israel to investigate the theoretical question of the role of local economic conditions on shaping the entry into adulthood.
Research strategy
This article compares young middle-class adults in two Israeli cities by utilizing both qualitative and quantitative analysis. Our use of in-depth interviews enables us to identify the nexus between local economic conditions and subjects’ life choices and biographical narratives. We then seek to verify our findings and test our argument regarding the effect of place on life course transitions in a representative sample based on secondary use of the Israeli census.
Qualitative analysis
Our qualitative analysis draws on a wider project comparing the residential choice process of middle-class, first-time homebuyers in two Israeli cities (Shani, 2018). The first is Tel-Aviv, the country’s economic and cultural centre. The second is Beersheba, the main city of Israel’s southern periphery. This project included 30 interviews in each city with 106 interviewees comprising individuals and couples. Interviewees were recruited from personal networks, Facebook groups and real-estate fairs. The interviews were semi-structured and focused on the interviewees’ lives and residential histories, their decision to buy a first home, and their locational choice process. Most interviews lasted about two hours. The interviews were recorded, professionally transcribed, and analysed with the assistance of Atlas.ti.
For the purpose of this article, we analyse the timing of buying a first home and its relation to finding employment, marriage and the birth of children. We employ a broad definition of the traditional pattern of entering adulthood as one where achieving homeownership is tied, chronologically and narratively, to these events in a sequential pattern.
We identify middle-class households by the higher education of at least one member of the household and the ability to purchase a home (Butler and Savage, 2013; Forrest and Hirayama, 2015). This broad definition does not ignore the growing differentiation within the middle-class (Savage et al., 2013). It is an analytical strategy aimed at avoiding the reduction of local patterns to social actors’ profiles, and at allowing a comparison between Tel-Aviv and Beersheba, two cities that differ both in the profile of their middle-class population and contain significant variations within it.
As a result, the social profile of interviewees differed not only between the two cities but also within each city. On average, the interviewees in Tel-Aviv were more educated, earned higher wages, and came from more economically established families. Still, there was considerable variation among interviewees in each city and there were numerous cases of interviewees with similar socio-economic attributes in both cities. More importantly, patterns in each city could not be fully accounted for by the economic ability of interviewees at the time of buying their home, even when considering the support of their parents. All in all, the general trend in each city transcended differences between interviewees and it is this dissimilarity between urban contexts and its underlying causes that we wish to explore.
Quantitative analysis
Our main data source for our quantitative analysis is the most recent Israeli census, conducted in 2008. 1 We restricted the sample to include only Tel-Aviv and Beersheba. We then further restricted the sample to include only young adults (ages 25–34), arriving at a sample of 15,690 individuals. Our variables of interest are: 2
We estimated a set of logistic regressions to predict the log odd ratios of all family transitions (marriage, having children, homeownership) by tertiary education. We also controlled for income, gender and years living in each locality. The latter factor is of particular important in addressing potential selection bias, as Beersheba residents are more likely to be born in the city while Tel-Aviv residents are more likely to move to Tel-Aviv at an older age.
Local causation and self-selection
Before presenting our findings, we would like to address our treatment of local causation and to stress that we do not wish to advance a strong version of local determinism. Our argument does not ignore the role of structural factors but examines if and how local configurations of two key structural factors result in different social patterns. We do not reject self-selection either. Following Sampson, we view self-selection as an integral aspect of locality effect; however, in this article we place our focus on other mechanisms of local causation. Furthermore, we argue that both empirically and theoretically our findings cannot be fully accounted for by self-selection. Empirically, in Tel-Aviv, only 24% of interviewees moved to the city at a time in their life which was clearly related to delayed adulthood, and only 16% presented their move as motivated by the wish to enjoy the freedoms of this period. In Beersheba, only 25% of interviewees moved to the city in relation to family formation. Among these, half were of cases where interviewees left the city for a few years and then returned. In addition, in our quantitative analysis we also provide control for years since entering the city (years since internal migration).
The reduction of locality effect to self-selection is problematic from a theoretical standpoint, too. The concept of self-selection rests on a separation between ends and means, and between preferences and the processes leading to one’s choice (Whitford, 2002). These dichotomies have been specifically criticized by various strands of sociological theories of praxis (Bourdieu, 2000, 2005), valuation and evaluation (Lamont, 2012) and choice (Illouz, 2012), and even by some psychological models of choice (Zsambok and Klein, 1996). Ultimately, as established by Bourdieu, dispositions are generative and result from the interaction between social actors’ attributes and social space. It is true that Bourdieu’s work, like much sociological research, has been a-local. However, social space cannot be easily separated from local space and the effect of the latter has been increasingly recognized in recent studies (Benson and Jackson, 2017; Brown-Saracino, 2015; Cutts and Widdop, 2016; Savage et al., 2013).
The two cities
Tel-Aviv is Israel’s centre and an emerging global city with strong links to the global culture and economy, especially the high-tech industry. Several works have documented the concentration of the financial, technological and cultural industries in Tel-Aviv (Alfasi and Fenster, 2005; Felsenstein et al., 2013; Kipnis, 2004, 2005; Roper and Grimes, 2005). As a result, Tel-Aviv and its metropolitan area are the parts of the country with the highest concentration of ‘high-quality’ middle-class jobs (Bank of Israel, 2013), and economic sectors associated with the new economy are a major source of employment for the city’s middle-class. On a scale of 1 to 10 of socio-economic ranking of localities in Israel, Tel-Aviv is in the eighth highest category (Central Bureau of Statistics, 2015).
Beersheba is the central city of the country’s southern region, which is peripheral culturally and economically. The city ranks in the fourth category in the Central Bureau of Statistics socio-economic scale and the whole region has the lowest concentration of ‘high-quality’ jobs in the country (Bank of Israel, 2013). However, Beersheba does host a major hospital, a research university and government offices, thus making white-collar jobs in the public sector a major source of employment in the city (Avni et al., 2016). Another major source of middle-class jobs is found in the petrochemical industry clustered around the city (Gradus, 2001; Portnov and Erell, 1998). Recent attempts to develop a local high-tech job market focusing on bringing large multinational and governmental employers to the city have yielded limited results.
These regional economic patterns also translate into differences in labour conditions and stability, 3 as summarized in Table 1.
Indicators of employment relations among individuals with BA and above.
Source: Authors’ analysis of 2008 Census, 2010 Employees Survey, and the 2008 and 2012 Social Surveys. Data files were obtained from the Israel Social Science Data Centre (ISDC) at the Hebrew University.
This estimator is based on the Israeli Social Survey, which offers a limited sample size and should be approached with caution.
In addition, while housing prices have risen steeply in both cities since 2008, there is substantial variation among them. Thus, to households positioned in the sixth and higher percentiles of income distribution, Tel-Aviv is the least affordable major city in terms of housing prices while Beersheba remains the most affordable (Ben-Shahar, 2015).
Middle-class housing patterns in Beersheba are also much more uniform. Most middle-class families are concentrated in new neighbourhoods on the outskirts of the city; only 25% live in rented homes and the city’s rental market in general is concentrated in the poor neighbourhoods around the university. In Tel-Aviv, middle-class households and families are spread across the city, as reflected in processes of urban renewal and gentrification (Marom, 2014). Furthermore, 35% of middle-class families live in rented dwellings and the city’s rental market is also spread across various neighbourhoods.
Finally, it is important to note that in Israel, despite the small distances, commuting between metropolitan areas is rare. According to our analysis of census data, 88% of tertiary-educated residents of Beersheba work within the metropolitan area. In Tel-Aviv, 85% work within it.
Results: Local economic structures and entrance into adulthood
Beersheba – following the ‘natural’ path
In Beersheba, the traditional pattern of entering adulthood dominates. The average age of interviewees was 30 – near the national marriage age of 27.8. In 76% of the cases, interviewees bought or started to look for a home at the time of marriage and/or having their first child, and in 80% of cases at least one member of the household held steady gainful employment. Furthermore, the traditional life course dominated the narratives of nearly all the interviews in Beersheba.
Some couples commented explicitly on the story of the purchase of their home as reflecting the ‘normal path’, but the influence of the traditional life course on interviewees’ accounts and choices was mostly apparent in its taken for granted status.
Take for example, the answer of Dana (F, 31, NGO employee) and Aviad (M, 31, electrical engineer) to the question, ‘What made you start thinking of buying a home?’
We started thinking about children.
So, that was the trigger?
No, I think that the trigger . . . it was just natural.
Precisely. I think that the trigger is the next step after marriage. The next stage after marriage is a home . . .
While the view of buying a home as a ‘natural’ advancement in life reflects a common attitude in Israel (Weiss, 2014), in Beersheba it was also based on local conditions which enabled and reinforced it. As often in Beersheba, the ability of this couple to buy a home at a relatively early stage of their lives and careers was encouraged by their stable employment and the still affordable housing prices that characterize the city. In relating their decision to buy a home, Aviad said: When I started my job, all the older guys . . . pressured the younger workers to buy a home . . . They said that there is nothing wiser than buying in the first year on the job, because you have a steady job, you’ll always have the money to pay for your mortgage, and prices will always go up.
The example of another couple, Sara (F, 34, administrator) and Hanan (M, 32, mechanical engineer), demonstrates how stable forms of employment not only shorten the period between finding employment and achieving homeownership but also reinforce the sequential pattern of entering adulthood. When asked, ‘What happened that made you start thinking about buying a home?’, they answered:
[to Sara] I found a steady job, didn’t I?
Yes, yes . . . Since he found a normal job, we felt like now we could do it. Also, we were expecting a child.
Note how Hannan and Sara waited until one of them found meaningful employment before starting to look for an apartment. For Sara and Hanan, as for many others in the city, the combination of relatively scarce employment opportunities and job stability strengthened the sequential pattern of entering adulthood. This was so because it turned finding employment into a necessary stage that had to be met before the purchase of a home.
The case of Sara and Hanan also demonstrates the influence of the local housing market. This is how Sara describe their first encounter with it:
You check the prices, you go to the bank to see how much down payment you have to make on a mortgage. First you cry, then you start to save. We saved every month, we saved, saved, saved, whatever we could . . .
If Beershebians like Dana and Aviad were encouraged to buy their home by the belief that ‘prices can only go up’, Sara and Hanan’s account conveys another sentiment in the city – the urgency to enter the market while prices were still within their reach. This sentiment was reflected in many interviews, with responses like ‘We felt like we needed to catch the train while we could’, or ‘We wanted to get a foot in the door’.
Another feature of Beersheba’s middle-class housing market is its division between poor neighbourhoods in which apartments are rented mostly to students, and middle-class family neighbourhoods where most residents are homeowners. This distinction expressed itself in many interviews in the city, in which interviewees contrasted ‘hardcore student areas’ with ‘pleasant family neighbourhoods’. Reflecting local housing patterns, this distinction also played a role in structuring the transition to adulthood by making the physical and chronological move to the next stage seems commonsensical – a natural advancement in life. Here too, a common local experience in Beersheba ties into a common belief in Israel, namely, that family formation calls for homeownership and rules out renting as unsuitable for family life.
Altogether, we argue that the particularities of Beersheba’s labour and housing markets create a common local experience of entering adulthood composed of completing one’s education, finding employment, starting a family and buying a home. This common experience is evident in the fact that though interviewees differed economically, the vast majority followed the traditional pattern. Furthermore, the fact that most interviewees adopted this traditional life course narrative, even if it did not match their own circumstances, reflects how Beersheba’s economic structure supports mainly the traditional pattern of entering adulthood both in practice and in meaning.
Tel-Aviv – delayed and diverse patterns
In Tel-Aviv, interviewees not only reached traditional markers of adulthood later in life with an average age of 36, but also reached them through more diverse patterns. Only in 13 cases did interviewees purchase their first home after getting married and/or around the time of having their first child. Among this group, two cases were single-parent households. Another 10 households bought their first home several years after the birth of their first child, sometimes before or after the birth of their second child. The other households reported buying their first home with no connection to either marriage or having children. Furthermore, just like in Beersheba, patterns of achieving homeownership could not be fully accounted for by interviewees’ economic resources.
In a mirror image of Beersheba, the un-hegemonic status of the traditional life course in Tel-Aviv was evident in the ambivalence expressed towards it. Interviewees rarely explicitly tied buying a home to their marriage, and almost no interviewees treated achieving homeownership as ‘the next natural stage’ after marriage.
For example, Oded (M, 35, travel guide) and Meirav (F, 35, psychologist), parents to two daughters, answered the question ‘When did you start to talk about buying?’ by saying:
… It was in the back of our minds for a while: ‘You should buy, it makes more economic sense, bla bla bla . . .’
It’s because my parents really pressured us for a long time. We resisted it for a long time too.
Resisted?
I don’t know . . . we felt that it’s like . . .
A mortgage? Now?
It felt too much for us. Too grown-up . . .
To understand this ambivalence, we turn to the particularities of the local labour and housing markets and their influence on our subjects’ lives. As mentioned earlier, Tel-Aviv’s labour market is characterized by precarious and shifting employment. Accordingly, finding employment in Tel-Aviv was experienced not as a passing stage but rather as a constant reality. For example, Smadar (F, 35), who at the time of the interview worked half-time as a producer and half-time in her art studio, described her job history as follows: I started working there [for a theatre] in sales, and then I built a debt-collecting system for them . . . I can’t stay in the same job for too long. The longest was two-and-half years, and that was also three quarters-time . . . Yes, I worked a little. I worked in production for three months. I jumped from one thing to another. I would start studying something, and stop . . .
Smadar’s story might reflect a sense of a voluntary choice on her part. But the experience of Sha’ul (M, 48), a filmmaker, and Maia (F, 28), a designer, express another sentiment:
Around the time we moved in . . . Sha’ul hadn’t been working for a long time, and I was working . . . I mean, I had started working again [at a new job] after three months [of maternity leave] but then the project I was employed in ended . . .
The instability described above means that, their higher wages notwithstanding, interviewees in Tel-Aviv experience, or feared experiencing, times with little income. Interviewees with more profitable occupations experienced less economic hardship but still were affected by the precarious local labour market. Take for example, Yoni (M, 30). Having just lost his profitable position in high-tech and planning on launching a start-up, he talked in the interview of his ‘fear of ending up in the streets that I somehow have’. While it is highly unlikely that people like Yoni will end up homeless, it is still important to recognize this underlying sense of insecurity which is facilitated by Tel-Aviv’s labour market.
This sense of instability and insecurity interacts with the Tel-Aviv housing market. Thus, many interviewees, even those with substantially high incomes, preferred waiting until they had enough savings to make a large down payment and ‘it was possible to take a very small mortgage’, or until they felt they were ‘pushed to buy’ by the needs of their growing family and the insecurities of Tel-Aviv’s unregulated rental market. Others opted for cheaper neighbourhoods in early stages of gentrification. In fact, almost all households that bought their first home early in their family life were either gentrifiers or did so with funds supplied by parents.
Choosing to postpone homeownership or opting for a cheaper, gentrifying area are choices which also reflect the particularities of Tel-Aviv’s housing market. Unlike interviewees in Beersheba who felt encouraged to buy while prices were still affordable, a third of the cases in Tel-Aviv reported being deterred from purchasing a home for several years by the high housing prices. Galit (F, 35, psychologist) and Or (M, 34, high-tech employee), for example, started looking for a home after getting married but were discouraged by the city’s housing prices and continued to rent an apartment until the birth of their second child. They describe their encounter with the city’s housing market as follows:
… I started dragging him around to look for apartments. At the time our budget was more modest . . . We saw apartments in the range of 1.2 million shekels . . .
I remember saying to ourselves, ‘Wow, 1.2 million! More than a million!’
… We gave ourselves passionate speeches about how prices were at their peak and must come down. If only we knew . . .
As opposed to Beersheba, it was more common and expected in Tel-Aviv to continue renting in a middle-class neighbourhood. Middle-class households and families in Tel-Aviv rent apartments in various locations, including well-off neighbourhoods (Shani, 2018), such as the one Galit and Or lived in before buying their home. Accordingly, the belief that ‘renting is not a suitable arrangement for raising children’ was less evident in Tel-Aviv, making interviewees more at ease with their decision to delay buying their first home.
The growing trend of gentrification in Tel-Aviv, which does not exist in Beersheba, offered interviewees another option, that of buying their first home in relatively poor areas of the city which were expected to ‘improve’. This option was often taken following the birth of children. For example, Yasmin, a 31-year-old single mother, bought an apartment in a relatively cheap and poor part of southern Tel-Aviv shortly after the birth of her first son. Although her left-wing views, she told the interviewer, should have led her to oppose gentrification, ‘when it comes to my property, I can’t wait for it to reach this area’. Other households that bought homes as a part of their family life in Tel-Aviv were generously assisted by parents.
Thus, even in cases where the traditional pattern was maintained chronologically, it did not have the same transitional significance as it had in Beersheba. Gentrifiers who bought their home because they were married and/or had children still had to wait for their new neighbourhood to become ‘suitable’ for their family. As for interviewees who relied solely on their parents, the relationship between economic independence and adulthood was disrupted.
Thus, the diversity of patterns in Tel-Aviv is not so much a matter of individual inclination as it is of a local reality shaped by the particularities of the city’s labour and housing market. Economic conditions in Tel-Aviv delay the achievement of markers of adulthood and lead different households to pursue various alternative strategies, making the traditional life course less relevant. If the common experience in Beersheba is reflected in the dominance of the traditional life course narrative, the common experience in Tel-Aviv results in ambivalence.
Localities and delayed adulthood, quantitative analysis
We now turn to a quantitative analysis to examine our argument about the localization of life course patterns among the middle class between the two cities. Figure 1 presents the predicted margins of the interaction between city and education (BA and above) taken from a set of logistic regressions depicting the effect of each locality on the young-educated regarding marriage, having children, and owning one’s home.
Predictive margins of city and education – marriage, having kids and homeownership.
According to our analysis, the young-educated residents of Tel-Aviv are less likely to own homes and have children than both the young-uneducated residents of the city, and the young-educated residents of Beersheba. Within Beersheba the differences between the educated and non-educated were smaller and less significant both in regard to having children, where results barely reached statistical significance (p < .6), and in regard to homeownership, where results were not significant. Regarding marriage, the young-educated in Beersheba are more likely to be married then the uneducated in the city, while in Tel-Aviv the differences between the two groups were not significant. 4
Our statistical analysis, therefore, supports our qualitative findings and main argument. As in our qualitative analysis, the young-educated residents of Tel-Aviv are the least likely to achieve most traditional markers of adulthood, even when controlling for income and years lived in each locality. Hence, our quantitative analysis demonstrates our argument that localities play a role in shaping life course transitions and accordingly, that the relationship between class and life course is also mediated by place. As we have shown, not only is the young-educated population differentiated by locality, but also, within each city, the differences between the young-educated and un-educated took on a specific pattern.
Discussion
In this article we have demonstrated how the local economic structures in Tel-Aviv and Beersheba shape local patterns of entering adulthood within the Israeli middle-class, focusing on the timing and meaning of homeownership. In Beersheba, a stable job market characterized by relatively scarce job opportunities, along with rising but affordable housing prices, translated into a local experience supporting the traditional pattern of entering adulthood as both a chronological and a narrative structure. In Tel-Aviv, low job stability, exponentially high housing prices, and a diversified housing market disturbed the traditional pattern of entering adulthood. This not only prolonged the achievement of traditional markers of adulthood, but also resulted in more diversified life course patterns and a general rejection of the traditional narrative of adulthood.
Our statistical analysis gives further support to our qualitative findings and to our argument concerning the localization of patterns of entering adulthood. The results show that middle-class residents (as identified by higher education) in Beersheba achieve all of the traditional markers of adulthood at an earlier stage. Furthermore, we were able to demonstrate the statistically significant effect of living in each city on entering adulthood, by controlling for education, income and years lived in each locality.
Our analysis is, of course, not without its limitations. First, we should acknowledge that localization in life course patterns might also be influenced by national context and the particularities of Israeli society discussed earlier, an issue that deserves further attention. Secondly, we should also note that our attention to the structural dimension of place is not a rejection of the importance of other local factors such as narratives, social networks and the design of urban space (for the latter see Shani, 2018). This matter too warrants further research.
Our findings expand current understandings of the relationship between the global and the local. Beck (2007) criticized sociology for its ‘methodological nationalism’, which conflates social structure and the nation-state – a view which, he argued, could not be supported in the age of globalization. The main response of sociologists was to reinstitute the significance of the nation-state by demonstrating local variations of social patterns between countries (Brückner and Mayer, 2005; Buchmann and Kriesi, 2011; Mayer, 2009; Mills and Blossfeld, 2006; Shanahan, 2000; Yopo Díaz, 2018). Our findings suggest that global forces are expressed differently not only between countries, but also within them. Thus, we support Roudometof’s (2019) theoretical claim that the encounter between the global and the local results not only in glocalized social forms, but in the localization of social patterns within the nation-state. Specifically, our article’s contribution is in the demonstration of the materialistic aspects of localization. As we have shown, the local economic structure of each city plays a significant role in shaping local life course patterns within the middle-class in Israel.
Our findings also call for the re-examination of the relationship between place and class. Academic and popular conceptions of the new middle-classes portray them as a product of globalization which is unrooted from place (e.g. Bauman, 1996; Beck, 2007). While scholars have shown how place, and more precisely central global cities, are important to the new middle classes (Andreotti et al., 2014; Bacqué et al., 2015; Butler, 1997, 2005; Florida, 2003; Savage et al., 2005; Zukin, 2009), they view place of residence mainly as the product of class identity (but see Cutts and Widdop, 2016; Shani, 2018). Our findings suggest a more fundamental relationship between the new middle-classes and their place of residence – one in which their global identity is actually a product of local places.
Footnotes
Appendix
Descriptive statistics: means (standard deviation in parentheses) and percent for key variables in the analysis, by city.
| Beersheba | Tel-Aviv | |
| BA and above (%) | 27 | 52 |
| Have children (%) | 58 | 27 |
| Mean years of living in locality | 35 |
26 |
| Mean income (IS) | 5940.92 |
7671.21 |
| Homeowner (%) | 52 | 23 |
| Married (%) | 61 | 39 |
| N | 4389 | 11,301 |
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Nissim Mizarachi, Yuval Yonay and Eva Ilouz for their helpful comments of an earlier version of this article. Earlier versions were presented at the Israeli Sociological Association meeting (2020) and the authors wish to thank the participants for their insights.
Funding
This work was supported by the Jonathan Shapira Foundation, the David Horowitz Research Institute and Tel-Aviv Global Research Scholarship.
