Unpacking commercial gentrification in central Paris

Introduction

Starting in 2010, independent coffee shops became ubiquitous features of central Paris streets, luring clients away from iconic chair-lined cafes and brasseries. ¹ Independent coffee shops first developed in the United States, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom (hereafter referred to as Anglo countries), before migrants and binationals imported the concept into France in the early 2000s (Brones and Hargrove, 2015). The country already had a long history of coffee consumption and socialisation in dedicated spaces, yet the new business surprisingly caught on. In Paris alone, over 200 coffee shops ² opened between 2013 and 2019, beginning in the 10th district, spreading to the nearby Marais (3rd and 4th districts), before reaching the adjoining 11th district.

The present research situates this recent addition to the retail landscape within the wider process of neighbourhood change in the western part of the vast 11th district (hereafter West 11th). Formerly an ethnic and working-class enclave, it first started to gentrify in the late 1970s (Fleury, 2003: 247–248). Now a diverse, liberal district, it emerged as a new consumption area in the 1980s (Van Criekingen and Fleury, 2006) when one of its neighbourhoods – Oberkampf – became home to dozens of trend-setting venues and independent businesses. However, the available space for gentrification was limited and the streets near Oberkampf actually experienced an altogether different transformation when hundreds of brick-and-mortar stores were converted into textile wholesale units by Chinese migrants at the turn of the 1990s (Chuang, 2013). By the mid-2010s, the Chinese wholesalers had been displaced by a public–private programme led by the Paris city government that called in a young, creative crowd to help revitalise the area (SEMAEST, 2018). From the south, which borders a well-established hypergentrified consumption area (the Marais), to the socially-mixed north (Lower Belleville), West 11th stores were taken over by new, more international players. Four separate areas are discussed in this study and are featured in the map in Figure 1: Lower Belleville, Oberkampf, the Chinese wholesale neighbourhood and the streets bordering the Marais.

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Figure 1.

Coffee shops in the West 11th district, Paris, 2018.

Researchers have described coffee shops as a core element of the business mix of revitalised shopping streets: Art galleries, Boutiques and Coffee shops – hereafter referred to as ABCs (Zukin et al., 2016: 13). Their owners have been likened to pioneers transforming ethnic neighbourhoods into sanitised, cosmopolitan spaces of consumption – Zukin’s ‘pacification by cappuccino’ (cited in Rose et al., 2013: 13). A study on Tehran, Glasgow and Amsterdam described coffee bars as signs of gentrification where the new emerging middle classes can show off their lifestyles and social status (Shaker Ardekani and Rath, 2017: 7). Another scholar pointed to hipsters who are acting as ‘agents of neoliberalism, colonizing the inner city’ (Hubbard, 2016: 3.5). ³

Here, I argue that this recent transformation of the Paris business mix is due not to neoliberal hipsters, but rather to the inconspicuous but pervasive role of small, internationally mobile entrepreneurs. The influence of relatively privileged migrants (Croucher, 2009) on retail-led gentrification has rarely been discussed in the academic literature, but my findings suggest that the current wave of upgrading in small business is an expression of transnationalism, defined by Glick Schiller, Basch and Szanton Blanc (1995: 48) as ‘the processes by which immigrants build social fields that link together their country of origin and their country of settlement’. Coffee shop development in Paris was initiated by specific transmigrants who applied culturally informed perceptions of consumption and gentrification, and forged new business hybrids. The Paris coffee shops are perfect examples of hybridisation – a complex interplay of several processes of cultural change whereby global flows are appropriated, resisted, negotiated and adapted by agents endowed with unequal power and resources (Stockhammer, 2012: 28–30).

Equally importantly, the state is the other key factor in retail gentrification. Indeed, the abundant research on gentrification in France systematically points to the role of state agencies and municipal authorities, insisting on the scale and scope of government intervention in France compared with Canada and England (Rose et al., 2013). In Paris, the municipal agenda has combined planned investment in amenities (since the 1980s) with the promotion of greater diversity and/or social mix (since 2001). City authorities tend to first prophesy future gentrification and then implement change to the benefit of their middle-class allies (Bacqué and Fijalkow, 2006). All authors concur on the role of the French state in the displacement of ethnic and working-class communities in the 11th district (Chuang, 2013; Clerval, 2013; Fijalkow and Oberti, 2001; Fleury, 2003). The consensus on government intervention is all the more remarkable since gentrification scholars tend to be divided between those who apply classic theory – including David Ley and Neil Smith – and others who stress alternative paths to neighbourhood change (Authier, 2018). In this vein, recent French scholarship has tried to explain the growth of gentrification as well as its failure. Recent comparative studies have disentangled the complex interplay of agents and processes shaping urban transformations, and have insisted on local patterns. Chabrol et al. (2016) examined 10 European cities including Paris, London, Sheffield, Barcelona and Lisbon, and found non-linear processes of regeneration, with upgrading driven by residents rather than displacement and eviction.

The role of gentrifiers has proven very contentious in France where academia initially reasoned in Marxist/classist terms, discussing the emergence of novel urban lifestyles and the parallel rise of a new middle class in the 1970s. After 2000, the growing proportion of middle-class homeowners living in socially mixed neighbourhoods became the focus of a national conversation that condemned them and ignored how gentrification was largely driven by the state, constructors and bankers (Authier et al., 2018). Still, French scholarship tends to portray gentrifiers as middle-class urbanites of average means who are relocating to ethnically and socially mixed peripheries because they can no longer afford central locations (Collet, 2008). Similarities with nearby Belgium regarding the role of this displaced middle class in the emergence of new trendy peripheries have repeatedly been noted (Chabrol et al., 2014; Fleury, 2003; Van Criekingen and Fleury, 2006; Van Criekingen, 2008).

Though less substantial, the literature on retail-led gentrification also views independent shopkeepers as middle-class, liberal entrepreneurs (Leblanc, 2017). Based on these paradigms, commercial upgrading is largely seen as the reinvestment in peripheral locations that occurs when independent businesses are chased out of exclusive central hubs. The local activism of middle-class entrepreneurs is understood as a strategy to compensate for negative social and geographic mobility, rather than a desire to evict the poor (Leblanc, 2017; Maltais, 2016; Mermet, 2014). Regarding displacement in retail, recent studies have shown that hypergentrification in central Paris is related to speculation on outlet value to the benefit of global brands (Mermet, 2014). However, there is also evidence for the resilience of small ethnic businesses in gentrifying areas that border the 11th (Chabrol, 2014).

The present research therefore fills a gap in the existing literature on gentrification in Paris by showing how transnational flows combine with municipal intervention and state deregulation to deliver significant retail change. Information on the business mix evolution comes from long-term observation from the mid-1990s onwards. Building on prior canvassing and exploratory research conducted in 2015 (Bantman-Masum, 2018), qualitative data was collected at 20 independent coffee shops between June 2016 and January 2019 (see Figure 1; the numbers 1 to 20 refer to specific businesses discussed in the article). All coffee shops were visited on several occasions for at least two hours of direct observation, informal conversations with staff and clients and at least one formal, semi-directive interview centring on professional and geographic mobility, transnationalism, gentrification, business values and local embeddedness. ⁴ Staff and owners easily agreed to participate, partly because they viewed interviews as a form of promotion, partly because they were eager to trade recent information on other coffee shops and market evolution and partly because I introduced myself as both a scholar and an insider with professional experience in running a restaurant in West 11th (near coffee shop number 5). This expertise proved instrumental in creating trust. Owners and managers shared their contacts and volunteered sensitive business information such as precise figures on wages, rents and investment, and even their experiences of failure.

The method became increasingly participatory ⁵ over time, after I trained as a barista. Informants were asked to react to the preliminary findings, which helped clarify their views on negative–positive value terms such as gentrification, class, wealth, eviction, diversity, etc. Their answers are discussed below as culturally informed perceptions of gentrification. ⁶ The rest of the article explores the crucial importance of geographic mobility and the role of the state in driving transnational commercial upgrading.

Mobile entrepreneurs in a transnational city

Paris coffee shops became trendy in a global age in which the macro circulation of people, goods and ideas translated into changes at a micro level. When a Franco-British architect opened his first coffee shop (5), residents and shop-owners looked quizzically at the English speakers, female clients lined up outside his miniature venue. Why the sudden rush for overpriced eggs, pancakes and coffee? Unbeknownst to the onlookers, the newly opened coffee shop occupied a specific market niche: a business designed to fund the mobility of its Global North migrant owner, employing and serving a majority of co-nationals, networking online with native English speakers (Bantman-Masum, 2018). Like 5, other early Paris coffee shops were the brainchildren of internationally mobile entrepreneurs who imported upmarket speciality coffee into France (Brones and Hargrove, 2015). The majority of coffee shop founders in West 11th were foreigners, born in Ireland (13), England (13), Canada (19), Colombia (1, 11), Singapore (9), Slovakia (8) and the Philippines (18). Others are binationals – Franco-Panamanian (16) or Franco-British (5 and 10, 12). Some were former migrants to Great Britain (17, 20), the United States (3, 4, 9) and Germany (2, 15). The French founders of 7 and 17 were conspicuously less international, with no experience of living outside France. ⁷ These newcomers overwhelmingly introduced themselves as geographically mobile professionals with extensive travel experience who first discovered coffee shops abroad before opening their own in Paris. Reflecting on how the coffee shop model had reached Paris, an influential blogger and professional adviser (and former barista at 5) clarified that specialty coffee had been ‘imported through mobility’, based on her own experience as a migrant living in Australia for three years (see below).

Once a sign of social distinction, experience abroad recently became a relatively common experience for young workers. Opportunities for temporary migration were greatly expanded under governments that promoted free circulation for students and young adults: the Schengen Agreement, the Erasmus Programme and the Working Holiday Visa opened the doors to EU countries as well as Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Owners and staff clearly took advantage of these opportunities. All but two of them were under 40 when this research was conducted. They came of age in a transnational, mobile time. This age group represented a significant 34.6% of the Paris region population in 2012 (DRJSCS, 2016: 4). Since 15–44 year olds accounted for 47.3% of the Paris population in the most recent survey available (INSEE, 2019), ⁸ coffee shop development can be said to reflect the urban imprint of a geographically mobile generation of well-travelled, urban dwellers.

Interestingly, coffee shop development also paralleled the rise of home sharing in central Paris. The city boasts the highest number of listings on Airbnb (Gurran and Phibbs, 2017). Inside Airbnb (an independent source of information on the platform) reported 59,881 listed properties in December 2018, 86.8% of which were entire homes (Inside Airbnb, n.d.). Their map showed that the 11th district offered thousands such options to visitors (5,996, 88.8% of which entire homes). During interviews, staff systematically listed foreigners as a key group of clients, often specifying that they meant expats, tourists and, above all, Airbnb guests. Home sharing greatly increased the pool of potential clients for coffee shops. As in other tourist destinations, a significant proportion of the Paris housing stock was converted into temporary accommodation. When tourists displaced residents, the business mix was tipped in favour of affluent mobile crowds (Cocola-Gant and Lopez-Gay, 2020; Gurran and Phibbs, 2017). The first coffee shops capitalised on this pervasive presence of foreign visitors, until the terror attacks of 2015 caused a steep, though temporary, slump in international tourism. The attacks took place in West 11th and translated into a sharp loss of business for 3, on rue Saint-Sébastien, only a few steps away from the Charlie Hebdo headquarters and the Bataclan concert hall. The French owner of this now-closed coffee shop reported a 70% drop in business; others experienced it too, in lesser proportions. Two years later, the tourists finally returned, fuelling demand for upmarket coffee shops. Other coffee shops opened near 3, leading the former Brooklyn restaurant owner to sell and relocate full time to upstate New York.

But the recent process of gentrification on rue Saint-Sébastien must also be viewed from a longer historical perspective. In Paris, commercial upgrading took the form of an outbound, long-term, steady process of capital reinvestment that started in the centre before reaching the peripheral Eastern districts (Clerval, 2013). Wealth reached West 11th through rue Oberkampf, a street that connected the older Paris districts of the Marais to those, like the 11th, that were integrated into the city in the second half of the 19th century (Fleury, 2003: 240–241). By the 2010s, the coffee shops in West 11th followed the extension towards the periphery of the nearby Marais, a hypergentrified consumption area (Mermet, 2014). At rue Saint-Sébastien, the business upgrade spanned several decades. The wholesalers, a transportation company, two bakeries, three grocers and two laundromats disappeared from the street. These long-term changes produced a greater concentration of leisure-orientated, higher added value businesses. Residents noted that all the restaurants, bars and French cafes that were there in the 1970s (11 in total) survived the process, albeit under new owners with a different business model. The last decades brought more ABCs, as well as everyday stores (a locksmith’s, a hairdresser’s, a hearing aid shop, etc.) and a private school. In the 2010s, two coffee shops opened on rue Saint-Sébastien, near new upmarket ABCs with similarly mobile owners (foreign designers, Global North chefs, etc.) in what was already a gentrified shopping street. In the process, the business mix internationalised even further.

By contrast, in the northern part of West 11th, coffee shops signalled an earlier stage of gentrification. Rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud is located in Lower Belleville, a neighbourhood with a high proportion of foreign residents (Clerval, 2013: 114) which had managed to resist full-fledged upgrading for almost four decades after the emergence of nearby Oberkampf (Clerval, 2013; Fleury, 2003; Van Criekingen and Fleury, 2006). Long-term residents and scholars described how several waves of immigration – an East European Jewish majority in the 1950s, Arabs from the 1960s onwards, Balkan migrants as well as Turks in the 1970s – contributed to shaping the local business mix. At the turn of the 1990s, middle-class residents, including internationally mobile professionals, started to move in (Smith, 2016). From the 2000s onwards, the Lower Belleville business mix was remodelled by competing processes: new Arab-owned shops blocked the expansion of the Chinese district just as the extension of gentrified Oberkampf led to a higher ABC concentration (Clerval, 2013: 113–130). This evolution on rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud points to a slow, stunted process of commercial upgrading: Muslim shops (2000s) near a mosque sat next to a workers’ union (established in 1937) that was partly converted into a city-owned theatre (opened 2007).

The coffee shops on that block – 8 (founded in 2013) and 9 (founded in 2016) – were opened by transmigrant managers who could be described as social preservationists (Brown-Saracino, 2004). They identified with the diverse population of Lower Belleville and often relied on the local network of businesses that included plumbers, electricians, builders, grocers, as well as restaurants and bars owned by Indians, Arabs and earlier gentrifiers. Coffee shops 8 and 9 introduced new patterns of diversity: these multi-owner businesses were created by nationals of many countries, including affluent Singapore, Switzerland, France and Italy, as well as Slovakia and Morocco. Although their businesses did signal commercial upgrading, the two managers were, like many other coffee shop owners, experiencing negative geographic and economic mobility. Clearly, they were creating new upmarket consumption spaces where coffee cost twice as much as in traditional cafes; yet this experience did not translate into great economic gains. In 2017, 8’s founder worked alone, seven days a week, but could barely support herself financially; she was just patiently waiting to sell her business, take the money and move out of France.

The role of the French state in transnational gentrification

The reasons that selling an ailing business could actually finance one’s international mobility need to be explained. The strategy only made sense because French tenure laws and rules on commercial real estate allow for the ad hoc creation of property value during business transfers. In line with previous studies (Clerval, 2013: 55; Rose et al., 2013), my data points to the role of the French state in driving gentrification. I examined two key aspects of political intervention: the law regulating business transfers and the Paris city government’s revitalisation programme for the Chinese wholesale neighbourhood. Even if these are different levels of intervention (national legislature versus municipal government), they illustrate the extent of state support for commercial upgrading. It is therefore crucial to outline the relevance of the state in the long-term changes in the business mix of West 11th, and how it supported transnationalisation both directly and indirectly.

Under French commercial tenure laws, tenants can sell the value of their business (fond de commerce), access to the commercial space itself (pas de porte) or their rental agreement (bail commercial). This form of ad hoc value creation is allowed, rather than regulated. Each time a commercial space is transferred to a new tenant, the former tenant cashes in on the transfer (cession). This has become a key mechanism in commercial upgrading because the amount of capital needed typically increases at each transfer. In 2018, the value of a bare commercial space started at a few thousand euros, up to hundreds of thousands for prime location real estate. Newcomers, such as independent middle-class entrepreneurs, are structurally disadvantaged by this system. Under the system, long-term profitability largely depends on the newcomer’s ability to negotiate the original rental agreement and pay as little as possible in cession, pas de porte or bail. In clear validation of Neil Smith’s (1998) argument that gentrification is first and foremost a return to the city by capital, coffee shop founders reported that banks had easily lent them the funds they needed. At least 15 of them contracted a substantial bank loan (over €100,000) to invest in the commercial space. Months or years later, the majority earned less than the minimum wage (at €1188 per month in 2018). French commercial tenure contracts are designed to protect tenants from eviction, but they also fuel gentrification.

In fact, these tenancy rules – a lack of regulation rather than legislation – made West 11th particularly attractive to entrepreneurs. They knew West 11th to be an affluent district (Préteceille, 2018) with relatively affordable rental space compared with hypergentrified areas. In the nearby Marais, secret pre-emption deals secure the transfer of retail spaces to corporate big brands in exchange for hundreds of thousands of euros. In the 2010s, independent businesses could only settle for less busy side streets (Mermet, 2014). Compared with the Marais, nearby West 11th presented new entrepreneurs with excellent opportunities for commerce as well as future value creation. During interviews, coffee shop owners repeatedly explained how they had based their decision to set up shop in West 11th on its brand image of an affordable liberal hub, crafted by previous gentrifiers. There, they could benefit from the existence of a well-established space of consumption. In France, as in other EU countries like Belgium or Italy, young adults face daunting systemic economic constraints in both housing and employment (Dubucs et al., 2016; Van Criekingen, 2008). In this context, real estate affords them unique opportunities for wealth creation (Collet, 2008).

With speculation built into the inevitable process of business succession, coffee shop entrepreneurs were encouraged to regard small business as a financial enterprise and to participate in transnational capital reinvestment. Importantly, a high proportion of coffee shops (9, 12, 13, 14, 18, 19) were funded by geographically mobile professionals: the deregulation of business transfers actually facilitated the cross-border circulation of capital. Of the many coffee shops that opened following a business transfer, several were owned by Colombian nationals. On rue Amelot – a street away from the Marais – coffee shop number 1 was co-founded by a Colombian interior designer and a French banker who paid €300,000 in transfer fees. In 2019, they offered to sell their business for €550,000 in transfer fees. The Colombian co-founders of 11 paid €160,000 in transfer fees and later added an additional €400,000 to own the actual brick-and-mortar shop itself. With this costly procedure, 11’s co-owners invested the capital they had accumulated in diplomacy and corporate auditing. This time, the business transfer was made possible by the cross-border circulation of small capital, rather than the previously mentioned capital reinvestment led by banks. In addition to facilitating capital reinvestment, the legislation on business transfer also had a significant spatial impact. Newcomers were limited in their choice of potential locations, which was reflected in the spatial distribution of the coffee shops: the only venue (6) located on a major shopping street – rue Oberkampf – was actually founded by an older, highly successful restaurant owner from the Marais.

The legislation on commercial real estate transfers is but one aspect of state intervention (or the lack thereof) to have drastically shaped coffee shop development. Other arms of the French state also determined the direction of the commercial upgrading of West 11th. This was the case with the city-led revitalisation programme in the portion of the district occupied by Chinese wholesalers. Not only was the programme aimed at creating a trendy consumption space aligned with global trends, but it also invited risk-prone, internationally mobile players to lead the path to commercial upgrading.

The target neighbourhood first specialised in textile production and distribution at the turn of the 1990s, when hundreds of West 11th outlets – located in a vast area between rue Oberkampf, avenue Parmentier, boulevard Richard Lenoir and rue de la Roquette – were transferred to Chinese migrants who converted them into wholesale outlets. Soon, residents and council members of this gentrified neighbourhood set about ousting the newcomers in the name of retail diversity. A public–private partnership called SEMAEST (Société d’Economie Mixte d’Aménagement de l’Est Parisien) was founded on the mission of pre-empting commercial spaces and recreating the pre-existing business mix. SEMAEST proceeded not by evicting tenants, but rather by taking over vacant outlets and then marketing them to other types of commerce (Chuang, 2013). To encourage business transfers, municipal authorities created a giant wholesale platform outside of Paris in Aubervilliers, where individual wholesalers partially relocated. The revitalisation programme thus succeeded in creating dozens of vacancies that the 11th district government sought to fill with craftspeople and multi-partner businesses with solid business plans.

A SEMAEST leaflet in circulation in November 2018 sketched its vision for a segment of the wholesale neighbourhood (the blocks near rue Breguet and rue du Chemin Vert) after its revitalisation. At that time, the business mix included, in addition to the many remaining Chinese wholesalers, a few organic food stores, several coffee shops and other ABCs. The text, tellingly written in both French and English – as if addressing a global audience – described the revitalised segment as a new consumption area designed for both residents and tourists:

the textile wholesalers have given way to young, dynamic entrepreneurs buzzing with ideas. Established thanks to SEMAEST and the work they have carried out to revitalise local businesses, these new shops have succeeded in meeting the expectations of both local inhabitants and visitors by offering a wide variety of skilled, [sic] goods, and services. (SEMAEST, 2018)

The leaflet portrayed the public–private partnership behind the revitalisation programme as a neutral alliance between SEMAEST and innovative millennials. This means that the revitalisation programme never aimed at recreating the pre-existing business mix, but rather at transforming the Chinese wholesale neighbourhood into a trendy consumption hub. In this sense, the project reflected the extroverted mindset of both the City of Paris – which controls 74.88% of SEMAEST’s capital and partly staffs its executive board (SEMAEST, n.d.) – and the 11th district’s head of small businesses who led SEMAEST for several years.

In order to implement their plan, officials chose to invite specific businesses. This was how one of the co-founders of 12 was allowed to submit a business proposal to transform a vacant car park taken over by SEMAEST into a bread and coffee shop. The three partners, now on their fourth business venture in Paris, had previously participated in a city-led project in the 17th district. The co-founder remembered how they had lost their initial investment when the municipal authorities transferred the contract to a new tenant. In West 11th, the partners carefully negotiated the terms of their association with SEMAEST. Their past experience had taught them that securing real estate over the long term had to be an integral part of the business plan. Having secured the right to benefit from a future transfer, the partners borrowed over €600,000 and converted the SEMAEST car park into a trendy food venue.

When the Paris municipal authorities control access to rental spaces, in order to revitalise areas of the city, they expect business owners to assume a high level of risk. Having evicted the Chinese wholesalers, SEMAEST chose to support the creation of real estate value by extracting wealth from the new generation of entrepreneurs. In and around the revitalised area, a majority of coffee shops took over former wholesale outlets (2, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20) with the task of delivering commercial development. Revitalisation created opportunities that attracted players who were at ease with risk-taking, including many geographically mobile coffee shop founders. In this sense, the city authorities encouraged transnationalisation as if it had to be an integral element of commerce-led neighbourhood change.

Defining cultural influence in gentrification

Why would SEMAEST believe that it must incorporate transnationalisation into its revitalisation plans for West 11th? This last section focuses on how international mobility influences perceptions of gentrification in France. It discusses the theoretical implications of common practices, such as comparing and contrasting Paris with other Global North cities. Frequent references to trendy neighbourhoods like Williamsburg (New York City) suggest that geographically mobile players define upgrading in a transnational perspective, gauging local transformation against a global backdrop. This is analysed here as evidence for the cross-border circulation of culturally grounded perceptions of gentrification.

I noted earlier how coffee shop founders commented on the high proportion of foreign tourists and expats visiting their businesses. During participant observation, I noticed how English was routinely spoken at many coffee shops. After all, many owners and staff members were native English speakers (5 and 10, 9, 13, 14, 19) or had lived in English-speaking countries (3, 8, 18). At 8, I was once invited into a conversation in English between the Slovakian owner, her Italian former chef, an American national living in Paris and a French citizen who had spent the last seven years in New York City. The conversation jumped from the cost of healthcare and education in France compared with the United States, to the trickle-down effect and the subprime crisis. Observation provided numerous examples of everyday, casual transnationalism at work in coffee shops. These were defining experiences for staff and customers alike: the French barista at 3 cherished his conversations in English with tourists who had ‘an obviously different mindset’. Compared with the French restaurant where he had previously worked, this was a relaxing work experience. The Anglo component of the Paris coffee shop culture – in this context, the close acquaintance with the culture of English-speaking countries like the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand – is one of its commercial strengths. At first, these businesses thrived on transnationalisation. Owners welcomed tourism-led gentrification because they expected to benefit from it. International tourism fuelled their growth. The founder of 3 capitalised on the expansion of the Marais, targeting its wealthy international crowd. The Canadian and Filipino owners of 13 and 19 chose a location near Bastille, a well-established commercial hub with a steady inflow of foreign visitors and well-travelled French professionals.

With time, founders experienced the limits of relying on cross-border flows. The aftermath of the 2015 terror attacks, with the ensuing drop in international tourism, clearly exposed their reliance on the outside. To compensate for the sharp deficit that followed the attacks, coffee shop owners turned to French clients. They acknowledged the need ‘to localise’ (9), another fundamental aspect of transnationalisation whereby cultural imports are hybridised by cultural brokers. ‘Localising’ is now so common in small business that it is analysed as a global trend, a survival strategy blending local and global taste in an effort to adapt to new trends (Hattori et al., 2016: 171; Yu et al., 2016: 74). In order to survive, Paris coffee shops needed to blend French and Anglo culture. French clients were introduced to good coffee, a classic topic for conversation among coffee shop staff. The conclusion was that France had finally caught up with other Global North cities in terms of product quality and service. This idea that France must compare and compete internationally was a recurrent theme in all the interviews. Gentrified shopping streets abroad served as models for owners desirous to increase their competitive edge over rivals. The two founders of 20 both lived in London, for 4 and 6 years respectively. One of them described his business as a form of risky venture, the goal of which was to cater to a trendy crowd, not street residents. Such was the vision for which they had invested €10,000 each in access fees, contracted a €80,000 bank loan and opened a coffee shop in the revitalised area. Their short-term survival depended on the success of a nearby workspace that could potentially bring regular clients. But their ultimate success implied a more immaterial development: that the street would soon ‘become a mix of everything’, like Brooklyn or Williamsburg. Many founders cited New York – alongside Berlin, London and Sydney – as a model for the typical gentrified street. Their perceptions of gentrification were firmly set in a transnational perspective that seemed to dictate that Paris must undergo a form of standardised upgrade to compare positively to other trendy neighbourhoods.

At a deeper level, these individual remarks on transnationalisation were rooted not in one standardised representation of the gentrified shopping street, but instead in several, sometimes divergent perceptions that rested on wider preconceptions regarding small business and neighbourhood change. Importantly, national origins and political beliefs influenced individual readings of urban transformations, and opinions as to how individuals should act upon them. Discourses on upgrading were culturally specific and signalled a disconnect between French and Anglo perceptions. For instance, residents of Lower Belleville recommended Rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, a book written by an American expat who – they considered – had misinterpreted how the neighbourhood had changed. The book was a first-person narrative of the journalist settling in Lower Belleville at the turn of the 1990s, and then failing as a pioneer gentrifier (Smith, 2016). The pioneer tropes that endowed this gentrification narrative with meaning made it relevant to English speakers (Smith, 1998). ⁹ But since the pioneer tropes do not exist in French, the book tapped into a cultural heritage that the French could not access, and they interpreted it as a cultural misconception, rather than insightful analysis.

Interviews also showed that national origins combined with migrant experiences could shape and warp attitudes towards commercial upgrading and related processes. Among my informants, those who were born in English-speaking countries, where gentrification theory was first developed (5 and 10, 12, 19), largely embraced the idea of commercial revitalisation, and happily discussed their role in it and how they expected to thrive on it. The Franco-British owner of 5 and 10 enthusiastically detailed his strategy: he had a clear notion of how the business mix should evolve to reach a perfect stage of commercial upgrading. He mentioned the need for antique shops, barbershops and delicatessens. He premised his sharp, straightforward observations on the belief that gentrification is complete when a standard and precise mix of businesses exists. Like the co-founder of 12, a friend of his who inspired his decision to create a coffee shop, he built speculation into his long-term business plan. The owner of 5 and 10 was also very outspoken about how he would benefit not just from commercial upgrading, but also from the commercial tenure system. He was the sole owner to openly praise the business transfers, adding that he liked how French law allowed for capital accumulation. To him, this was a wonderful savings system.

This attitude can only be contrasted with the way the French manager of 14, a former foreign reporter for French public radio, analysed gentrification and gentrifiers:

gentrification … we are all participants in it. I came to live here because the rent was cheap, because of the Chinese wholesalers. Now the rents in my building are up by 20%, and at the same time, small businesses are popping up in rue Boule, rue Sedaine, Popincourt … Cafes, bars, shops selling who knows what!

In a city like Paris where inclusion and wealth redistribution are core political values, shop keeping tends to be scornfully dismissed as a conservative occupation (Leblanc, 2017: 87). French owners have learnt to downplay their local impact. The manager of 14 quipped about this, remarking that honesty regarding one’s role in gentrification is taboo among liberal intellectuals. What is more, culturally informed political beliefs can be said to influence not just ideas on gentrification, but business practices too. French coffee shop owners insisted that they were infusing business with ethics, that they related to the left-leaning politics of West 11th, that they wanted to preserve the social mix. This cannot be taken as mere lip service since it translated into tangible business practices at coffee shops with French ownership. The French manager of 14 made his coffee shop accessible to all. He wanted rubbish collectors and local African housewives to feel welcome and invited them in for an affordable espresso. Similarly, the French owners at 7 and 17 insisted on keeping coffee affordable (and speaking French). The owner of 7 went out of his way to serve everyone, adapting to the needs of elderly neighbours and high school children alike. On one of my visits, he introduced me to some of his regulars (all of them French nationals) to prove his point about his local embeddedness. The founder of 2 – whose business included a profits redistribution clause – proudly stated that she was acting for the benefit of the community, even if she acknowledged her role in neighbourhood change. Individual profit-making and competing globally were not their top objectives.

These French discourses on inclusion and how not to create an overly exclusive space clashed with narratives of real estate valuation, the pioneer spirit, etc. The sort of transnational gentrification taking place at Paris coffee shops must therefore be viewed as a complex and often contradictory process whereby international norms are introduced by mobile players, and then negotiated and hybridised. Williamsburg and other coffee capitals of the world, such as Melbourne and Auckland, helped define new urban trends for Paris-based entrepreneurs. Culturally informed perceptions of commercial upgrading forged in English-speaking countries were adopted and circulated by geographically mobile players. These norms were influential enough to be replicated and to serve as models for state-led revitalisation programmes. Still, one of the obstacles to our understanding of this transnational gentrification process lies in the fact that gentrifiers are a heterogeneous, multinational group, whose perceptions reflect several culturally informed views on neighbourhood change and social justice. My research outlined the differences in the way French coffee shop owners viewed gentrification, compared with Anglo coffee shop owners. But this analysis is not aimed at essentialising national characters, rather at emphasising differences in perceptions and practices that bear on processes such as upgrading and hybridisation. Ideologically speaking, France is a Global North country, but its regulated economy and political landscape differ markedly from those of the United States and the United Kingdom. Interestingly, the issue of cultural models and standards harkens back to the origins of the gentrification debate. It was first raised by Ruth Glass, over half a century ago, who remarked that gentrification resembled foreign influence and homogenisation:

it is often said … that the city is in the process of being ‘Americanized’. Indeed, judging from general impressions of the city’s looks and standards of living, the contrast between Central London and mid-town Manhattan, for example, is no longer as striking as it used to be before. (Glass, 2010: 20)

In this sense, transnational gentrification – a heterogeneous, negotiated, multi-faceted set of related processes leading to hybridisation – provides an interesting framework for future discussions on how the local, national and global dimensions can satisfactorily be comprehended.

Conclusion

This analysis of Paris coffee shops uncovered a series of transnational processes that play a part in the ongoing process of commercial upgrading in West 11th. International tourism and migration, and the circulation of business models and ideas, were shown to have significantly influenced neighbourhood change. I demonstrated that the small, geographically mobile entrepreneurs who first imported the Anglo coffee shop model into France enjoyed the support of public and private players, banks as well as state actors. The business itself, described by scholars as a core element of the gentrified street, is viewed in France as a Global North standard. This perception influenced the Paris municipality discourses which encouraged trendy consumption in the revitalised Chinese wholesalers’ area. However, beyond the cross-border circulation of business models and discourses, transnational gentrification must not eclipse other key processes. Crucially, state intervention and deregulation encouraged specific patterns of investment in commercial real estate, a key factor in the high concentration of coffee shops in West 11th. In the end, transnational gentrification should be regarded as a global process that can be negotiated. The coffee shop model was hybridised to fit French culture after the 2015 terror attacks: this translated into linguistic adjustments – speaking French, not just English – as well as more ideological practices – comparing and contrasting France with other Global North locales.

I showed how transnational processes and players guided the development of Anglo-style coffee shops in Paris, thereby introducing a standard feature of the global shopping street into the French business mix. Yet France’s unique combination of state deregulation and intervention differentiates Paris from other cities. This is a clear example of the existence of multiple paths to gentrification, an idea that is defended by French scholars. I have foregrounded striking differences between French and Anglo owners as evidence for the existence of culturally informed perceptions of gentrification. Yet, such differences should not be construed as an argument to deny the existence of heterogeneous attitudes towards gentrification in France or abroad. The idea that the cross-border flows greatly influence gentrification merits more research into the complex interplay of local, transnational, private and public forces driving urban change. Transnational gentrification must therefore be unpacked if we are to develop a nuanced theoretical framework that fits the dimension and complexity of the global scale.