Researching Social Stratification in Large Urban Zones Today

The current state of globalization is aggravating the inequalities within globalized cities and is generating a high degree of conflict. If we seek to find out to what extent ghettos, agents in conflict or if there is a situation of unsustainable imbalance caused by this degree of inequality, we should consider the objective data and the social consciousness of stratification enclosed in social interaction of the people living in neighborhoods in global cities. This chapter explains how we can study this topic with an example: a town in the Metropolitan Area of Madrid in 2012, with a theoretical perspective that asks about how the human space is today and how everybody builds his social identification, and a methodology that uses the problem-centered interview to collect data. From this perspective, it is discussed whether the new urban social structure tends to be dual or fragmented. When social awareness is studied, it may be understood that urban people tend to develop fragmented identities today based on leisure and family that bond everyone with other by small groups or weak bonds. However, into a poor urban area, there are other boundaries that a lot of people recognize based on class and ethnic differences that mean polarization and conflict, but these ones work only in particular problematic situations. So, the image of system of stratification in large cities appears to be a dynamic thing, under the influence of a series of different factors which are not only global but also local.