Intrinsically Advantageous? Reexamining the Production of Class Advantage in the Case of Home Mortgage Modification*.

MORTGAGE modification; SOCIAL classes; PRIVILEGE (Social sciences); SOCIAL networks; HOMEOWNERS; UNITED States social conditions; TWENTY-first century; SOCIAL history; HOUSING

Social class confers a bundle of capabilities, practices, and beliefs that are conventionally assumed to be hierarchical, rigid, and self-perpetuating. However, this framework often belies the fact that these qualities needn't be necessarily or exhaustively advantageous. In particular, social change may render obsolete class-linked characteristics that were advantageous in previous periods. Drawing on interviews with homeowners at risk of foreclosure and a yearlong ethnography of a housing counseling organization, I find that although the housing crisis of the “Great Recession” affected both working- and middle-class homeowners alike, the practices of working-class borrowers better positioned them to exploit a number of informational advantages in the rapidly changing mortgage modification setting. My findings are a departure from existing research that treats middle-class capabilities and practices as intrinsically advantageous. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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