ABSTRACT
Class position and identities was expressed through residents' attachment to place on both phenomenological and material levels. It is commonly assumed that the traditional relationship between working-class identity and place attachment was compromised by deindustrialisation and the decline of industry-based communities so much so that focus of contemporary sociological studies of the post-industrial neighbourhood falls on the relationship between middle-class position and identity. Contra to 'locals', who are nostalgically trapped in past and have weak ties to the neighbourhood and transients who are here today, gone tomorrow, elective belonging defines the unique place-based attachment of incoming groups whose chosen place of residence is congruent with their life story. Elective belonging seemed to speak of an attachment to the residual industrial culture. It expressed agency in the face of changing social relations. This ownership related to an emotional and personal investment in the neighbourhood. Locational attachment can reconnect the relationship between class position and identity through the concept of elective fixity.
