“Here, We Are Middle Class”: Aspirational Materialities and Boundary Work in Self‐Constructed Neighborhoods in Bogotá

ABSTRACT Urban studies have tended to locate middle‐class urbanism in formally planned neighborhoods, while self‐built settlements are typically analyzed through frameworks of informality and poverty. This article challenges that dichotomy based on 5 years of ethnographic research in neighborhoods of informal origin in Bogotá, Colombia. I argue that in these contexts middle‐class identities emerge through what I term aspirational materialities—transformations of the domestic and neighborhood environment that express projects of social mobility. Practices of building, expanding, and beautifying homes—including vertical expansion, finished façades, garages, and security devices—function not only as architectural improvements but also as means of producing social distinctions. The article brings together approaches to symbolic boundaries with the anthropology of space and materiality to analyze spatial‐material boundary work, through which residents use the built environment to claim recognition and respectability. First, I examine how everyday evaluations of façade “improvements” morally classify neighbors according to notions of effort, discipline, and neglect. Second, I show how residents mobilize the city's socio‐spatial imaginary to claim an intermediate position between the “poor” and the “elite,” turning urban geography into evidence of status. The article contributes to debates on middle classes in the Global South by showing how class is constructed through material and spatial practices of distinction in contexts of inequality.