Integrating computational analysis with in-depth fieldwork across suburbs and corporate boardrooms, Julien Migozzi's research shows how credit scoring has restructured the property market, classifying home-seekers on the fly, reshaping value chains and organizational practices in the real estate industry around data extraction, and shifting the logics of urban segregation.

Viewing class formation through this lens of digitized markets, Dr. Migozzi traces how the South African middle class is made through the production of a "mortgaged periphery," where middle-income households earn their middle-class status by scoring "high enough" for debt-leveraged homeownership. Here, in post-apartheid suburbia, physical fences and algorithmic barriers work together to regulate residential mobility and access to housing wealth, materializing class boundaries through asset ownership, property aesthetics, and debt relationships.

About the speaker

Julien Migozzi is an economic and urban geographer, and an Assistant Professor in Development Studies at the University of Cambridge. At the intersection of geography, urban studies, and economic sociology, Julien’s research investigates how digital technologies transform markets, cities, and inequalities, with a particular interest in housing and financial markets. He is a coauthor of the Atlas of Finance (Yale University Press, 2024).