Re-examining economic and social polarisation in a multi-ethnic metropolitan area: The case of Los Angeles

The thesis that industrial restructuring has generated increasingly socially and economically polarised large cities is re-examined in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles metropolitan area is both ethnically diverse and at the center of the arguments about industrial change and restructuring. The evidence for polarisation is at best mixed. There is some evidence of an income squeeze and of a growing professional class and concomitantly, a decrease in the proportion of skilled and unskilled occupations. However, it is far from polarisation especially when race and ethnicity are taken into account.