Cheap luxury

This article explores the articulation between the form of the division of maintenance and servicing labor and the social classification of inhabitants. Based upon fieldwork conducted in Buenos Aires in the second half of the 2000s, it analyzes how the middle classes inhabiting condominiums created during the latest wave of real estate developments have appropriated equipment and services that were until then the privilege of wealthier groups (front desk, tennis courts, gym, etc.) The article shows that the growing precariousness of jobs among the employees who provide these goods and services has been a condition of this cultural appropriation. What defines these cheap luxuries? And what does it mean to have access to them at home? Fieldwork suggests that access to these goods and services is not the same as in the case of wealthier groups, and that the way in which the households view the precarious condition of condominium employees varies according to which fraction of the middle classes they belong to.