Ser jovem morador de áreas populares: um estudo das representações sociais dos jovens sobre seus locais de moradia

Abstract

The relationship between youth and the citizenship has been debated in several ways and from different academic perspectives. Many of these studies have pointed out that poor youth are often the target of negative portrayals that associate them to crime and violence. In this work we study the social representations of young people about their places of residence, based on the economic, political and social changes in recent times. These changes, in our view, are related to the central position that consumer practices are taking on human lives, causing deep changes in the society. We live in an environment where the social life (and individual) is being driven by consumption. Thus, the ability to consume or not becomes a fence between those who deserve social recognition, and those who are doomed to the place of inappropriate for being failure consumers. We discussed in our work, how social relations and organization of city spaces influence the assignment of respect and self esteem of several social sectors, at the time that define the places of recognition and misrecognition in social space. To answer questions concerning the effects of humiliating situations and misrecognizing of youth social existence living in popular areas, we heard 16 young residents of Conjunto Habitacional Selma Bandeira, Benedito Bentes neighborhood in Maceió. Two focus groups were conducted four interviews, and two months of participant observation. The analysis revealed that cases of discrimination and violence experienced by young people is symbolic commonly translated into thoughts not valuing living space, the perception of existential fragility and the gradual retraction of their trajectories through the city. We conclude that the constant exposure to situations of humiliation, discrimination and false recognition associated with a historical reproduction of the precarious economic conditions, social and political subtract in a large extent, the opportunities for youth to build and develop strategies that can produce significant changes in relation to their place in the society. Despite the wish to have social recognition, young people live undergoing a dynamic, a social framework that difficult the expansion of their displacement and the achievements of new spaces from the disputes listed in their places of residence, and in establishing relations with the city of Maceio.