Youth discourses about an excluding and segregationist city: from experience to reflection

Abstract

Cities are melting pots of movements and transformations that allow performing analyses from many points of view, and young people are one of the important actors of their evolution. The experiences and practices of these young people generate discourses about the space they live on, and they frequently question those produced by institutions, the media, authorities or social groups. Hence, the objective of this paper is to analyze discourses given by high school students who live and study in an area with high levels of social inequality in Mérida, Mexico. Said discourses are about their use of public and private space, and the meanings attributed to their territory and the rest of the city. We describe the empirical context (the city) as a space of segregation and exclusion, and present theoretical concepts that enable us to understand the city– communication dyad. We used social semiotics as a methodology to explain young people’s discourses which we disaggregated into five fields: dignifying the territory, traveling around the city, using public and private space, damaged self-esteem, discriminatory practices, racism and stigma.