Ambivalent places: the lived space of urban youth in border cities

Abstract

The spatiality of urban youth constitutes the central interest of this paper, focusing on the way in which they experience the living spaces that shape their daily lives, by identifying and qualifying places of enjoyment, suffering, security and insecurity. To do this, discussion groups comprised by male and female high school students from public schools located in socially disadvantaged areas in Tijuana and Mexicali in Mexico were formed and asked to elaborate a cartography with four types of places: those where they have a good time, those where they have a bad time, those where they feel protected and those where they feel at risk. They were also asked provide the reasons for such situations. This yielded an inventory of places with contrasting affective tones, which make evident some ways in which the living spaces of young people are affected by the context they inhabit.