| Summary: | SADG/UI4067/2014Do children represent the neighbourhoods where they live? This was the starting point of a research focused on the analysis of children’s lives in six public housing neighbourhoods in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, Portugal. Rooted in social ecology theoretical approaches and childhood studies, which recognize children as social actors, the main goal was to achieve a better understanding of children’s socialization processes considering multi-problematic spaces, but focussed mainly on their involvement in violence and delinquency. Between 2005 and 2009, a case study based on ethnographic and child-centred research methods to explore children’s personal accounts of their lives was conducted in the selected neighbourhoods. Findings highlighted that most children complained about living there, referencing how social and spatial segregation, associated to high exposure to violence, affect them. Violence and crime were labelled as the most prominent problems, and children’s exposure to neighbourhood violence seldom occurs only once or just in one form. The data demonstrated how ‘normalization’ of violence perceived by children influenced their use of the neighbourhood’s places, reducing their sense of the seriousness and effects of violent acts. Violence, briefly discussed from the children’s points of view, served to build their skills, structure their present relations with peers and adults, and simultaneously helped and (re) constructed a permanent social dissatisfaction reinforcing neighbourhood’s stigmatization.publishersversionpublishe
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