Seguridad e identidad en Carabanchel: los significados de un barrio como herramienta para el Trabajo Social

Abstract

This article seeks to show the link between meanings coming from a neighbourhood, people’s identification with this place, representations of «lack of safety in the streets» and the exercise of social work. Based on the results of research compiled in the Carabanchel neighbourhood of Madrid, the aim is to show the devalued meanings that the neighbourhood has historically carried with itself as a consequence of the relative material exclusion it has suffered and the negative representations built around it by external agents (such as the media). At the same time, the article compiles some of the reinterpretations actively made by people living in Carabanchel, which corroborate or contradict those meanings imposed from outside. Throughout the text, these neighbourhood meanings are connected with discourses and practices based on insecurity, trying to show how different social positions vis-à-vis danger change depending upon the moment within the biographical course of social power.