The villa and the neighborhood. Childrens perspectives on the urbanization process of the villa 31, City of Buenos Aires.

Abstract

Villas and slums are present in almost every city in Latin America. Even though during most of the XX century the policy towards these neighborhoods has been their eradication, in the last years the has been a turn toward integration, reflected in many urbanization processes. In the villa 31 of the City of Buenos Aires, de government has been implementing a series of territorial interventions that have modified the landscape and also de neighborhood dynamics. These transformations have effects in the daily life of all its inhabitants, including children and young people. In this article we aim to analyze said effects. We stand on the ethnographic perspective and have been doing field work with different children in the neighborhood. Among the conclusions we have found that the teenagers establish a difference between what they perceive as villa and what they perceive as barrio, related to their ability apprehend those territories, which is also conditioned by gender.