Abstract

This paper presents a qualitative study carried out with young people from four excluded neighborhoods in Santiago de Chile: La Legua, José María Caro, Lo Hermida and Los Robles. The methodological design involved a variety of data production techniques, allowing us to identify the subjective narratives of their inhabitants, as well as the external perceptions of the neighborhoods. Results suggest that the subjective (or ‘from inside’) perceptions of young people from excluded neighborhoods incorporate the structural inequality that afflicts them, but they are also critical of this reading, as well as the spatial stigmas imputed to them, qualifying such classifications with biographical experiences associated with positive feelings in their neighborhoods. The paper concludes that the concept of excluded neighborhood requires a dialectic articulation between subjectivity and society, or between an internal and external outlook, in order to open new directions for social change.