Survival tactics of street-culture youth in Xalapa

Abstract

The article presented here addresses a segment of survival experiences of the youth of street culture, conceptualized as creative tactics of exclusion in daily life in the face of neoliberal social control mechanisms in urban space. The objective is to analyze a set of youth social practices, as an expression of street sociality that strains power relations in spatial disputes with state and non-state actors. From an empirical investigation, treated theoretically, the purpose is to show the existence of a complex framework of mobility tactics, symbolic appropriation of spaces, forms of organization and collective identity, product of the accumulated knowledge of life in the streets, tending to overflow the mechanisms of segregation, internment and urban violence in the city of Xalapa.