The peripheries of belonging: Experiences of social reintegration for young people in Mexico City

Abstract

This paper looks at the spaces traversed by youth in Mexico City who have recently returned from incarceration. Research was conducted with a group of young people participating in the program of a local Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) in Mexico City between January 2020 and July 2021. Through group discussions, artistic activities, and photography assignments, youth revealed different landscapes that had shaped their sense of identity and the paths that they saw available to them: their pre-carceral environments, the adolescent centers of internment or adult prisons where they were incarcerated, the partial institution of the NGO, and the current neighborhoods where they lived. As the COVID-19 quarantine occurred during the project, they also grappled with the return to a space of confinement. Finally, they shared imagined spaces that could support youth like them to find meaning outside of joining criminal groups. These narratives illustrated youth's desire to find legitimacy and belonging as they grew up in marginalized urban neighborhoods where they had limited opportunities for education and formal employment. In these “ugly neighborhoods,” criminal gangs were one of the few visible paths to success. Their experience in carceral spaces only reinforced the ideas that one must look out for oneself and dominate others or be dominated. Then they returned to the same marginalized social contexts, with the added stigma of their incarceration, leaving them (as Alex put it) with a “blurred future” outside of criminal groups.