Youth Social Exclusion in Latin America
Youth Social Exclusion in Latin America
- Gonzalo A. SaravíGonzalo A. SaravíCenter for Research and Graduate Studies in Social Anthropology
Summary
Globalization and neoliberalism changed the structure and dynamics of contemporary society and imposed a new social question dominated by exclusion, precariousness, and inequality. Social exclusion is not an individual attribute but a social process; it is an inherent result of a neoliberal capitalist society that produces different disposable figures around the world. Exclusion means not “being outside” of society but “being inside” in unfavorable, subordinated, and devalued material, social, and symbolic conditions. Therefore, youth social exclusion implies a process of socialization, subjectivation, and life trajectories in an unfavorable world: a process of inclusion in exclusion. This process crystalizes in at least three main spheres: space, the self, and the life course of young people. In Latin America, extreme social and material deprivation intersects with gender inequality relations, social (mis)recognition, violence and crime, institutional weakness, and growing spaces of (i)legalisms, among other dimensions. All of them shape the place, subjectivity, and biography of most disadvantaged young people throughout the Latin American continent.
Keywords
Subjects
- Sociocultural Anthropology