Children's perspectives on disorder and violence in public housing neighbourhoods in Portugal

This paper is based on a PhD in Sociology concerning childhood, violence and delinquency in Portugal. Rooted in social ecology theoretical approaches, and in childhood studies that recognize children as social actors, the research carried out with the support of the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) aimed to a better understanding of children’s socialization processes in communities looked as multi-problematic, especially about children's involvement in violence and delinquency. Within this framework, between 2005 and early 2009, a case study based on ethnographic research has been carried out on six public housing neighbourhoods in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area. Involving a combination of qualitative methodologies, it was sustained in a comprehensive analytical logic that has considered the voice of children as its starting point. Since the option was to look at children as a key source for understanding social dynamics, child-centred research methods were at the core of the project, such as visual techniques (drawings and photography), conversations and interviews. This presentation focuses on the findings obtained in the research’s first stage, which was centred on the question: how do children represent living in their neighbourhoods? The objective, at this stage, was to identify the main contours of children’s socialization in the field, through children’s own accounts of their lives. In general, when expressing about this matter, the negative aspects pointed out by the 312 participants strongly overlap the positive ones. Children turned out to be powerfully aware of what they consider to be the main social problems over there, which can be distributed around four dimensions: poverty and unemployment, physical and social disorders, crime, and (in)security. Not surprisingly, part of the childhood cultures generated here is underpinned by a street culture of violence, and some of the children emerge not only as victims, but also as agents of violence.