“Those Who Do Not Have the Opportunity to Know This, Will Never Understand”. Stigma and Recognition: Affective and Moral Dimension in the Youth of Urban Periphery of Five Chilean Cities.

Territorial stigma has often been understood from its structural aspects of production and reproduction (Wacquant, 2014), and its effects on the identity, self-esteem, integration, and social cohesion of the residents. Other approaches include the agency of people, and as such, integrate a subjective dimension. This research proposes to analyze territorial stigma from the perspective of recognition (Honnett, 2010), by exploring the affective and moral dimensions of 44 young people who live in five different territories in different cities of Chile. These territories are widely known for their negative attributes, been stigmatized for at least two decades. Different than their parents, these youngsters' biographies are built from the stigma that already existed when they were born.

Results show that stigma occurs not only through labeling and the imposition of negative identity but also through a lack of recognition and positive assessment of the ways of living that are developed in the territory. As such, the action of stigmatization erases the ways of living of the community and the positive aspects that these youngsters experience in the everyday life of their communities. Young people contest the stigma in visible and invisible ways, as every time they make life decisions that are different from the stereotype of the stigma, they are taking an opposing stand, resisting the stigma applied to them. At the same time, in those where stigma is accepted, there is a constant search to resolve a conflict, looking for strategies that allow them to overcome stigma, instead of getting tangled in it. The different responses to stigma show that the lack of recognition experienced by the youth is contested in their everyday practices as a way to overcome it.