Childhood, Urban Violence and Territory

Children’s Perceptions of Place and Violence in Public Housing Neighborhoods in Portugal

Abstract

Rooted in socio-ecological theories, this article discusses how children perceive the influence of community and place in the forms of violence they identify in their neighborhoods. The article reports on a case study conducted between 2005 and 2009 based on ethnographic and child-centered research methods to explore children’s personal accounts of their lives, mainly through visual techniques, in six public housing neighborhoods in the Lisbon metropolitan area, Portugal. Most children complained about living there, describing how social, ethnic and spatial segregation affected them. Violence and crime were labeled as the most prominent problems and children’s exposure to neighborhood violence seldom occurs only once or just in one form. The “normalization” of violence perceived by children influences their use of the neighborhoods’ places and reduces their sense of the seriousness and effects of violent acts. Some children emerged not only as victims, but also as violence agents at a young age.