Urban transformations, fear of crime and social entanglement: The case of Maipú, Santiago of Chile

Abstract

The fear that crime produces reconfigures urban living in neighborhoods. This does not refer to the direct experience of crime, but to various factors that unfold on the street, neighborhood and city scale, hiding behind it various fears and concerns. A less explored aspect refers to how this feeling is embedded in urban processes and transformations. Based on a qualitative study carried out in the Maipú district in Santiago de Chile, we investigated the judgments and assessments associated with danger and crime and how these are related to socio-spatial changes. Our thesis is that the perception of insecurity overturns the traditional imagery of a residential middle-class commune, which, after a process of demographic growth and changes in its urban structures, mobilizes new ways of signifying the environment in which it resides. In the neighborhoods, the figure of “empeligrosamiento” towards strangers emerges, a process of subjectivation that redefines social interactions that are not predictable. This process does not occur homogeneously in the territory, but is mediated by the type of neighborhood in which it resides.