Childhood cartography of an urban border in Belo Horizonte city

Abstract

Children, as social subjects, deal with space by assigning specific meanings to it, according to the different dimensions of their identity, one of them being age/generation. Urban spaces are usually built by adults, but, through an appropriation process, children as subjects produce unique ways of relating with the city. In this direction, this article presents data from an investigation carried out with neighbouring children of an urban region that explores how they appropriate the spaces located on an urban border between middle class neighbourhoods and a slum in Belo Horizonte. A proposal of an ethnographic cartography of the “space with children” was developed, in order to grasp the (un)predictable uses and the gaps that they could find in order to appropriate the city, despite the demarcations imposed by the adult world.