Security, mistrust and the symbolic dimension of segregation in gated communities

Abstract

This article seeks to analyze the symbolic dimension of residential segregation within gated communities. It discusses the idea of social and functional integration between gated communities and popular neighborhoods from a micro spatial approach. Based on interviews with residents and employees, it aims to study the practices, their meanings and the representations of residents and domestic workers of gated communities in the Metropolitan Area of the Valley of Mexico. While the practices of physical separation and symbolic distancing within the home reflect discrimination and a historical distrust of the well-off classes towards the poor, the social and spatial safety, and segregation devices that operate as classifiers of individuals based on its degree of reliability and danger, establishes a new order of a private surveillance institution. The physical closeness between groups generates a symbolic segregation, a perverse effect of economic and political segregation.