In Portugal during the late 1990s, concerns escalated, fueled by the media, regarding the "uncivilized" emerging youths. The evolution of the urban landscape in the large cities of Porto and Lisbon, influenced by growing migration, gave rise to new social dynamics in the public space, especially in the most peripheral areas. This era proved to be a fertile time for artistic expression in neglected regions, with the particularity of producing opposite social representations: "marginality of the street" simultaneously became identities of resistance and a symbol of conflict and disobedience. In response to these fears, public policies were implemented to support these young people, whose educational and professional paths were marked by failure. The "Choices" programme emerged as the main policy, designed to take young people off the streets, encapsulating them in a stigmatized image of a rebellious "gang of teenagers" and the Street as a place that produces these "devience". Over two decades later, amid a recent pandemic that has reshaped public space usage, the same public policy persists in these regions. However, these young people are now portrayed as apathetic and purposeless, even if associated with violence. Intervention programs are now designed to extract them from their homes re-integrating them into public spaces, streets, and communal living. This paper will present a discursive analysis of institutional documents targeting youth in segregated territories and analyze the changing media representations of youth and “their” streets over the past two decades. Additionally, initial insights from ethnographic fieldwork in a social neighborhood in Porto will be shared. The study follows the daily lives of a group of youngsters involved in a social intervention program, allowing access to their subjectivities and practices in public spaces. These initial findings are crossed with the perspectives from the technicians who monitor them and the participant observation of the territorial dynamics of the area. This serves as a preliminary effort to update the social representations of the segregated youth and its appropriation of the streets, as well as the image of the “streets” in public policies.

This presentation was made as part of the project Peripheral Creativities: youth, arts and public policies in segregated territories (PERICREATIVITY)” (2022.08993.PTDC), funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT).

Street,peripheral territories,youth,public policies discourse