School violence and interstitial spaces in Mexico. An ethnographic approach in Uruapan, Michoacán.

Abstract

The objective of this article is to analyze how forms of understanding and experiencing social violence are constructed in school spaces through the identification of interstitial spaces in a secondary school located in Uruapan, Michoacan, Mexico. Interviews, focus groups and participatory mapping were conducted with the intention of gathering qualitative information on the uses and perceptions of school space. Through daily interactions inside and outside institutionalized educational spaces, young people build relationships and perceptions about the space that generate pedagogies on violence, learning about areas of risk, vulnerability, impunity, defenselessness, among others. These interactions arise within highly conflictive scenarios such as the marginal urban areas of Michoacán, a state that in recent years has experienced high rates of armed violence derived from the presence of drug trafficking and the policies to combat it. Through this information, spaces were detected in which links or networks converge that show the intersection and interaction between institutional and daily violence within schools, thus forming pedagogies of violence among the school community.