Abstract

DI LEO, Pablo Francisco. Institutional Experiences and Agencies of Young People from Popular Sectors in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Reflexiones [online]. 2019, vol.98, n.2, pp.141-158. ISSN 1659-2859.  http://dx.doi.org/10.15517/rr.v98i2.34604.

This article presents results of a funded social research which main objective is to analyze the experiences and agencies of young people from popular sectors in institutions that promote the access and the exercise of rights in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires (MABA), Argentina. For the data construction the researchers conducted, as a qualitative methodological strategy, in-depth interviews and biographical narratives with fourteen young people in five institutions. This work presents three categories emerging from the analysis of youth narrations, called self-narratives: discovery, moral (re)orientation, and collective transformation. Around these narratives is discussed in theoretical terms the problem of young people agencies and identity constructions, using conceptual tools from the sociologies of experience (Dubet 2013), the individual (Araujo y Martuccelli 2012), and the contemporary social theory (Ema López 2004; Mahmood 2006; Taylor 2006; Butler 2012; Heller 2017). The article concludes that these institutions provide young people with various supports that open up opportunities to re-signify and exercise their rights in socially vulnerable territories. In this way, they build agencies and exercise their citizenship in ways that do not respond to abstract theoretical or legal definitions, but are anchored in their experiences, everyday ways of cohabiting and projecting along with other people.

Keywords : Youth agency; Narrative identity; Young people; Popular sectors; Institutional experiences.

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