Citation

Risør H, Pérez IA. Identities 2018; 25(2): 228-244.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/1070289X.2017.1400278

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The paper analyses practices of intimacy among youth in a poor, crime-ridden neighbourhood of Santiago. It argues that their sense of belonging to their neighbourhood and broader society is disjunctive: they inhabit the nation-state without complying with expectations of proper citizenship. Similarly, they dwell in their neighbourhood without identifying with it. Instead, they turn to intimate relations with friends and lovers as spaces of belonging. Through these often failing relationships, they pursue emotional and socio-economic stability and seek to fulfil expectations of social becoming and mobility. These intimate and romantic practices can both be understood as an utopian, affective promise that allows for imagining possibilities of a good life and as a moral exercise in the realisation of an adjacent self and we argue that intimacy constitutes a key site in the quest for social belonging among subaltern youth in neoliberal Chile.

Language: en

Keywords

Belonging; intimacy; nation; subjectivity; utopia; youth