The research for erasing social stigma: a way to build citizenship

Abstract

The present article can be viewed from an ethnographic perspective, which contempaltes the way of participation of a young group of leaders of high school. It starts with an understanding of their imagination and tries to analyze the way in which both, male and female students of poor and deprived areas exercise citizenship.

This way of understanding citizenship, -within a context of modernism and radical speed of change brough out by a free market society- required the search for new ways of entering this view which would enable at the same time an interpretation of the ways young people are doing different kinds of politics. In other words, it was necessary to go beyond the classic notion of citizenship, giving it more freedom from its tight framework of rights and duties.

The article describes the school institution and its surroundings from the standpoint of these leaders which brings an understanding of their view of the school, their expectancies and wishes in relation  to "being well" in the school they are involved and integrated with, by moments in a forthcoming society. From there on the study deals with the way in which young leaders aim to blot social stigmas that characterize the school which is located in a marginal area of the Great Santiago city which gives the opportunity for a better understanding of their form of citizenship.