PhD Project “«We are not marginal»: urban experiences, youth imaginaries, and public policies in segregated territories"
Reference: 2025.02164.BD
Scientific area: Sociology
Supervisor: Lígia Ferro (IS-UP); Otávio Raposo (CIES-ISCTE) (co-supervisor)
Timeline: July 2026-July 2028
Abstract: The late 1990s in Portugal were marked by a “moral panic” about young people from urban peripheries, portrayed through their association with danger and disorder, which led to the creation of the Programa Escolhas (PE). Despite changes in the political and media context and discourse, the imaginary surrounding youth from segregated territories remains stigmatizing, whether they are framed as “youth at risk” or “problematic youth.”
This study focuses on understanding and analyzing the urban experiences of young people living in these territories who are beneficiaries of the PE. By combining a multi-sited ethnography in two social housing neighborhoods in the Porto Metropolitan Area with an examination of young people’s socio-territorial representations and a longitudinal analysis of media and political-institutional discourses (PE), the study seeks to understand how these young people use, organize, imagine, and appropriate their neighborhoods and the city, and in doing so, to amplify their voices in recommendations for public policies.
