Abstract
This article addresses the social reintegration of young people studying in the prison of La Araucanía, Chile. Our objective is to describe the social representation of young people between 19 and 29 years old, who are currently serving a custodial sentence, in their reintegration process after secondary education. We start off with the acknowledgement that both social mobility and educational career are historically marked by the reproduction of sociocultural inequality: Educational structures do not fulfill the mission of providing tools for a persons’ life. Our article is based on a unique case study in which a current phenomenon is investigated; in this case, social reintegration within an authentic context—prison. Semi‐structured interviews were applied during our research and participants’ narratives were methodologically triangulated. Our article concludes that, given the presence of homogenizing and inefficient study plans, young people demand deep changes that are linked to a social pedagogy, which values their skills and life project through an awareness process. This process would enable them to explore their reality and cultural action in order to become conscious young people and co‐creators of their future once in freedom.
Highlights
We begin by clarifying the question: What does impris‐ onment mean? Its distinctive features are found inside prisons and, daily life under imprisonment is determined by the characteristics and routines of a prison regime based on segregation and security (Foucault, 2002)
To gain a deeper understanding, the researchers chose to answer: What are the social representations of young people about the process of social reintegration? The answers allow us to approach the life trajectories of young people in prison and the consequences of their social behavior in all its complexity
Social representations are established as the set of mechanisms carried out by social, cultural, and psycho‐symbolic studies; they have the ability to enhance the deployment of common sense and sub‐ jectivity, which are characteristics of qualitative research, with the purpose of understanding and interpreting the sense and meaning that the participants give to the social reintegration process
Summary
We begin by clarifying the question: What does impris‐ onment mean? Its distinctive features are found inside prisons and, daily life under imprisonment is determined by the characteristics and routines of a prison regime based on segregation and security (Foucault, 2002). The reality of imprisonment in Chile is characterized by being at the base of a punitive society in which power control mechanisms categorize the person who breaks the law as a criminal, as an enemy of society, Social Inclusion, 2021, Volume 9, Issue 4, Pages 60–68 and in which crime is a civil war act, an attack on society. This makes it possible to justify public action as a defense mechanism that is complemented by imprisonment by suspending civil rights, erasing the offenders’ citizenship, imposing an invisible power mark on him; a change of sta‐ tus that imposes a persons’ diminution (Foucault, 2016). Crime is an attack on society that justifies daily non‐criminal coercion; a form of control that is linked to punishment through institutions that subtract the person and set productive and normalization structures (Foucault, 2016)
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