Physical and Virtual Public Spaces for Youth: The Importance of Claiming Spaces in Lima, Peru

Abstract

Today’s youth live in a world where public life is changing rapidly and public spaces are no longer restricted to the physical urban landscape. With the global reach of the Internet, youth are increasingly surrounded by and immersed in new technologies which offer them access to virtual space. Access to virtual space was until recently limited to the higher- and middle-income groups in Latin American cities, but the rapid proliferation of the so-called cabinas (cyber cafes) and cable connections at home in low-income neighborhoods has brought virtual space within reach of the hitherto excluded. This chapter explores how youngsters from a peripheral settlement in Lima, Peru, are maneuvering both physical and virtual spaces. The chapter demonstrates that in a context of adult-regulated physical public spaces and physical insecurity, processes of socialization and identity formation are increasingly taking place online. The virtual world can provide youngsters with a new realm in which they can weaken their parents’ vigilance over their everyday lives. This chapter concludes that the rise in virtual socialization does not however imply that physical public space becomes unimportant for the youngsters in these settlements but, instead, reveals a fascinating interplay in marking identities in physical and virtual public space.