ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how inhabitants seek to extend their networks of trust and care by involving people from the neighbourhood as well as people in relations of reciprocity. It highlights the ways in which people seek to define themselves and their position through specific ritual and relational practices, and how they negotiate the question of belonging in the urban context. The chapter focuses on the understanding of sociality in processes of mobility, and the significance of practices of reciprocity and ritual kinship, or compadrazgo. Relations of compadrazgo are established on a wide range of different occasions, for example on behalf of a child in relation to baptism or corte-del-pelo For the first cutting of a baby's hair, an occasion for which padrinos are appointed and gifts are exchanged. The appointment of padrinos for children is seen as particularly important and as potentially of great significance for their future.
