ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses “everyday” notions of citizenship and narratives of the city among university students and young professionals in Lima, exploring how these two are connected. It builds on the insight that citizenship discourses “on the ground” are linked to people’s lived experience of society, and their relationship with the state and with fellow citizens. Existing contemporary ethnographic writing on the global and Latin American middle classes focuses largely on dynamics that separate the middle class from other classes and drive them apart. In contrast to this narrative, the young people represented in this study identified segregation, division and inequality as major social problems and sources of violence and incivility, and their citizenship discourses reflected this perception. Their narratives thus challenge common interpretations of middle-class politics and citizenship in contemporary ethnographic writing.
The chapter first explores informants’ narratives of the city, focusing on narratives of segregation and incivility. It then discusses one specific, normative notion of citizenship, which is grounded in these narratives and directly responds to the problem of division and segregation. By focusing on relationships, rather than rights or duties, this “relational” notion of “good citizenship” combines awareness of the other with horizontality and respect for difference.
