TOTAL PANIC: Residents and visitors in Barra are terrified. They are constant targets of the numbers of children and adolescents, in a street situation, who live by practising assaults in the area … Barra has been transformed into a ‘no-man's-land’.
Letter to the editor, A Tarde, 19 May 2005We have lived here for years; we are sleeping on the street, we are making friendships. If people from elsewhere arrive, robbing, we don't allow it … We're the security of the street.
Marcelo, 20 years oldIntroduction
A significant proportion of young, poor, Brazilians spend much of their time in city centres, but only a minority live permanently on the street. The majority migrate between the street, institutions and the private homes of relatives and friends. Although there are children and women among them, the majority are young men in their early teens to mid-twenties, and it is their voices that are represented in this article. In the city of Salvador in north-east Brazil, some of these young men hang out in Barra, a middle-class neighbourhood and tourist destination. Their presence in Barra is complex and ambiguous, capable – as the two quotations above suggest – of both causing fear and ensuring the safety of the neighbourhood residents. The quotes capture a dichotomy that is typical of discussions about crime and the fear of crime.Footnote 1 Young men in a street situation are often referred to in negative and stereotypical terms in the media, public opinion and policy-making; they are usually labelled as threatening as opposed to threatened, offenders rather than victims, and fearless instead of fearful.Footnote 2 Reviewing literature from Europe and North America, Pain states that these young people, although continuously at risk from crime themselves, are commonly defined as ‘hard-to-reach’ and regularly excluded from research, with the result that little knowledge has emerged about their experiences.Footnote 3
This article is based on longitudinal and multi-method fieldwork, including interviews and participant observation, monitoring how the different groups in Barra divide time and space. In exploring interactional patterns in Barra, the links between social identities and power relations are analysed, invoking concepts of social inclusion and exclusion. The spatial dimensions of Barra as a community are emphasised, which is atypical, but essential, when exploring social relations and fear.Footnote 4 In order to facilitate the study of complicated urban lives, the temporal dimensions of activities conducted between day and night are stressed.Footnote 5
The article has three main aims. The first is to include the experiences of a ‘hard-to-reach’ group: not only are young men occupying the street seldom included in literature concerning crime and urban space, but the voices of grown-up ‘street children’ in the majority world are also frequently ignored.Footnote 6 Second, I explore how the character of place is essentially temporal, revealing how temporality affects social interaction between the young men and formal residents according to dimensions of dominance and subordination. Third, I address the multifaceted and dynamic relations of urban space, dismantling in the process some of the usual dichotomies, such as distinctions between victim/offender, feared/fearful, and safe/dangerous spaces.Footnote 7 The empirical material demonstrates the complex, multiple and ambiguous positions of young men on the street in relation to trust, fear and crime.
Young People and Urban Space
The growing body of empirical literature that considers the socio-spatial lives of young people in urban settings reveals that the use of time and space within the domestic sphere is often subject to parental surveillance and control, meaning that the street is often the only place that many young people can carve out for themselves.Footnote 8 Yet, research also suggests that many of the public spaces which young people share with adults are becoming increasingly restricted to them.Footnote 9 Nevertheless, many young people resist this control, invading and manipulating the spaces that already exist and inhabiting spatial and temporal marginalities.Footnote 10 Hence public spaces are not only potentially dangerous for young people, but can also be empowering even though research further suggests that young people seldom manage to overturn adult hegemony in public space.Footnote 11
One spatial strategy available to those with power is ‘othering’, the construction of stereotypes of those whose lifestyles do not conform to hegemonic values, and which allows the confinement of those being ‘othered’ to the socio-spatial periphery.Footnote 12 Young people in general are often defined as the ‘other’ and young men in particular are constructed as a threatening ‘other’, demonised as a menace to law and order.Footnote 13 Young men are popularly imagined as being a risk, and to a lesser extent at risk, in engaging in risk-seeking behaviour in order to demonstrate masculinity.Footnote 14 Yet, recent research with young men reveals a high risk of becoming the victims of crime and violence themselves, complex feelings of fear, including being ‘fearful’, and the use of safety strategies, including when offending.Footnote 15 One strategy is the use of social networks to counteract stereotypes of group or place, thus enhancing feelings of safety.Footnote 16
Public discourses have generated an image of young people on the street as the ‘other’ within a wider discourse that defines norms of family, home and childhood.Footnote 17 Young people in a street situation are terminologically divided into two categories in the academic literature: ‘street children/youth’ and ‘homeless youth’. While the former is normally used to describe young people on the street in the majority world, the latter labels their counterparts in the minority world. In conformity with these labels, many would probably define the young men described in this article as ‘street youth’. I consider this term problematic, supporting the arguments of Panter-Brick that the terms obscure young peoples' social heterogeneity and conflict with the evidence that young people move on and off the street with some fluidity.Footnote 18 In the absence of a suitable label, I therefore refer to ‘young men’ throughout this article.
The academic focus on young people on the street in the majority world changed in accordance with the emerging paradigm of childhood research, later called ‘the new social sciences of childhood’.Footnote 19 As a response to developmental psychology and what academics perceived to be a false view of children as simply passive social subjects, key concepts shifted from dependency to competence and agency. This shift was echoed in research on ‘street children’, changing the focus from their vulnerability and victimisation to their resistance and survival strategies. Contemporary research on the existing geographies of young people in a street situation demonstrates that they exert some control over their lives.Footnote 20 Many have focused on the marginality and exclusion of ‘street children’, such as Butler, who asserts that many poor young Brazilians are socially excluded by policies, practices and institutions.Footnote 21 Likewise, Young demonstrates their marginal and stigmatised position within urban space.Footnote 22 Research also explores young peoples' rejection of their stigma and spatial strategies of resistance when occupying urban space – for instance, by illustrating how they appropriate urban space to suit their everyday activities.Footnote 23 Spatial strategies mentioned include nomadism – that is, circulating through the city in search of safety, respect, care and freedom – and using spaces that are immoral, impossible or impractical for adult use.Footnote 24 There have also been a few attempts to demonstrate that, although many young people live without parental guidance, they constantly interact with adults in their everyday lives.Footnote 25
The central tenets of research on ‘homeless youth’ will not be rehearsed here, but there are some aspects that are particularly welcome for the purposes of this article and thus will be briefly mentioned. People in a street situation are often socially excluded and constructed as a threatening ‘other’.Footnote 26 They are believed to engage in criminal behaviour – it is ‘they’ who are causing problems for ordinary citizens, it is ‘they’ who are driving away tourists and making the streets unsafe – thus their removal is designed to increase the general feeling of security in society.Footnote 27 Although often perceived as a risk, studies have found that these individuals are more likely to experience violence than the general population.Footnote 28 Gaetz suggests that young people on the street are easier victimised because they move through urban spaces that bring them into contact with hostile strangers and potential offenders, without the possibility of recovering in a secure environment or acquiring the protection of authority figures.Footnote 29 Although legal and illegal money-making activities provide income to meet day-to-day needs, they may also increase risk.Footnote 30 Also referring to young people in a street situation, Pain argues that there is no absolute distinction between offending and victimisation – many are involved in both, and sometimes the two actions are connected.Footnote 31
Barra, Salvador, Brazil
Brazil struggles with the dramatic distance between its upper and lower social strata.Footnote 32 Although the country ranks as the ninth-largest economy in the world, over 40 per cent of the population can be considered poor to the extent that their incomes do not meet their basic needs.Footnote 33 Socio-economic differences are also echoed in spatial binaries in urban areas – whereas the middle and upper classes often reside in apartment buildings, the lower classes live in the favelas. These socio-spatial segregations have implications for everyday life. While the upper classes create enclosed spaces for their leisure and living, preferring to socialise internally, the streets are increasingly seen as places where the poor make a living.Footnote 34 Lessons in separation and prejudice start early: well-to-do parents prohibit children from playing in the streets, keeping them inside the courtyards, while young people are sent to shopping centres and other semi-public areas. This is in stark contrast to the poorer areas, where public spaces are saturated with children and youngsters.Footnote 35
The empirical observations in this article are from the city of Salvador and specifically the neighbourhood of Barra. The neighbourhood has multiple meanings. It is a residential area with high-rise apartment buildings, mainly for middle-class citizens. It is also a commercial area, offering governmental and hospital services as well as some of the city's chicest boutiques, restaurants and shopping centres. Additionally, Barra is a tourist destination, with its sandy coastline adorned with characteristic fortresses and a lighthouse. In comparison to other neighbourhoods in Salvador, Barra maintains a high standard when it comes to roads, street lighting, garbage collection and police surveillance. The neighbourhood symbolises power, wealth and social success for both the included and the excluded. Poor people and brick houses, usually associated with the vast favelas located on the city's periphery, do not fit the residents', politicians' and investors' images of Barra. However, in spite of waves of gentrification, clusters of brick houses continue to exist in the midst of hotels and high-rises. The neighbourhood also adjoins a favela.
In addition to its residential, commercial and touristic meanings, Barra has another, probably unintended significance: the pavements in front of the high-rises are used as leisure and work spaces by many of the city's poor. Barra is an area where different groups have established opposing attachments to place, resulting in territorial conflicts. These are particularly antagonistic between the formal residents and the poor young people occupying the street environment. Many of these young people are part of a youth culture with roots in the criminal milieu of the favelas, with a specific style of clothing, way of speaking and taste in music. They call themselves pivetes and maloqueiros, adopting expressions with negative connotations that are often used to offend and giving them their own positive significance in terms of pride. Although there are children and females, the majority are males in their early teens to mid-twenties. Their skin colour varies, but is in general darker than that of the Portuguese-originated middle class. Even though a few have formal jobs, many work in the informal labour market. There are also many who are involved in crime, either in addition to other forms of work or as a substitute. In the last decade crack cocaine has partly replaced glue-sniffing and marijuana. Because of the addictive nature of crack, its arrival has caused changes in the everyday lives of the young, with an increasing number being engaged in crime, for instance.
This group includes young people who live both on the street and in the favelas, but who hang out regularly in Barra. The number of young people who actually sleep on the streets in Barra is difficult to pinpoint because of the migratory and seasonal aspects of street life, peaking during the summer months and at carnival time.
Of my 11 key informants, seven have lived in Barra for long periods of time as children and adolescents. Three of them were living in houses during the last period of fieldwork: Paulo and Thiago were living with girlfriends, and Silvio was living alone. Paulo was still working daily in Barra, minding cars, but the other two were avoiding Barra out of fear of reprisals for thefts. The childhoods of the four more recent arrivals in Barra are diverse. Gil spent his childhood in an orphanage, but has lived on the street in Barra in recent years (when not imprisoned). He was living on the street in an adjacent neighbourhood because of his ill-fated involvement in drug trafficking. Marcelo spent his childhood in his father's home, but gradually moved out onto the streets because of drug abuse. Joaquim and Leo claim to be living with their families, but they spent periods in their adolescence living in Barra, and still sleep on the street several days a week.
Methodological Reflections
I encountered Barra for the first time when I was 11 years old. In many respects our two-month family holidays resembled the everyday life of the middle classes, travelling habitually by car, avoiding the streets after dark, and moving between our closed apartment building, the shopping centre and the yacht club. In 2002 I became acquainted with some of the young people who lived on these streets, five of whom would later become my key informants. In 2005 I carried out my first fieldwork, resulting in my master's thesis, followed by two more periods of fieldwork in 2006 and 2008–9 for my PhD.
The empirical material presented in this article thus comes from a longitudinal, multi-method study, which is essential in research with young people on the street.Footnote 36 The article is based on empirical material drawn from participant observation in Barra as well as conversations and interviews with the neighbourhood's different users. Monitoring everyday life is important in order to map out interactional patterns between the different social groups. I thus spent many mornings, afternoons, sunsets and sunrises in the public space of Barra, trying to capture the temporal changes in space. The conversations and interviews added substantial information to the field notes. These included informal conversations with poor young people who spent much of their time on the streets. Throughout my research I had contact with approximately 60 people of both sexes and of ages ranging from 8 to 30 years, the majority of whom were young men. With my key informants, 11 males (18 to 28 years old), I also conducted narrative interviews. Recognising that the notion of public space in Brazil is highly ‘masculine’ and that gender and maturity shape the life trajectories of people living in street environments, it is essential to emphasise that this article does not cover the female perspective.Footnote 37
Young people on the street are reckoned to be vulnerable because of their age, socio-economic disadvantage and stigmatised status.Footnote 38 In order to moderate potential power differences between myself and the participants, the latter were asked to provide their own individual consent, being informed of the voluntary nature of their participation and the constantly available option of withdrawal. Privacy and convenience were achieved by conducting interviews at places and times chosen by the participants, and confidentiality is maintained by using pseudonyms.
I have followed seven of the key informants over several years.Footnote 39 Well-established relationships increased the quality of the interviews because relationships of trust facilitated talk on sensitive topics, such as involvement in crime and police abuse. Knowing their backgrounds also facilitated asking appropriate questions, in addition to verifying their stories to some extent. My longitudinal relationships with several of my key informants and others on the street enabled access to the street ambience. Most young people on the street have experienced harmful relationships with adults and are often distrustful of them.Footnote 40 With time, I established a ‘friendly’ research position with the young men, modelled on a bond of friendship that was achieved by showing respect and expressing a desire to be with and learn from them.Footnote 41
It was also essential continuously to express loyalty and trust. My loyalty was implicitly or explicitly proven in encounters with offensive residents or aggressive police. Demonstrating trust and proving trustworthiness was a continuous, mutual process. To trust is to accept vulnerability and the risk of potential harm based on positive expectations in exchange for the benefits of cooperation.Footnote 42 I showed my trust in them, for instance, by accompanying them to places normally defined as dangerous (nocturnal Barra, favelas, places where drugs were distributed). My benefits were friendship, street protection, research cooperation and being continuously introduced to new people on the street. The young men showed trust in me in several ways, such as telling me their life stories and not concealing their involvement in crime in my presence. The young people also benefited from these relationships of trust, firstly in terms of friendship and secondly through occasional material opportunities such as receiving clothes, food and bus tickets when the urge came to return to their family homes. Thirdly there were benefits to my acquaintance such as police awareness that I would ask questions if someone disappeared or was imprisoned.
Proving loyalty, trust and trustworthiness also led to some unpleasant situations, such as being witness to assaults. Being robbed is humiliating and frightening. Even though I often sympathised with the victims I could not interfere because that would have meant breaching these relationships of trust.Footnote 43 I often had to remind myself that my ethical considerations were directed towards my informants and not towards society in general. Besides, reflecting on the consequences, I felt more empathy with the thief getting caught, ending up with bruises or broken ribs or being imprisoned, than with a tourist who had been deprived of his Swiss watch.
In order to increase my understanding of the other users of Barra, I also carried out structured, open-ended interviews with a total of 38 middle-class residents, business people and police officers. The business people were in general easy to find and willing to participate. The middle-class residents were harder to reach, since those encountered on the street only represented the voices of those who actually use public space. Doing home visits, walking from door to door, I realised that no one was willing to let strangers in. Thus the interviews were conducted in apartment buildings where I had resided and where the gatekeepers knew me. I was also denied access to police officers on street duty by the head of the military police department, who argued that an interview with him as a representative was sufficient. Thus police officers were encountered either through acquaintances or while on patrol.
Temporal Patterns
In order to explore some of the complicated facets of Barra that are related to the different uses and users of the streets, the dimensions of time and space are essential. Massey asserts that relations between objects do not simply occur in space and time; it is these relationships themselves which create and define space and time.Footnote 44 Therefore relations and interactions between the two main groups that are the focus of this analysis – the poor young men, and the middle-class residents and traders – continuously define and redefine the meanings of Barra. The dimension of space makes possible contemporaneous multiplicity and enables a multiple, complimentary use of Barra by both its formal and informal inhabitants. Time, on the other hand, as Massey argues, is the dimension of change. It is this kind of temporal change that will be examined here, and more specifically the circadian rhythm of Barra.
Before continuing, there are three points about multiplicity that have to be emphasised. First, all the categories of people represented here are heterogeneous. It is therefore important to acknowledge individual differences. The opinions of one police officer do not necessarily represent those of other police officers, and the behavioural pattern of one young man is never the same as another, for instance, concerning involvement in crime. Second, in order to grasp the complexity of patterns of interaction, it is important to stress that the relationships are dynamic and multifaceted. This is not only because individuals change over time, but also because they have multiple identities. Third, recognising that space makes possible multiplicity, it becomes evident that temporality is not unequivocal but intricate and ambiguous. The temporal dimensions in Barra are thus complex and the practices intertwined. For instance, substance abuse and assaults are treated as night-time activities here, but may occur earlier in the day.
Nevertheless, the empirical material reveals that there are significant temporal patterns of interaction between the poor young men and the residents, and it is these patterns that are explored here. There are mainly two different interactional patterns characterised by different positions, territorial strategies and modes of power distribution. The patterns roughly coincide with the circadian rhythm. Although the shifts are gradual, creating overlapping twilight zones around dusk and dawn, a clear-cut division between ‘daytime’ and ‘night-time’ has been made in order to facilitate the analysis.
Daytime interaction
As mentioned when describing the empirical context of Salvador, social interaction is marked by considerable social distance between classes. This is evident in the daytime interactional pattern between the young men on the one hand and the residents and traders on the other. The former depend in many ways on the latter to be able to remain in Barra and obtain fresh water, food and money. They thus have a lower social position, having to adjust to the hegemonic social norms simultaneously as they constantly encounter acts of discrimination and exclusion.
Several residents expressed discriminatory and stereotypical views of poor people in general – for instance, by discussing their presence as a hygiene issue. The female head of the Association of Residents of Barra explained: ‘The beach has stopped being pleasant. They [poor people] lack access to education and pollute the beach. They do their necessary in the water.’ Even the workers were criticised, as a letter to the editor of the local newspaper demonstrates:
It's incredible what the government allows to happen at one of the postcard images of Salvador: The lighthouse of Barra. We only see street vendors with their cool boxes, selling sugarcane juice, coconuts … A great filth is spread throughout Barra, without anyone to inspect it or a minimum of civilisation. It is impossible for Salvador to continue to be so messy, filthy, causing an awful impression on the tourists that fill the city.Footnote 45
Many people wanted to regulate the use of Barra by ‘othering’ the poor users, trying to push them back to the geographical as well as social periphery. The category of poor who experienced the highest level of ‘othering’ was the young men. They were not only perceived as unhygienic and annoying, but often constructed as a threat as well. As one female resident (33 years old) said, ‘You never know if they are going to rob you or assault you’. Nor were men working legally spared this attitude, as another female resident (36 years old) revealed: ‘They rob. I don't trust the ones who work either – if only they get the opportunity …’
The discrimination was apparent in everyday encounters in Barra: visible signs such as skin colour, clothing and speech immediately identified class background and decided the terms of interaction or its avoidance. These subtle interactional processes were explained by Leo: ‘The rich know better how to explain themselves, knowing the way of talking. The poor have their slang, their way of dressing … Even the money is different; the poor take out a five-reais note from their pockets, while the rich take out a 50-reais note.’
Leo lived with his family but appeared in Barra every day, looking for legal as well as illegal income opportunities and hanging out with his friends. He was very conscious of class differences and felt that he was treated differently because he was poor. In encounters with poor young men, many middle-class citizens react with exclusionary performances, such as hostile gazes, clutching their belongings, walking stiffly or crossing the street, or complete avoidance of the public space. Silvio, who spent a great part of his younger years in Barra and used to have a fixed spot for minding cars, said: ‘When the women were going to the supermarket, they would pass by in absolute terror.’ These reactions provoked feelings of being out of place among the young men, and many, including Silvio, were offended.
Despite discrimination, many young men from the favelas continue to inhabit Barra. The majority come from households that are struggling with issues of poverty, domestic violence and substance abuse. They have little formal education, and few chances to find a job in the formal labour market. The wealth of Barra's residents, tourists and traders creates more financial opportunities than can be found in their deprived neighbourhoods of origin. Furthermore, the majority of the key informants and the majority of the young men who keep returning to Barra grew up in this neighbourhood. For some of them, this is the only way of living they know. Many glamorised their childhoods on the street, when they were able to use their ‘street stigma’ to evoke sympathy and charity. Diego followed his older brothers into the street at an early age. He remembered the warnings about the difficulties of growing older:
They [my brothers] used to tell me: ‘These people here are only giving us things because we're young. When we grow up they will treat us like the guy over there. Do you see that guy over there, begging money for food? And the people say, “No, I haven't got any change.”’ My brother told me to watch while the people called him vagabundo. ‘One day you'll also be called vagabundo’ – and it turned out to be true.Footnote 46
One male resident confirmed the predictions of Diego's brothers. He spoke about an incident at the petrol station where he had given away food to a boy. Seeing the boy share it with some older ones, he felt humiliated and outraged: ‘I was supporting the vagabundos!’
The statement of a male police officer (43 years old) also highlights the implications of maturity: ‘The street child lives on the street because of various problems. A pivete is a street dweller who causes problems. A vagrant does not cause problems but uses drugs because of the lack of other options.’ When it comes to gaining trust from the surrounding world, it seems as if the periods of adolescence and young adulthood are the most difficult in a male street career. Growing up, these individuals' status changes from victim to offender, and then apparently changes back to victim when they become senior vagrants. Several of the young men also observed gender differences in street life: Marcelo explained that while women who begged were given money, men who did so were often told to find a job. The observation suggests that Brazilian society considers adult males to be breadwinners: they are physically strong, so they should work to gain what is theirs.
Because the young men have less access to charity, they earn money and food in other ways, through either legal or illegal activities. Both the interview material and observations confirm that nearly all preferred legal work whenever the opportunity presented itself, which was primarily during daytime. This included shoe-shining, minding cars, running errands, vending and helping out in kiosks or restaurants. These opportunities are given to them by middle-class residents and people in the business sector – the young men therefore depend on the trust, goodwill and preferences of these individuals.Footnote 47 To increase their chances of earning money and food legally, many young men strategised in order to cover their street stigma. They were preoccupied with their looks and with being clean, sober and proper; Silvio, for example, always washed himself and brushed his teeth before he began minding cars to earn money for breakfast. They also switched to middle-class modes of speaking – that is, talking more slowly and clearly. Gil explained the importance of courtesy in being able to stay in the neighbourhood: ‘For the police it's the residents who count. If [the residents] like you, [the police] leave you alone; if not they shoo you away. People judge by looks and attitudes. It's not about beauty, it's about politeness; you being polite … greeting with “good morning”, “good afternoon”, “good night”.’
Thiago explained that the young men's custom of greeting the formal residents as ‘auntie’ and ‘uncle’ meant using synonyms of caring, friendship and respect. Diego also highlighted the importance of showing satisfaction and professionalism when working:
If they see that we [work] with affection, then ‘wow!’ They get emotional: ‘I have something at home that needs to be done. I won't take it to a professional. I'll take it to that guy. He does it cheerfully, laughing, smiling. I feel that he does it better than a professional’ … And when you look around, you already have more clients than a company.
Trust is essential in the young men's relationships with the surrounding environment. I argue that it is these relationships of trust, although atypical, which make many young men prefer Barra to their homes.Footnote 48 The best strategy for gaining trust is to work honestly. Trust facilitates access to money, food, clothes, and bathing, sleeping and working opportunities – or as Diego said: ‘From trust comes everything.’
Young writes about two patterns of the socio-spatial acceptance of young Ugandans on the street: ‘coexistence’ and ‘incorporation’.Footnote 49 Coexistence demands tolerance, and there are many signs of this kind of interaction in Barra, especially when it comes to favours. Young men carry mineral water and groceries. In return, residents offer fresh water, food and clothes, let the young men use their outdoor taps, and store their clothes and valuables. Silvio would occasionally borrow jeans from a middle-class youngster when he went dancing, while a female resident helped Marcelo make new identity documents. Diego received morning coffee from the hotel close to his sleeping place and washed himself in a toilet at a small museum nearby. Silvio even received leftovers from the police: ‘Sometimes they would call me: “Here [nickname], take this doggy bag, go on.” I would even be afraid of eating it, in case they had put something in it to kill me … Even [nickname of a notorious police officer] gave me [food] when he was in a good mood.’ Many of the young men receive daily leftovers from both residents and restaurants. Some even manage to rent cheap rooms in some of the hotels when they are still vacant late at night.
There are also some notable signs of incorporation of the young men in Barra. Incorporation involves responsibility and trust, suppressing the stigma of homelessness and working alongside others. Several young men had been offered formal jobs. Silvio worked the night shifts at a hotdog stand, while Joaquim worked periodically in a kiosk, living with the owner and being given great responsibility: ‘I looked after Reais$ 35,000 for the guy [the former boss], I didn't take one real – do you think the guy doesn't trust me? The guy went travelling, gave me the key to the safe to mind it all. I … arrived at his apartment all alone; not a thing disappeared.’Footnote 50
Others find more informal jobs, such as delivery services, washing dishes in restaurants and helping out at the beach kiosks. Unfortunately, the insecurity, irregularity and unpredictability of street life do not conform to the rules and regularity of working life. Consequently, many find difficulties in keeping these jobs. Silvio had to look after the profits from his work until the next morning, when the owner would appear to do the day shift; some of the other young men repeatedly stole the money while Diego was asleep, and eventually he got fired. Joaquim was ordered to work through the carnival, but because he could not bear the thought of missing the street party, he quit.
Night-time interaction
Social distance between classes continues to be manifest in the interactional pattern at night-time in Barra, but the power positions are in many ways reversed. The young men exert greater spatial control over the neighbourhood, and residents, traders and tourists depend on them to be able to use the nocturnal space without being harassed or assaulted. But just as there are traces of coexistence and incorporation of the young men among the residents and traders in the daytime, there are also signs of protection in the nocturnal street environment.
The movement in the streets of Barra gradually alters a couple of hours after sunset. At 9 o'clock most shops are closed. Restaurants, bars and internet cafes remain open a couple of hours longer. Tourists with accommodation in Barra linger at the promenade, the tourist attractions, the restaurants and the bars. Many also move along the sidewalks, waiting for taxis and buses to take them to Pelourinho.Footnote 51 Only a small minority of the middle-class residents continue to use the street space. The majority withdraw to private or semi-private spaces, such as homes and shopping centres. Many of those interviewed expressed a fear of nocturnal Barra, such as the head of the residents' association: ‘I don't go out at night. I've given up. Only the courageous go out.’ One male resident, who said he was afraid of assaults and of dark streets, added: ‘I rarely walk in the streets here in the evening. There is less movement, a lack of security. I go by car to the Japanese restaurant [two blocks away]. There are more people from other areas in Barra at night.’ The man was referring to people from the favelas, defining them as ‘non-movement’, although more correctly they represented for him the ‘wrong’ kind of movement.
The police advise people to stay at home after midnight. At this hour, tourists appear sporadically, usually drunk, heading for their hotels. A couple of police cars move randomly through the streets. Only pockets of nightlife continue, especially during the summer and at weekends. Middle- and upper-class people are mainly seen as they pour out of chic clubs and private parties, only to enter their cars and disappear. One bar situated at the end of the promenade stays open as long as there are paying clients, so thirsty tourists hang about there long after the main streets have emptied.
As the streets gradually empty, the presence of the poor young men becomes more apparent. Their spatial confidence increases as they step with greater bravado and stress that this pavement is theirs. Nocturnal verbal territorial greetings and declarations are common: ‘A praça é nossa’ (‘The square is ours’) and ‘É nós na area’ (‘It's us in the area’). Hanging out in a small square in Barra one evening, Thiago was rapping verses of a song called A cidade é nossa (The City is Ours):Footnote 52
The few young men who have managed to obtain money earlier in the day, and who are not addicted to crack, spend the night-time hanging out, having a good time. As Silvio put it, ‘At night, if I had money I'd drink some beers at the Chinese Bar, and then head to the beach, playing [football] until I got tired and went to sleep.’ For the others, especially those who are addicted to crack, the evening hours are spent continuing the search for money. As the city streets empty, the legal money options decline, while the illegal options increase – these include drug-dealing, burglaries and assault. For those involved in crime, such as Leo, ‘the night in Barra is hotter, [there is] more movement’. Of my 11 key informants, ten said that they sell drugs when the opportunity presents itself; their favela background gives them access to the nearby favelas where cheap drugs are sold (Silvio does not use drugs and thus avoids the drug outlets). Thus, while there is still activity in bars and restaurants, many of the young men will seek to befriend tourists in order to offer them drugs.
Nine of those interviewed had committed burglaries periodically. The deserted aspect of the street at night facilitates breaking in to parked cars and private property. Everything that can be sold is of value: laundry on a clothesline, tennis shoes on a veranda, stairs, fences and aluminium roofs. More than half of the key informants also undertake assaults periodically. This is also preferably done at night, with the young men keeping their ‘posts’ and looking out for victims. These are normally tourists, but also the few middle-class people who might appear. After spotting a victim, the young men often join forces to ambush them. They beg or threaten for valuables, and if they meet resistance, they may resort to violence. Not always physically stronger, the young people normally triumph because they have more fighting experience and attack in groups. In addition, they play on their general impression as threatening ‘others’, as unpredictable predators. On one occasion a couple of young men spotted a male tourist making out with a Brazilian woman on the beach; they left him without his money, credit cards, hotel keys and tennis shoes.
Although a lot of criminal activity goes on in Barra at night, the chances of becoming a victim are not the same for everyone. As during daytime, visible signs are evaluated in encounters between strangers, but at night it is the young men who have the dominant position in deciding the terms of the interaction. They make careful distinctions between the different types of people they encounter. Poor people are normally (but not always) ignored. Upper-class people and tourists are prime targets, but there are exceptions. Residents, traders and tourists who help the young men and/or interact with them on equal terms are normally left alone. This is not simply a matter of paying them off, as one young man explained: someone who gives R$ 10–20 does not necessarily receive protection, while someone who gives R$ 1.50 may do so. Instead the young men appreciate people who interact with them, being polite and helpful instead of arrogant or fearful, and treating them with respect instead of prejudice. Joaquim emphasised this difference: ‘I like the respect; I don't like the fear. There are residents here who are afraid.’ He explained that he preferred people to talk directly to him if they did not approve of his behaviour, instead of going to the police.
Like many of the young men, Thiago was partly law-abiding, working honestly for long periods of time, but when the temptations were too great he began committing assaults or burglaries. Nevertheless, through all this, he valued the friendships he had been able to obtain with residents and traders. He stated: ‘When the maloqueiro sees that the resident is doing something to help him, he also tries to help the resident in some manner.’ Marcelo explained: ‘We have lived here for years, we are sleeping on the street, we are making friendships. If people from elsewhere arrive, robbing, we don't allow it … We are a part of the street, we're the security of the street, thus a lot of people know us, minding cars … and walk undisturbed here.’ Leo revealed that it was not only former positive acquaintances that could make him change his mind about assaulting someone: ‘I come talking nice and everything, ask where they're from and stuff, and if I see that the person is humble and stuff, gives attention, it is not even worth doing whatever I had in my mind. I don't do it … [I do it] with the people who are arrogant, who deserve it.’ A person's behaviour therefore goes some way to determining his or her potential as a victim.
The different ways of encountering the young men bring to mind Anderson's terms ‘street etiquette’ and ‘street wisdom’.Footnote 53 Street etiquette is a crude set of guidelines based on generalised perceptions and superficial characteristics. Some interviewees avoided the public parts of Barra at night, such as the head of the residents' association and the male resident who took his car just to go two blocks down the road – through these avoidance strategies, however, they also excluded potential allies. Street wisdom is cumulative and includes a more sophisticated approach in urban encounters, tailoring one's responses to each unique event. The interviewees with ‘street wisdom’ used the streets more and felt less frightened. They interacted with the young men. Consequently, they were able to perceive internal differences and gain potential allies. Having ‘street wisdom’ basically reduces the chances of becoming a target, as Leo's statement demonstrates. The conscious process of gaining ‘street wisdom’ was exemplified by a female resident (25 years old) who deliberately said ‘good evening’ to all the young men hanging around in the small square when she moved into the neighbourhood. This would ensure her protection, she explained, adding that she felt safest in her own street because of the familiar car minders. A male resident (also 25 years old) stated that he was not afraid of being in Barra at night because the ‘criminals’ knew him and thus ignored him. Street wisdom is based on generalised trust, namely trust between heterogeneous groups.Footnote 54 This does not indicate that the person concerned trusts everyone, but he or she is capable both of trusting strangers and detecting who is trustworthy or not.
The emptiness of the streets at night, and consequent lack of witnesses, facilitates not only drug use, burglaries and assaults, but also abductions and homicides. Thus the people with money are not the only ones to feel fear in nocturnal Barra. In fact, one of the reasons why so many young men stay awake until daybreak is the fear of being attacked while sleeping. As Gabriel explained, looking back on his youth on the street: ‘If anyone wanted to kill me, they didn't manage to catch me, because I slept more during daytime and at night I was awake, alert. During daytime I slept hidden, and at dusk I walked around, doing wrong things.’
The fear among the young men was sometimes used strategically by other people. A male hotel manager (66 years old) revealed: ‘Sometimes some of them trick me, but I threaten them. I say that I'll get them when they're sleeping, then they get nervous.’ Silvio reported a more serious incident of being threatened which occurred while he was sleeping with his girlfriend in the small square where he minded cars. Three armed men in hoods suddenly appeared, ordering Silvio and his girlfriend to leave the area. They hid, sleeping only a block away, and nothing more happened. Silvio reasoned that it was the residents' reaction to the couple sleeping there several nights in a row.
Unfortunately, not all threats are empty. Young people from the periphery who hang out in Barra, sleeping, working, using drugs and assaulting people, are of great concern to the residents, business sector, politicians and the tourist industry. Joaquim explained the residents' preoccupation with the young men's presence:
There are residents who want to preserve Porto da Barra. They want to remove the pivetes, making a world only for themselves and the tourists … The residents want to chase us out of here, because they've got education, right? Many [of the residents] have an education; it's easier to earn money, and they will have more if we aren't around. That's why they say they want a ‘Barra limpa! [clean Barra]’, with pit bull hearts: ‘The pivetes are robbing too much, the pivetes are using too much drugs’ …
The police normally carry out ‘clean-up’ operations in order to restrict access and to control the spatial and temporal boundaries of the neighbourhood. The police sporadically arrest all ‘unwelcome elements’ – basically poor people of all ages and both sexes who inhabit the street environment – beat them and then release them on the outskirts of the city. Silvio used to experience this regularly when living in Barra: ‘They beat us up and left us there … We returned walking or by bus. We hadn't done anything wrong.’ One of the more garrulous police officers explained his patrol duty thus:
It's the police who are in control; it's us who impose power in the area. When we appear, the neguinhos [little negros] all tremble with fear. This place is for the tourists, right? And for the residents as well, the majority middle class. We act to guarantee the security of these people. Pivetes and prostitutes need to feel fear. Because God does not want that kind of thing, does he? … Hence our work is to clean up this area.
Once more, expressions of hygiene are employed. The officer also revealed the police's violent tactic of beating up poor young people in an effort to get them to return to the periphery; in some cases, however, the strategies are far worse. There are incidents reported of anonymous people killing or causing serious injury to young people. This happens normally in cases where those responsible have a personal grudge against the victim, and the young men who hang out in Barra possess a long list of potential enemies. Sometimes homicides are carried out by police (on or off duty), as was allegedly the case with Sergio's killing. Sergio was renowned as a fearless bandit among his own kind. One night he was abducted by four men in Barra; his corpse was found with marks of torture on the outskirts of the city. When discussing the tragedy with other young men, common phrases were: ‘Sergio was too much!’, ‘He had it coming’ and ‘It got too personal’.
But it is not only the police and death squads the young men fear, but also other young men who become involved in street conflicts. Once, a young man accused Silvio of snitching and threatened to set him on fire. As a result, Silvio avoided sleeping before daybreak for several weeks. Sometimes these are empty threats, but occasionally they turn into real tragedies. Shortly after my last period of fieldwork ended, a man was killed while sleeping at the Jesus statue. Rumours circulated that the perpetrators were a man and woman who were also sleeping on the street. Both Thiago and Gabriel revealed that in their adolescence they had participated in the killings of people who were asleep (which thus increased their own fear of falling asleep on the street).
Increasingly, as drug trafficking gains strength in Salvador, crack also claims victims among the young men. Some are wanted for drug debts, some because they are selling the drugs of the ‘wrong’ drug lord in the area, and some because they buy drugs on credit with the intention of selling them, but lose them, as in Gil's case. Out of fear of a police patrol car stopping to do a body search, Gil reportedly threw the drugs away and could not find them afterwards. The drug lord accused him of having consumed them and gave him 24 hours to recover the money. A couple of days later he was shot several times in the abdomen, but fortunately he survived.
Diurnal and Nocturnal Power Relations
During the daytime the poor young men are victims of ‘othering’, experiencing daily rituals of social exclusion. Unlike children and women, who do not present a physical threat in the public space, the young men, as they age, are gradually transformed from victims into offenders, from being endangered into being dangerous. Even so, they make an effort in social interactions to appear trustworthy. Their strategies include being preoccupied with their looks, emphasising politeness and demonstrating enthusiasm and stamina when given work. In social encounters it is the middle class and business sector who normally decide the terms of interaction, having the dominant position and controlling the resources of material goods (money, food, fresh water and job opportunities). The young men's behaviour in these contexts is servile and subservient. They depend on the evaluations of others and require a social network of supportive residents, traders and tourists.
Being in the streets of Barra after midnight, it is obvious that the public space no longer belongs to the middle class and the business sector. Nocturnal interactional patterns differ in many respects from those in the daytime. While social interaction continues to be determined by social class, the power structures are reversed. It is the young men who hold a dominant position, deciding the terms of social interaction between these groups (the situations where armed police are involved, of course, are different, being more similar to daytime interactional patterns). The young men assess those encountered and choose whether to protect them or re-establish social distance by assaulting them. Even those who are not involved in assaults still have the influence to protect passers-by, as in the cases of Silvio and Marcelo. Although the young men's goal continues to be the acquisition of money, their survival strategy is no longer based on cultivating an impression of trustworthiness, but on cultivating one of fearsomeness. The nocturnal reversal includes resources, knowledge and social networks. Whereas the most important diurnal resources are money and material goods, nocturnal resources are security and immunity. Furthermore, whereas diurnal interaction valorises formal knowledge and professionalism, nocturnal interaction requires street knowledge or so-called ‘street literacy’ – for instance, the solid temporal and spatial knowledge of the young men, knowing how to ambush, flee and hide.Footnote 55 While good relationships with the middle classes and business sector are valuable in the daytime, a social network consisting of street people is highly advantageous at night.
Table 1 demonstrates the differences between day and night with regard to social status, behaviour, power distribution and territory. The young men try to adapt to hegemonic values in the daytime while overthrowing them and establishing counter-hegemony at night. Spatial relations, access to public space and degree of mobility can be seen as parameters of empowerment.Footnote 56 Thus, I argue that the young men exert power to some extent in Barra, especially at night. The feelings of empowerment produce feelings of safety. Koskela writes that a strong sense of empowerment can make people feel safer in an area where they know the risk of violence is higher than in the surrounding areas.Footnote 57 This might explain why the young men continue to be present in Barra in spite of the potential dangers.
Table 1. The Division between Day and Night for Poor, Young men in Barra in Relation to Residents and Traders
Source: author's elaboration based on fieldwork results.
Multifaceted Relations of Fear and Trust
There are strong sentiments of fear among all groups in this analysis. Many of the formal residents and traders fear crime and thus avoid public space, especially at night. The young men are aware of their potential enemies, and many therefore avoid sleeping while it is dark. Pervasive fear distorts everyday relations and generates ‘particularised trust relations’ – that is, trust only within homogenous groups.Footnote 58 Even if particularised trust entails fewer risks, it also makes people perceive the world in terms of ‘us’ and ‘them’ and withdraw from public life. In this manner, fear creates several vicious circles. In the case of residents and traders, when they avoid public space and lack ‘street wisdom’, the possibilities of becoming a target increase since they lack allies and have less ability to ‘read’ public space.Footnote 59 On the social level, the escape of the middle classes from nocturnal public space strengthens the distortion of class relations and causes deserted streets, which leads to increased crime, which further increases fear.Footnote 60
In the case of the young men, the fear reinforces the image of them as a threat and argues for their exclusion from urban space.Footnote 61 The fear results in increased social control.Footnote 62 Consequently, community safety policies such as aggressive policing are employed, improving feelings of safety among the residents and traders at the expense of the people on the street. Koskela argues that this kind of social control often generates cumulative fear, racism and distrust.Footnote 63 The public hostility against the young men increases; fear and hostility work as a self-fulfilling prophesy in that they make opportunities to earn an income by legal means more difficult to acquire, hence making illegal opportunities more attractive. This is in accordance with research among young Brazilian drug traffickers: society's prejudice is met with criminality and violence, a natural projection of the prevalent image of the youngsters.Footnote 64 The deviant behaviour in turn confirms the prejudices of others, further increasing hostility and social exclusion.
On a general level, a certain degree of trust is a precondition for both individual autonomy and collective human enterprise.Footnote 65 Generalised trust enables social interaction and cooperation between heterogeneous groups. Trust also neutralises fear and has the potential to turn vicious circles into positive spirals. In the case of the young men, proving oneself to be trustworthy is a principal survival strategy which facilitates access to a wide range of commodities. Being trusted and repeatedly proving oneself worthy of that trust also increases the young men's security on the streets, firstly by increasing work opportunities, thus reducing involvement in crime and the number of potential enemies, and secondly by enabling them to ‘become someone’ in the eyes of society, and thus a more dangerous target for potential enemies.Footnote 66
The young men use trust-inviting signals such as appearing clean, using polite phrases and greeting the residents and traders with familial terms (‘aunties’ and ‘uncles’).Footnote 67 Trust is a kind of social capital, and the young men are cautiously aware that it can be invested and wasted.Footnote 68 The best investment is to fulfil positive expectations repeatedly and consistently when being asked to establish firm relations of trust. Trust is also seemingly contagious; for instance, Joaquim was treated differently in the periods he was working at the kiosk. Many people who before had not even dared to talk to Joaquim would now socialise with him. Thus, interaction with the same people is of continuous advantage in building trust. The young men therefore often remain in Barra, where some trust relations are already established. They also struggle to preserve these relationships. This is done in several ways – young men who have sufficient relationships of trust to support themselves economically avoid criminal activity, for example, in order not to be associated with distrustful activities. Young men who combine survival strategies based on trust and fear either consciously target victims who are not known to them (often tourists) or leave Barra to carry out such activities.
The young men are aware that distrust is also contagious: breaking relations of trust ends the possibility not only of restoring that specific relationship, but also of building other such relationships.Footnote 69 Cases where trust is wasted – where the young man who had been trusted no longer fulfils this expectation – occur especially with those addicted to crack who struggle to control the desires of the addiction. Some of the young men claimed that the introduction of crack in Barra had severely damaged their relationships with residents and traders.
These relations of trust are not only advantageous to the young men. The empirical material reveals that the residents and traders (and to some extent tourists) who are able and willing to trust the young men gain protection from crime in Barra. This relieves people from anxiety and increases security, hence enabling the use of public space.Footnote 70 It also has economic benefits – for instance, by allowing residents and traders to spend less money on surveillance, walk instead of drive, and use a cheaper workforce instead of professionals when possible. Trust also morally obliges the trusted, thus often functioning as a self-fulfilling expectation.Footnote 71 In agreement with this, trust makes people take active roles in their community, behave morally and learn to compromise.Footnote 72 This signifies that an increase in relations of trust will encourage honesty and cooperation among Barra's users instead of hostility and crime.
Conclusion
Young men on the streets of Latin America are often ignored in academic literature, being betwixt and between ‘street children’ and ‘vagrants’. Because of their mobile life situations, they are also considered a ‘hard-to-reach’ category and thus often excluded from research on crime and urban space.Footnote 73 Based on longitudinal qualitative research aimed at understanding the everyday lives of young people on the street in one chosen neighbourhood in Salvador, Brazil, this article has explored the dynamics of the social relations between the young men and the local residents and traders.
To enhance understanding of the complex aspects of urban life, a multi-method approach was employed. Pervasive 24-hour participant observation on the streets facilitated the detection of temporal patterns, as well as multifaceted and at times incoherent interactional relationships – for instance, concerning social inclusion and exclusion, and street immunity and hostility. Conversations and interviews with different groups of users – the young men themselves, middle-class residents, traders and patrolling police officers – revealed the multiple and ambiguous social positions involved in everyday interaction. It is obvious that individuals may occupy different positions related to fear, crime and power, and the relative importance of each position depends on the social, spatial and temporal contexts involved. Thus, by using this kind of methodological approach, one is able to dismantle some of the usual dichotomies concerning urban space mentioned in the introduction –for example, the status of young men in a street situation as both threatening and threatened, offenders and victims. It also increases understanding of the indefinite character of power distribution, also depending on social, spatial and temporal contexts.
The analysis reveals how the character of Barra – that is, the activities and patterns of social interaction and dominance that take place there – changes between day and night. When the residents and traders gradually withdraw from public space after dark, poor young men who have acquired informal bonds with the neighbourhood take over, partly shifting from an inferior to a superior social status, from subordination to domination, from serving to demanding and harassing. While acknowledging the heterogeneity of categories and the complexity of sentiments regarding trust, fear and crime, the analysis indicates certain patterns. Among the middle-class residents and traders, two main ways of encountering the public space appear, using either street wisdom or street etiquette.Footnote 74 While the former requires a certain level of trust, the latter is more associated with suspicion and fear.Footnote 75 Similarly, among the young men, two main ways of obtaining money appear, one legal and the other illegal. Some only engage in the former, while others engage in both. Legal means of obtaining money are generally based on trust, while illegal means are to a large extent based on fear, which creates a difficult dilemma for the young men in defining their relationship to the area. Many of them try to sustain established relations of trust by selectively choosing who to assault and where to do it. Another dilemma for the young men is the fact that they are not only fearsome, but also fearful; their vulnerable positions on the street make them not only potential offenders, but also potential victims of violence, from police or from acquaintances who have a score to settle with them.Footnote 76
In analysing this material – using the concepts of street wisdom and etiquette, trust and fear – two socially reinforcing processes seem to emerge. On the one hand, it seems that fear tends to make people act according to street etiquette, which is likely to maintain or even reinforce the socio-spatial distance between the upper and lower social strata. Whereas the poor are kept socio-economically marginalised, the better-off lose spatio-temporal resources, which potentially increases crime and thus fear. On the other hand, trust facilitates strategies associated with street wisdom and makes possible social interaction and informal and formal relations between the same strata, such as relationships of aid and the job opportunities described above. This again has the potential to reduce crime and secure the urban space, thus further reinforcing trust.
