The symbolic (re)production of marginality: Social construction, internalization, and concrete consequences of territorial stigmatization in a poor neighborhood of Santiago de Chile

Territorial stigmatization is a socially-constructed, symbolic representation of a place created and manipulated by external agents, which, once established, becomes decisive for the future of that place and its residents. This discredit is wide and perdurable and operates ‘from above,’ in the media, public officials, and part of academia, and ‘from below,’ in everyday interactions. Through a qualitative case-study in Santiago de Chile, mainly based on interviews and participant observations, this article shows the entire process of stigmatization: how these symbolic representations are socially constructed by different actors; how they are assumed in the discourses of residents, with a variety of reactions that include submissive internalization, naturalization, and a politicized challenge; and how these representations trigger the abandonment from several actors, which is conceptualized by residents as living in ‘Red Zones’ of chronic institutional abandonment. We finish suggesting that stigmatization operates as an institutional mechanism that intervenes in the relationship between poverty concentration and the emergence of social problems.