This paper presents material from extended interviews and observations with 25 street youth in Mexico, revealing how their attempts to control and understand their lives relies on a control of and identification with their bodies. Using Goffman's ideas of stigma and performance, and Butler's performativity, the paper illustrates that even if these young peoples' bodies fall short of mainstream ideas for youthful bodies, they have developed some strategies that allow some control over their bodies. These bodily performances differ according to audience. This intention is by no means fully achieved. Their bodily actions sets out a series of identity markers but street life implies all sort of events, from painful childhoods to vicious leisure pursuits, and restricts the ability to affect material conditions. Moreover, care needs to be taken in interpreting these signs as the participants' own understandings and practices are neither easily categorised nor consistent.
Despite considerable ethnographic research with young people in street situations and a growing interest in violence, little attention has been paid to suicide. The occurrence of suicide is a dramatic event that reveals weaknesses in support systems established by governments and civil society organisations, as well as perceived failings of friends. While an interest in suicide usually considers cause, in this paper we explore effect. How does the death of a member of a tightly knit group of street youth affect others and what does the suicide tell us about their identification with death more generally? Research for the paper was part of an in‐depth study of identities among street youth in Mexico.
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