El delito en el barrio Virgen de Guadalupe de la ciudad de Formosa, Argentina. ¿Inseguridad real o estigmatización residencial?

Abstract

The Virgen de Guadalupe neighborhood is one of the most populous neighborhood conglomerates of Formosa city. It is a residential complex of collective houses built through the National Housing Fund (FONAVI) in the late 70s, during the last military dictatorship.
In the collective imagination of the residents of the capital, it appears as one of the most dangerous and insecure urban sectors of the city of Formosa, only surpassed in magnitude of perception of insecurity by the Obrero neighborhood.
The main objective of this article is to analyze the relationships between the occurrence of crimes and the perception of insecurity in the Virgen de Guadalupe neighborhood.
Methodologically, to carry out this work, on the one hand, a sample of the Formosa population of 651 individuals surveyed through surveys of perception of insecurity carried out to the neighbors has been used, and on the other hand, data on the occurrence of crimes in the city of Formosa during the year 2016, supplied by the police authority.
The main finding obtained has been the verification of a situation of residential stigmatization, a product of the influence of the media and social networks.
We conclude that the situation of residential stigmatization suffered by the neighborhood is not consistent with the real levels of crime in said neighborhood, and that the topophobic perception of it comes essentially from the "bad reputation" that has been dragging on for some time, and that it translates into residential segregation problems for its inhabitants.