Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

In this paper we assess the role that territoriality has as a fundamental condition for citizen security from the perspective of young people living in disrupted peripheral territories in the metropolitan area of Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico. For this purpose the First and Second Surveys on Secondary Students Perception of Security (2010-2018), in order to detect the perception that students have on such issues. In the realm of space of crime and transgression there are two elements that limit aggression: territoriality and dominant behavior. Both processes can inhibit hostilities from the moment in which the individual can identify -and avoid- the spaces where the person runs the greatest risk of encountering situations of conflict. Taking as a point of departure the quest for identity in adolescents by means of the articulating features of geographical space, our research identifies, through the construction of five indicators, the mechanisms of appropriation of the territory as a strategy to maintain social control of urban space.