The social construction of spaces of fear: Practices and imaginaries of women in Lavapiés, Madrid

When taking into account the socio-cultural context of fear in the city, it can be observed that certain spaces are considered dangerous or unsafe depending on how our own experiences have shaped our cultural sense of space. Feelings and perceptions of fear are conditioned by our own experience, which in turn influences the way we react to fear. For this reason, it is necessary to situate women’s experiences in urban space as a starting point for investigating the relationship between the city and feeling unsafe by means of an ethnographic analysis. This study was carried out in Lavapiés, a neighbourhood in Madrid whose part of the citizenship imaginary has little to do with what is really happening there. A negative image of the neighbourhood has been created which, according to our findings, is not perceived equally by all women.