Ser joven privado de la libertad en ciudades del norte de México

The objective of this article is to analyze the narratives of four young people from border cities who were deprived of their liberty for having proven their participation in a crime. The narratives are approached from a qualitative perspective to delve into the meanings involved in building identities in a border context. The field work was developed during 2018 and 2019 in the treatment centers for adolescents in San Luis Río Colorado and Nogales, Sonora, as well as in Güémez, Tamaulipas, Mexico. One of the substantive findings was to identify the process of internalization and normalization of a state of permanent precariousness in the actors in the absence of structural strategies that homogenize the youth. The analysis from these dimensions provides empirical elements in the discussion about heterogeneities in youth identities; elements for an epistemological, holistic and situational discussion on the accumulation of situations of vulnerability that certain actors experience in a given geographic space.