Growing up in San Siro. A common experience. Reportage through images and rhymes

Abstract

This reportage collects some reflections on the everyday life and growth paths of young people living in social housing buildings in the neighbourhood of San Siro, and aims to question the mainstream narratives that often capture and report a partial, or extreme, reality of life in the suburbs. The recent mediatic attention on the phenomenon of rappers in this area was triggered by the episode of a clash with the police during the production of a music video that attracted 300 young people from different neighbourhoods, in contravention of the anti-gathering regulations in force due to the pandemic emergency. On this and other occasions, newspapers and tv stations’ reports were limited to aggressive depictions of the youth from working-class neighbourhoods as gangs of thugs putting up fights and robbing their peers from the city centre. The suspicion that reality is much more complex than this led us to spend some time in the neighbourhood, looking at young people’s habits and relationships with different eyes and trying to involve them in the narration of their stories.