COVID-19-related Socio-Territorial Stigma: Case Study of Nezahualcóyotl Borough

Considering the spatial, social, and symbolic structures of exclusion, this paper discusses the differentiated impacts brought about by the COVID-19 health crisis. Our conceptual starting point is that urban conflicts exemplify the representation struggles of the city that produce polarized and simplified identities of places and people. From a qualitative research approach based on mixed techniques, we trace the multiple expressions of socio-territorial stigmatization that befell Nezahualcóyotl, a suburban district of the Metropolitan Area of the Valley of Mexico, with a long history of self-construction, marginality, and segregation. We found that generic social distancing measures were inconsistently administered as local government deployed repressive control over informal economy practices for sanitary and symbolic reasons.