Between school, family, and the street

School violence and gender in contexts of insecurity and illegal economies

Abstract

This paper examines school violence in Peru in the context of the expansion of illegal economies and rising citizen insecurity. The study was conducted in nine schools in Arequipa, Metropolitan Lima, Callao, and Ucayali, combining a qualitative approach with principals, tutors, and students with data regarding school violence and gender-based violence from national databases. The analysis draws on a relational and structural framework that recognizes the multiplicity of forms of violence (interpersonal, institutional, community-level, and structural) and their situated, interconnected character. Findings show that, despite incidents of school violence, schools are perceived as relatively safe spaces compared to the street or the home in high-insecurity contexts. The family emerges as a central intermediary actor between community criminal structures and school behavior. Gender operates as a cross-cutting structural dimension that shapes the risk trajectories of boys and girls in fundamentally different ways, and that schools themselves frequently reproduce rather than challenge. The study also identifies a significant gap between the complexity of the phenomenon and the institutional capacity of schools to address it, as existing prevention and reporting mechanisms prove insufficient in the face of forms of violence linked to organized crime.