The present article aims to analyze the relationship between social vulnerability and tendencies in the residential segregation and segmentation in our large cities. It is considered that, in all capitalist societies, there were different systems of risk management for material production and social cohesion. In Brazilian cities, the social vulnerability stems from the crisis of a dual system of social welfare, funded from a combination of free market forces and the mobilization of family-community structures, peculiarities of our capitalist development. We chose as an indicator of social vulnerability the segments of the population aged from 4 to 24 years, corresponding to different cycles of socialization and acquisition of resources necessary to social integration and reproduction, whose vulnerability is differentiated according to the importance of family, school and (or) market in the social reproduction of that group. Results indicate that, irrespective of place of residence, if in the center or the periphery of cities, if in the most privileged regions or not, the social context of "neighborhood" where there is little social capital in the form of stable relations with the labor market increases the risks that this population be in a situation of vulnerability. Therefore, it is possible to think of a pattern of sociability marked by social isolation with low exposure to assets that allow people to overcome this situation that, at the same time, is marked by the instability of social life.
large cities; social issue; social vulnerability; residential segregation
