Beyond stereotypes: understanding the real dynamics of gangs
In cities worldwide, gangs shape the social fabric of urban life, influencing communities in complex ways. They are usually portrayed as disembedded organisations, which contributes to the repressive interventions they experience. However, the ERC-funded GANGS project showed that their emergence and evolution are much more intricate. “Our research demonstrates how gangs are fundamentally embedded within, and shaped by, broader social, economic and political processes, both intrinsically and in terms of the consequences of their violence, and they need to be understood first and foremost in relation to this context,” states Dennis Rodgers, GANGS project coordinator.
How gangs are formed and why people join them
The GANGS project was developed around five case studies in Algeciras in Spain, Marseille in France, Naples in Italy, Managua in Nicaragua and Cape Town in South Africa. The researchers carried out qualitative research in these cities to understand the reasons behind the emergence of gangs, their evolution, their impact on the contexts in which they emerge, the factors that lead people to join them and how being a gang member impacts their life paths. Although gangs can emerge for different reasons, they often originate as coping or defence mechanisms related to broader processes of social, economic, political and spatial segregation, exclusion and discrimination. “At the same time, context is not the same as causality, and in any given community, it is always a minority who joins a gang. The reasons why specific individuals do so are variable, idiosyncratic and dependent on how they are positioned within broader social networks and on the life opportunities they can access,” explains Rodgers. Nevertheless, three general factors stood out in the GANGS studies. Having a family member who is or was a gang member and having learnt how to be violent can increase the chances of a person joining a gang. On the other hand, religion is a factor that frequently turns individuals away from gangs. Another key insight of the project is the importance of intimate social relations for organising gang activities. Gang members are usually related to particular people or groups, constructing collective norms and expectations that influence how they recruit members or control and govern local communities, for instance.
Gangster life paths
The GANGS project collected gangster life stories using an ethical protocol that, in most cases, maintained the interviewees’ anonymity and avoided collecting specific information about criminal activities to prevent legal liability and stigmatisation. In fact, several stories were co-written between the researchers and the gangsters. Contrary to common belief, being a former gang member can sometimes be an advantage in the long term, with ex-gangsters becoming social workers, street poets, pastors, human right activists or entrepreneurs, drawing on the experiences and skills they developed in the gang. “This is partly because the gangster life course is always fundamentally embedded within broader social relations and contexts, and exists on a continuum of experiences,” says Rodgers. This social embeddedness also explains more negative post-gang outcomes, which frequently include the lives of former female gang members whose stories reflect the constant constraints of patriarchal oppression. The nature of policing and incarceration also strongly impacts these life paths. Heavy-handed policing increases violence, while mass incarceration and long-term sentencing often lead to inmates having to rejoin a gang to survive in prison. In contrast, when these issues are less severe, imprisonment – when combined with access to sustainable post-incarceration opportunities – can often lead to individuals leaving gang life for good.
Keywords
GANGS, gangsters, social relations, gangster life, incarceration, criminal activities, stereotypes
