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15 pages, 259 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Intimate Belonging—Intimate Becoming: How Police Officers and Migrant Gang Defectors Seek to (Re)shape Ties of Belonging in Denmark

by Mette-Louise E. Johansen

Genealogy 2022, 6(2), 40; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy6020040 - 5 May 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3456

Abstract

This article examines the ways that Danish gang exit programs engage police officers and gang defectors in a pervasive work on belonging between gangs, kinship networks and the state. In urban Denmark, the majority of gang exit candidates are of ethnic-minority background and form part of the street-gang environment in marginalized migrant neighborhoods. This is an intimate social environment constituted by diasporic kinship networks, where gang formations are entangled with kinship formations. Hence, when gang defectors leave their gang, they also often leave their family and childhood home for a life in unfamiliar places and positions. As I show, gang desistance is thus a highly dilemmatic process in which gang defectors find themselves “unhinged” from meaningful social and kinship relationships and in search of new ways of embedding themselves into a social world. Based on an ethnographic study of gang exit processes in Denmark’s second largest city, Aarhus, this article shows how police officers and gang defectors seek to (re)shape ties of belonging between gangs, kinship networks and the state. The process, I argue, illuminates the intimate aspect of the notion of belonging, in which kin and state relatedness is deeply rooted in interpersonal spaces and relationships. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Intimate Belongings—Kinship and State Relatedness in Migrant Families in Denmark)

22 pages, 343 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Changes in Personal Social Networks across Individuals Leaving Their Street Gang: Just What Are Youth Leaving Behind?

by Caterina G. Roman, Meagan Cahill and Lauren R. Mayes

Soc. Sci. 2021, 10(2), 39; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci10020039 - 26 Jan 2021

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 5163

Abstract

Despite a small but growing literature on gang disengagement and desistance, little is known about how social networks and changes in networks correspond to self-reported changes in street gang membership over time. The current study describes the personal or “ego” network composition of 228 street gang members in two east coast cities in the United States. The study highlights changes in personal network composition associated with changes in gang membership over two waves of survey data, describing notable differences between those who reported leaving their gang and fully disengaging from their gang associates, and those who reported leaving but still participate and hang out with their gang friends. Results show some positive changes (i.e., reductions) in criminal behavior and many changes toward an increase in prosocial relationships for those who fully disengaged from their street gang, versus limited changes in both criminal behavior and network composition over time for those who reported leaving but remained engaged with their gang. The findings suggest that gang intervention programs that increase access to or support building prosocial relationships may assist the gang disengagement process and ultimately buoy desistance from crime. The study also has implications for theorizing about gang and crime desistance, in that the role of social ties should take a more central role. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Research on Gang-Related Violence in the 21st Century)

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