Researching youth street groups in Southern Europe

Abstract

This Background Paper of the TRANSGANG Working Papers reveals the multiple facets of youth street groups of four European cities: Milan, Marseille, Madrid and Barcelona. The authors show how in the guts of these cities different institutional, associative and informal agents have contributed to forging a space where migration, youth, class, order and social disorder are connected. In its pages, focused on the input that distinguishes the Transgang project, to think of these youthful subjects, placed on the fringes of legitimate citizenship, as authors, and not just actors of an already written story, exploring the border places where conflicts are constructed and relationship frictions, mediations and social changes are present. This is both at a horizontal level, among young people, groups and peers, and also at a vertical level, with the world of institutions and their policy interventions. In other words, it is about exploring how juvenile "spoken" subjects speak in the first person using another language and other spaces.