Significati, ruoli e simboli nella partecipazione attiva di giovani organizzati in bande, gang e gruppi violenti

Abstract

The youth gangs are groups of young people who find commonality in the same values and cultural models that oppose the norms of society. The acts of violence perpetrated against the community, most often gratuitously, by groups of more or less structured young people, are an expression of actions that push away the goal of peace, most often a not shared objective. The motivations behind the decision to join gangs are diverse. They can range from sharing a model based on the use of violence, to the assimilation of aggressive and oppositional attitudes towards the native society, to the adoption of illegal behaviour also typical of criminal organisations. Over time, the groups, called in different ways and with different characteristics depending on the country, have been transformed towards the adoption of aggressive behaviour and violence against their peers, encountered on the street or in clubs, with whom they have altercations, or against common goods, as when they deface squares and monuments, or carry out thefts and robberies, or clash directly with other groups. Violence is therefore used as a tool to regulate conflicts with other groups in cities and working-class neighbourhoods. The literature on the subject shows that this is a complex topic that has different characteristics connected also to the use of different terms that may seem interchangeable but are not and whose use is linked to the objectives that the group wants to achieve. Peace has no place in the daily lives of adolescents and young people because it is not thought of as an antidote to anger, violence, fear and frustration. Peace and its attainment do not, therefore, offer tools for managing conflicts and making them generative. The perspective to strive for must therefore be directed towards and centred on the person and on the rediscovery that action has in the construction of “non-violence”.