The relation between being out of school and participating in criminal economies is widely documented in the literature on youth delinquency. However, the complex connection between these two phenomena has not yet been fully unpacked. This paper draws from two studies that we, the authors, conducted separately to explore the role educational…

This article explores the dissonance between the expansive discourses imagined by the advocates for youth media as helping foster "empowerment" and "voice", versus the more circumscribed realities of participatory media production. I focus on a two-part case study--considering both a film-making project for "at risk"…

This article traces the conditions that made possible the legislation of police surveillance of schools as a "solution" to the "problems" of "convivencia" in school, during a period of social and racial diversification of Spanish society. During the 1980s and 1990s, "convivencia" -- the ideal of living…

This paper reports the findings of an eight-month ethnographic study of a small group of at-risk youths in a school of a southern coastal city in China. The process leading to the young students being marginalised by the school system and how they developed a "muddling through" subculture to counteract this marginalisation is revealed.…

In this article, Dyrness and Sepúlveda argue that in El Salvador, young people are participants in a diasporic social imaginary that connects them with Salvadorans and other Latinos in the United States--before they have ever left the country. The authors explore how this transnational relationship manifests in two school communities in San…

To do research that really makes a difference--the authors of this book argue--social scientists need questions and methods that reflect the complexity of the world. Bringing together a consortium of voices across a variety of fields, "Methods that Matter" offers compelling and successful examples of mixed methods research that do just…

This study explores community-level risk and protective factors for youth violence in Cite Soleil, Port-au-Prince's most violent slum. The youth of Cite Soleil have often been mobilized to violence by powerful actors as tools for achieving political or financial gain. Drawing on a formal survey (N=1,575) and ethnographic data collected between…

Despite a growing concern about gangs in Britain, academic research that focuses on gangs remains scarce. Drawing on data from the ESRC-funded ethnographic research YOGEC (Youth Gangs in an English City) project, this paper explores the negotiation of space and place by young people living in inner-city areas affected by gangs. Using a combination…

Crime and street violence often evoke racialized discourses about urban space. In this ethnographic research in Chicago, however, the disdain that many Mexican migrants articulated about street gangs principally concerned issues "internal" to the Mexican/Chicano community, notably a profound ambivalence about U.S.-born Mexicans and a…