ABSTRACT
Since the 1990s, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the tearing down of the ‘Iron Curtain’ that had hitherto divided Europe for decades, Germany has had to deal with growing numbers of immigrants from eastern countries. Among literally millions of so-called Germans of Russian descent and similar ‘re-settlers’ from other eastern states who aimed to be repatriated, there were hundreds of thousands of young people. In addition came the fugitives (and victims), along with their children, of the ethnically co-determined war in the Balkans. Those developments added strain to the still not sufficiently answered challenge to the German state, economy, and society. This included the stark challenge of mastering the task of integrating the offspring of generations of so-called guest workers. Accordingly, the situation sparked scholarly interest in the problem of delinquent behaviour among young people of migrant background in general and of violent group or clique oriented activities in particular. Criminological and other social science studies looked, for example, for the potentially specific ‘nourishing’ conditions with which foreign or repatriated (second-generation) youngsters were being confronted (cf. Förtig 2002; Müller 2000; Oberwittler 2003; Reich 2003; 2005; Schmitt-Rodermund and Silbereisen 2004; Weitekamp, Reich and Kerner 2005). This development added considerable knowledge to the extant youth group or gang-related studies (cf. Farin and Seidl-Pielen 1996; Fuchs 1995; Seidl-Pielen and Farin 1995; Tertilt 1996; Wilfert 1959; Youkhana 1996). Our study adds to this growing body of knowledge by examining whether there are differences in the characteristics and risk factors of migrant and non-migrant youth receiving street work services in a German city.
