ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how street gangs in the city of Kinshasa (DR Congo) conquer, control and use public space. A growing number of street youth team up and scour streets in search of a location to settle (for a while). First, the chapter outlines the preliminary negotiations that make to spatially define a turf. Before gangs can settle somewhere in public space, they need to come to an agreement with those individuals who consider themselves to be the owners of the target site, including shop owners, tenants and rival street gangs, because every inch of the city is negotiable. During these negotiations, none of the participants is considered marginal, certainly not the street youth who are inextricably bound up with Congolese society. The second part of the chapter describes the way of life gang members develop, examining how they manage to construct a home on the streets and make sense of their urban environment. Finally, the author examines the authorities’ reaction to the presence of gangs in public space. They launch cleansing campaigns that affect gangs’ sense of territoriality and force them, on a regular basis, to look for other turf. Illustrated by ethnographic data about one particular street gang followed for more than 15 years, this chapter sheds light on living in Kinshasa’s urban public space.
