ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to present the first results of research about Latin American young people in Barcelona and their presence in the city's public life. 1 In recent years, there has been a surprising increase of the Latin American youth in the city, as in all Spain; at the same time, generally a negative social image has been constructed of Latin American youths. Since 2003, the ‘discovery’ of the ‘Latin gangs’ by the media and their configuration as criminal gangs has generated processes of moral panic and stigmatisation concerning all Latin American young people. The specificity of this process has been that, beyond the reality of Latin gangs, a distorted image of young immigrants of Latin American origin living in Barcelona has been produced. In this chapter, we will discuss the process of social construction of Latin gangs in Barcelona, underscoring the role played by the media. We will try to analyse the nature and the meanings of those groups, questioning their configuration as gangs and defining them as gangs-in-process. At the same time, we will outline some basic patterns of youth sociability to construct theoretical references to understand and explain Latin street organisations in Barcelona. We will present, too, the alternatives pointed out in the local institutions between their repression as (illegal) criminal organisations and their recognition as (legal) youth associations. In the meantime, we will produce general discourses about the situation of Latin American youngsters in Barcelona, their resettlement problems, and their processes of identity construction.
