‘Why them?’ ‘Why then?’ ‘Why there?’: the political economy of gangland

‘Why them?’ ‘Why then?’ ‘Why there?’: The Political Economy of Gangland, John Pitts, argues that European gang scholarship has largely ignored the social, economic and political contexts from which street gangs emerge or in which they mutate. And it has therefore failed to understand the ‘politics of gangland’. The chapter considers how changes in the social, economic and political circumstances surrounding the emergence of different types of twentieth-century youth gangs in England, France, the Netherlands, Spain and Russia have affected their constitution, affiliations and activities. In exploring the differences and commonalities between these different groupings, he finds that, in each instance, the young people involved are drawn from socially and economically disadvantaged populations who experience social stigma by virtue of their ethnicity or social status. However, as he argues, that their involvement in gang crime and/or oppositional youth movements is profoundly affected by historical and contemporaneous economic and/or political events.