French sociologist Marwan Mohammed studies criminal delinquency and is particularly interested in youth gangs. He spent the week at UdeM as a researcher in residence.
Security has carved out a prominent place among the themes of municipal elections in Montreal this year. Theme that was also found at the heart of the New York campaign won this week by Eric Adams, a former delinquent turned police officer, at the same time when the subject seems more and more promising in France within the framework of the presidential elections in gestation.
There are certainly nuances to be made so as not to mix everything up on one side of the North Atlantic or the 49e parallel. Still, we have to ask ourselves whether the same causes produce the same effects everywhere. Where does delinquency come from? How does it come into being in a society? How is it repressed?
The French sociologist Marwan Mohammed has spent the last decades exploring these questions, focusing on fieldwork and interviews with delinquents. He has studied “youth gangs” at length, what street gangs. This week, he is inaugurating a new research residency program at the UdeM Center for International Studies and Research (CERIUM).
“To understand delinquency, of course that the social question is important, the level of income, the living conditions, the levels of education of the parents, which weigh directly on the capacities of the families,” he said in an interview with the To have to. But in itself, that does not say why such and such brother becomes delinquent and not such other. Or why only an extreme minority of families are affected in working-class circles. We must therefore go beyond the framework in terms of social classes and enter into the functioning of families and schools to understand the dynamics. “
He says he himself was surprised to find that one in two young people in a gang was “demobilized at school” from the first years of primary school. “We don’t have young people dropping out. We have young people who have never hooked. “
In the long run, some marginalized people therefore come together. Here again, it is necessary to qualify: not all “gangs of buddies” turn into criminalized groups. “The gangs first attract those whose prospects are the most blocked, whose quality of educational profiles is the least good. The gang costs: it exposes to the police, to justice, to reprobation. But the tape also brings back: forms of protection, solidarity, friendship, adrenaline. “
Above all, it provides social status, position and economic opportunities. Finally, it makes it possible to be part of a history of the street, of the neighborhood. And of course, racism helps to reinforce the feeling of rejection and the attraction of the new group of belonging, according to the sociologist.
The bands enter into rivalry to retain or gain sources of income. “Violence is a way of regulating markets,” says Marwan Mohammed. He explains that in Marseille some drug outlets bring in up to 50,000 euros per day.
The gang costs: it exposes to the police, to justice, to reprobation. But the tape also brings back: forms of protection, solidarity, friendship, adrenaline.
“We must add honorary violence,” he said. There is a market for reputations. The bands promote a disposition to confrontation. They overvalue physical strength, virility. Confrontation allows you to become someone. “
Dare the question
Does this survival strategy work better in some already downgraded, marginalized, ostracized and racialized communities? Let us dare to ask the question: is delinquency a more attractive option for certain ethnocultural communities?
“It’s a legitimate question, but it all depends on how you ask it,” says Mr. Mohammed. Our way of focusing on crime is not innocent. Culture – cinema or television – focuses on certain forms of violence and racializes it by defining it by the skin color of the perpetrators. We must ask ourselves who has an interest in maintaining these links between an origin and a delinquency: the Italians with the mafia, the Haitians with the gangs, etc. It is a political construct. “
He himself was able to observe an over-representation of young people of sub-Saharan origins in certain bands in relation to their weight in the population. While digging, he showed that large families were overrepresented. The number of children therefore seems decisive. The original effect itself, at least in France, is in fact based on large siblings.
“In the middle and working-class classes, the larger the siblings, the lower the education and the greater the chances of occupying the public space. The accommodations are never adapted to the size of these families. Domestic saturation pushes children into the streets, and parents take less care of the children in these large siblings. Black jacket surveys showed this same reality fifty years ago. At the time, the jackets were black, but the faces of the offenders were white. “
On Thursday, November 4, from 5.30 p.m. to 7 p.m., Marwan Mohammed participates in a discussion with sociologist Valérie Amiraux on the theme “Organized crime and urban violence on both sides of the Atlantic”. The event is broadcast online.