UTANFÖR ELLER INNANFÖR: EN FRÅGA OM LIVETUTANFÖR

Social mobilization or street crimes: Two strategiesamong young urban outcasts in contemporarySweden

Philip Lalander, Professor in Work, Malmö UniversityWorld Conference on Social Work, Oct 11, 2012, Stockholm

Mira amigo, estoy cansado, de esta vida llena de amargura.Si algo pasa, alla en la casa, puedes contar a nosotros pa todo.Somos hermanos aqui en la calle, somos todos con risa y furia …En las buenas y en las malas.

Importance of studies focusing everyday life and social structures

• Strong trends on segregation and unequality in society, even in Sweden.

• In a time of individualization and medicalization it is important to focus on social, economic and structural embeddedness and incorporation in human beings.

• Bourdieus concept of habitus; how we feel and view the world is constructed in the individuals journeys through life, and how we are positioned in social, economic and cultural structures.

Two cases, groups of young men in Swedish low status suburbs

• The first is a study by Ove Sernhede, a group of young men with immigrant background who createted a kind of street culture which became like an ”education of our time”, learning to see and to reflect on society, ones position in it and the history of making resistance. Producing respectability.

Two cases, groups of young men in Swedish low status suburbs

• The other is also a group of young male with immigrant background. Carried out by Lalander.

• From early age they develop an interest of illegal activities, in the beginning using cannabis and stealing mopeds, but for some of them, later on, dealing with heroin and investing in organized crime.

They have things in common

• That they grow up in a Swedish society which during their childhood and youth went through major changes.

• They used street music and styles in order to create a feeling of respectability and also in some aspects to understand their own position, identifying themselves with the street, the translocal street, imaginary related to streets in Kingston, Brazil, East LA etcetera.

One thing that mattered can be illustrated with the concept charisma

• The rap organizers in the first case were charismatic and could provide young people with a sense of meaning and identity. They had a similar habitus, thus reflecting a sense of reality a sense of ”I know what you mean” without saying it.

One thing that mattered can be illustrated with the concept charisma

• Lorenzo was highly charismatic according to the habitus of the young men, so was the ”old man” (a large scale distributor)

• ”By relating to charismatic persons one may create a feeling of security, strength and self-respect.”

• Lorenzo and the ”old man” had money, which for the young poor guys is intertwined with other impression in the feel and the interpretation of them.

Impact for social work

• Working on a both structural and ethnographic level …

• Fight against local and global inequality, segregation, stigmatization and discrimination.

Thank you!