Abstract
So-called bandas (‘gangs’) have been the object of media, police and institutional violence, and the target of the processes of moral cleansing of public space in certain working-class outskirts of Madrid. But what happens when all this is implemented in a popular suburban neighbourhood, historically the territory of anti-capitalist left-leaning movements? What meanings, uses, enmities and alliances does the concept of gentrification then help to develop, and how does this relate to the presence of street gangs? This chapter explores the role of (often racialised) ‘youth gangs’ in the processes of urban (re-)configuration in the popular neighbourhood of San Diego (Vallecas, Madrid). Based on field observation and critical discourse analysis, we analyse the role of these young bandas (as an argumentative device in the media-neighbourhood repertoire for enhancing stigma of place, and as an unwanted presence for Spanish, white, civilised middle-class residents) in becoming an urban frontier against the area’s gentrification.
Keywords
- Racialised youth
- Gangs
- Punitivism
- Suburbia
- Gentrification
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See: Social Vulnerability Index, City Council of Madrid (2019).
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In this text, by suburban subalternity we mean those populations, normally adolescents (13–17 years old), young people (18–24 years old) and young adults (25–35 years old) who are also non-white and/or anti-capitalist activists, whose daily punitive criminalisation by the media-institutional-civil front excludes them (and displaces them) socially, politically, symbolically and spatially from the hierarchy of both social and institutional power within their neighbourhoods.
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“Plan de Contratación del Ayuntamiento de Madrid 2020” (Madrid City Council Procurement Plan), page 79.
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Although the development of this point goes beyond the scope of this chapter, we consider it important to highlight the connection between this supposed issue (‘organised crime and insecurity’ in working-class neighbourhoods) and the subject of prostitution/sexual exploitation. This relationship in the public discourse is not insignificant, and accounts for the controversies and internal power struggles that developed, not only within the residents’ movement, but consequently in connection with the feminist movement and hidden interests of certain traditional political parties (particularly in the current fight for the left between PSOE and Unidas-Podemos).
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Aramayona, B., Nofre, J. (2021). Bandas de Barrio (Neighbourhood Gangs) and Gentrification: Racialised Youth as an Urban Frontier Against the Elitisation of Suburban Working-Class Neighbourhoods in Twenty-First-Century Madrid. In: Campos, R., Nofre, J. (eds) Exploring Ibero-American Youth Cultures in the 21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83541-5_3
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