Latin gangs in Spain? Immigrant youth groups, stigma and symptoms

This article explores the criminalized social imaginaries of so-called Latin gangs in Spain, dismantling stereotypes and proposing different analysis approaches. The empirical material comes from an ethnography conducted between 2010 and 2011 in neighborhoods in the suburbs of Barcelona. The main techniques used were document analysis, participant observation with various youth immigrant groups and collection of data from oral sources with diferents types of informants. The results of the study discuss the social image of these groups, which stigmatize young people that are involved in them and it is symptom of segregated reception of immigration, increasingly in times of economic crisis. We analyze the dynamics of violence concerning these groups; at the same time, we interprete these groups as circulation spaces of social capital and as forms of agency, that can empower the members individually and collectively.