Abstract

The surge of transnational illicit economies has led to important transformations in gang structures and cultures. From locally-bound, solidarity-driven peer groups, gangs have morphed into globally-connected, market-driven enterprises. The co-optation of gangs by transnational organized crime has drastically reduced the sense of protection, inclusion, and belonging that gangs provide to their youngest members. Since 2015, Dr. Elena Butti has been conducting ethnographic fieldwork with adolescents who work as low-level drug-dealers for criminal narco-gangs in and around Medellín, Colombia’s second biggest city. In this talk, she will discuss how contemporary Colombian gangs operate through what she terms a ‘criminal franchise’ model, one in which low-level dealers take all of the risk and enjoy none of the gain. The street is, for these adolescents, not a space of emancipation and inclusion, but rather one where they live like fugitives, constantly fleeing violence by police, rival gangs and even their peers. Theoretically, this talk argues that the lens of ‘precarity’ is better suited than that of ‘uncertainty’ to capture the fragile position of young people at the low ends of crime. Practically, it discusses how these insights can be employed to inform better violence prevention policies at the urban margins.

About the Speaker

Dr. Elena Butti is an anthropologist, humanitarian practitioner and participatory film-maker. Currently, she is a Research Associate at the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID) in Geneva, and a Honorary Fellow at the Institute of the Americas at University College London. She holds a PhD and a Post-Doc from the University of Oxford. Her ethnographic research centers on the lives of young people at the urban margins in Latin America. She is currently working on her first book: We Are the Nobodies: Youth, Violence and Drug-Dealing in Colombia. Elena has collaborated with several international organizations on matters related to the Youth, Peace and Security agenda, and she currently works as the Global Youth Advisor for the humanitarian NGO War Child. She is also the author of several participatory films co-directed with young people in Colombia. You can read more about Elena’s work at www.elenabutti.com.