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In the last fifteen years, public anxiety has grown at the rise of
organized street youth who have spread from major urban centers to small
cities, towns and even villages. Form the ghettoes and barrios of New
York City and Los Angeles to the council estates of London, the flavelas of
Sao Paulo, the bidonvilles of Paris, the campos of Guatemala and the
housing projects of Moscow, newspapers stories, social scientific studies,
law enforcement agencies, judicial legislation, and educational task forces
are increasingly devoted to the anti-social presence of gangs, posses,
crews and pandillas. Whatever
local terminology is used to describe these subterranean worlds, the
phenomena now appear to be fed by the same globalizing imperatives normally
associated with production systems, consumer markets, communication
networks and population shifts. To address these latest dynamics
among some of the poorests school-age youth on the globe, a conference will
be held in May, 2001 that aims to:
- Bring together researchers,
educators, advocates and organizers from around the globe to share
knowledge, compare characteristics, discuss causes and shed light on
successful interventions regarding this growing problem of street
youth gangs subcultures;
- Focus on the specific roles
that globalism is playing in the growth of streets youth subcultures;
- Listen to the youth of
these international subcultures and/or to their representatives who
have developed grassroots organizations to cope with problems of
social, educational, political, cultural and economic
disenfranchisement;
- Provide a local historical
context for the emergence of street youth collectives and explain why
these subcultures have been responded to in the manner that is now
dominant in the host nation; and
- Discuss the relevance of
research within the specific context of each subculture and offer
possibilities of comparative and collaborative studies both within and
across national borders.
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