The Pool of Availability

Loïc Wacquant in his foreword to Urban Outcasts (2008: 1) talks of neoliberalist policies producing ‘stigmatised neighbourhoods situated at the very bottom of the hierarchical system of places that constitute the metropolis’. Characterised by ‘urban marginality’, he refers to ‘lawless zones’, ‘problem estates’, ‘urban hellholes’ and ‘no-go areas’ found in inner-city and peripheral urban environments. Charting the post-industrialisation degradation and disintegration of working-class territories in Western European cities he notes a process of ‘advanced marginality’ arising from stigmatised territories, the withdrawal of the social state and fragmentation of wage labour (2008: 236–8). In such places community bonds disintegrate and collective efficacy withers away to be replaced by ‘social fragmentation and symbolic splintering’ (2008: 244) and symbolic derangement (2008: 245). Wacquant focuses heavily on the role of the state in the sustained production of advanced marginality citing the overarching structure of neoliberalism. These ‘tainted’ urban spaces or ‘neighbourhoods of relegation’ (2008: 239) become subject to over-policing, experimental policing and ‘special measures’ which further marginalise ‘defamed’ communities.

The changes articulated by Wacquant in Urban Outcasts are also trailed by Norbert Elias in The Civilising Process (1994); Jock Young in The Exclusive Society (1999); Slavoj Žižek (2009) in First as Tragedy Then as Farce; Mike Davis in Planet of Slums (2006); and John Hagedorn in A World of Gangs (2008). Disengagement by executive authorities and marginalisation of residualised, vulnerable communities are commonly cited as contributory factors for the gestation of street gangs who evolve to fill the vacuums. John Pitts in his book Reluctant Gangsters (2008) locates these arguments in a UK context citing neighbourhood transformation in the 1980s/1990s as being formative in creating the circumstances in which youth street gangs might thrive. Pitts argues that deindustrialisation, income polarisation, structural youth unemployment, a rolling back of the state and economic marginalisation have become increasingly concentrated in areas of disadvantage. Scottish scholarship, notably Deuchar (2009), and also Fraser (2015) in his study of youthful peer groups, similarly identify issues of deindustrialisation, social deprivation, disenfranchisement by educational failure, unemployment and poverty as key reasons for street gang affiliation.