‘Don’t give love to someone who deserves a bullet’ – Young people’s negotiated solidarity in the context of crime and violence in Salvador, Brazil

• In Event: Crime and social Networks

Abstract

Although Brazil as a whole is a diverse society, with its youth living in a variety of situations, its disadvantaged urban communities have become sites of organised crime, drug trafficking and police violence, and this influences the lives of many young people. In this paper, I reflect on what constitutes solidarity in relation to young people living in this context of crime and violence. This paper is part of an ethnographic research project I conducted in urban Northeast Brazil with 17 young people living in socially vulnerable situations, most street-connected, between 2018–2023. In this paper, I elaborate on the specific situations and descriptions of four boys aged 15 to 17, with whom data was created in 2023 in a governmental institution based in Salvador, Brazil. Most of the young people the institution had received death threats from drug gangs.

The results illustrate how the young people’s ambivalent solidarities in the context of crime and violence were manifested in a constant negotiation between different solidary experiences. Young people’s solidarity in everyday interactions and practices consisted of negotiating togetherness and support. Additionally, the young people expressed solidarity beyond immediate relations, mainly, other young people living in difficult situations. It is impossible to understand the construction of solidarity in relation to these young people if we ignore their surroundings and the context in which they have grown up. Their sense of everyday solidarity and their life trajectories reveal complex experiences of solidarity and constant negotiations of (lack of) support and (dis)trust. I argue that while the participating boys expressed the desire to make a difference and prevent other young people from falling into crime, they should not be the ones to carry this burden. The results implicate the need for collective action that increases societal solidarity with, and justice towards, marginalised youth.

Author

• Annika Lehtonen, Tampere University