Involvement in crime and ways of experiencing youth: reflections based on trajectories on the peripheries of the Metropolitan Region of Porto Alegre

Abstract

We intend to reflect on involvement in crime by discussing aspects related to ways of experiencing youth in peripheral areas in the Metropolitan Region of Porto Alegre. We start from the notion that crime, as a space for sociability, also impacts the production of identities, cutting across youth lifestyles and habits. Thus, crime is referred here not to illicit businesses, but to social relations that acquire meaning around their collective experience. Involvement concerns, in its literal sense, the proximity of the actors to the dynamics that occur around criminal groups. We then seek to understand involvement based on markers of youth experiences, analyzing the relationship of young people involved with their territory, leisure, affections, the aesthetic apparatus and consumption. The data used in the article were collected during two master's research studies. It was possible to verify, through this articulation, that the notion of involvement goes beyond the limits of criminal practice, this being just one of its several possible elements. Thus, the term is polysemic, acquiring meanings that fluctuate according to the context and purpose of use, as well as the social actor who uses it.