Push, Pull, Prevention: The Propensity for Undocumented Immigrant Latinx Youth to Join Gangs and How to Prevent It: A Policy Report
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2021
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Haverford College. Department of Political Science
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Thesis
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Award
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eng
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Abstract
This thesis seeks to understand why some undocumented Latinx male youth join gangs in the US and how to prevent it. Over the past thirty years, undocumented Latinx youth have come to comprise a new and significant demographic of youth growing up in the United States, a portion of which have become affiliated with gangs. In 2012, out of an estimated 11.2 million undocumented immigrants living in the US, 2.1 million were children (Gonzalez and Vargas 2016). And, of the undocumented population today, approximately fifty percent are from Mexico or other countries in Latin America (Gonzalez and Vargas 2016). Without comprehensive US immigration policy providing a pathway to citizenship or permanent residency, undocumented Latinx youth are excluded from many opportunity structures, and thus face a unique kind of marginalization in the United States that fosters the type of conditions known to be conducive to gang affiliation among youth. However, for undocumented Latinx youth, making the decision to join a gang takes on a different meaning than for American citizens. Joining a gang means risking it all: not only do they risk arrest and imprisonment, as do all gang members, but undocumented Latinx youth risk the added consequences of immigration detention, deportation, and indefinite family separation. With these serious repercussions in mind, the question comes to bear why some undocumented Latinx youth would choose to risk it all to join a gang. What are the factors at play contributing to their decision to join a gang? What do gangs offer that these youth cannot find elsewhere and can't turn down? Moreover, if their conditions created by their undocumented status are conducive to gang membership, why do only some undocumented Latinx youth join gangs, while many others do not? While gang membership has serious implications for the youth involved and their life trajectories, it also has a larger negative impact on US communities, gang violence in Latin America, and immigration flows moving from Latin America into the US. Latinx gangs in the US coupled with US deportation policies that target gang members create a vicious transnational cycle for the United States; thus it is in the US' best interest to understand the root causes of gang affiliation among this demographic of youth in order to ameliorate the far-reaching impact of gangs (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement). Gangs inflict harm and violence on US communities. When undocumented Latinx youth are deported due to gang activity, some remain involved with their gang, or join branches of their gang in Latin America, thereby strengthening transnational gang networks. Other youth, faced with little reintegration support upon return to their birth countries, become vulnerable to gang recruitment in Latin America, thereby increasing the number of youth involved with gangs in Latin America, and leading to a growth in gang violence in the region (Blitzer 2017; Martínez 2016). In turn, increased gang violence in Latin America drives migration to the US. Consequently, the population of undocumented Latinx immigrants growing up in the United States without a pathway to citizenship continues to grow, thus subjecting more youth to conditions conducive to gang affiliation, and thereby completing the vicious cycle of gang affiliation among undocumented Latinx youth in the US. Thus, the US should work to mitigate the conditions leading to gang affiliation among this demographic, to negate the negative impact it has on the youth involved, US public safety, and US foreign policy migration goals (Blitzer 2017; Martínez 2016). The great urgency of this topic points to the need for the US to support this demographic of youth growing up within its borders. Attending the same schools and living in the same communities as their American citizen peers, undocumented Latinx youth grow up as Americans, assimilating in nearly all ways except legal into the American lifestyle. Considering that the absence of US immigration policy providing a pathway to citizenship for these youth creates conditions conducive to gang affiliation, the US is playing an active role in leading undocumented Latinx youth to join gangs. Thus, the US should be invested in addressing and ameliorating the root causes of gang membership among this demographic. The research presented in this thesis on why some undocumented Latinx youth join gangs and how to prevent it is thus relevant to scholars, practitioners, and policymakers in many fields related to immigration, gangs, community safety, and child development. It is especially relevant to advocates for comprehensive immigration reform, gang practitioners and scholars seeking to understand why youth join gangs and how to prevent it, and branches of the criminal justice system seeking to decrease gang violence and harm in American communities. In this thesis I argue that undocumented Latinx male youth join gangs when they experience adjacent socio-structural push and pull factors in the home and community, and when they exhibit agentic and entrepreneurial characteristics. The undocumented Latinx youth who join gangs are motivated individuals who actively seek out gangs to fill the socio-structural voids in their lives and pursue their individual goals. By this logic, I contend that a pragmatic policy approach demands a holistic response: one that seeks to provide support systems as a means to remedy socio-structural barriers in the home, community, and school arenas, while also providing undocumented Latinx youth with opportunity structures to pursue their individual goals, putting their driven, entrepreneurial mindsets to work through legal channels outside of the gang. In order to develop my hypothesis and argue my claim, I read over thirty interviews from the Migration Encounters Oral History Project interview archive with Mexican individuals who both did and did not join gangs while growing up undocumented in the US. After close analysis, I developed a three-sphere push/pull analytic framework for why some undocumented Latinx youth join gangs. My spheres of analysis are: family, community, and individual. I then selected five interviews with youth who did join gangs, and four with youth who did not join gangs, and completed an in-depth analysis of their push/pull factors through the three-sphere framework to develop my argument. I also spoke with one person who joined a gang while growing up undocumented in the US; my conversation with him, in conjunction with my findings from the interviews I analyzed, help inform my policy recommendations in Chapter IV. On top of the interview material, I drew upon relevant scholarly articles, books, policy reports, reports, and implementation guides to develop my hypothesis and argument. An analysis of the five undocumented Latinx youth who joined gangs in the US supports my hypothesis that it is a combination of socio-structural and individual characteristics that drives youth to join gangs. As evident through the analysis, all of the socio-structural factors within the familial and community spheres are mutually reinforcing, working in tandem with one another to push and pull youth into gangs. While broken families and strict parenting push youth into gangs in the familial sphere, neighborhood crime and violence, the criminal justice system, school environment, access to extracurricular activities, and poverty push youth into gangs in the community sphere. These socio-structural factors overlap and interact with each other, as poverty intersects all facets of community life, dictating the concentration of social problems in impoverished neighborhoods, which in turn attracts a strong police and criminal justice presence, impacts the ability for youth to have access to extracurricular activities, affects the people youth spend time with, and all together creates an environment conducive to gang affiliation. With this established, it is evident in the analysis that the youth who joined gangs asserted individual agency and demonstrated entrepreneurial attitudes in their decision to join a gang. Not only did some of the youth join a gang as their only available pathway to realize entrepreneurial goals such as earning money and status, but all of the youth sought out gang affiliation as a means to fill the socio-structural voids they were experiencing in their family and community life. Seeking out brotherhood, love, and support in a gang is an example of this assertion of individual agency demonstrated by all five of the youth. The analysis of the four undocumented Latinx youth who did not join a gang serves as a complement to the above analysis, as it offers insight into potential mitigating factors for gang affiliation. The presence of supportive teachers, school counselors, and ESL classes stood out as a common denominator among all four of the youth analyzed. Given that a major push factor for the youth who did join a gang was the absence of a supportive family member or the disappearance of a mentor, the presence of a supportive figure in the lives of the youth who did not join gangs can be a guide for developing programs and policy to better support this demographic of youth and help keep them out of gangs. Moreover, another takeaway point was the way in which extracurriculars may offer an alternative to gangs with the same pull-factor benefits for youth, and the importance of having those extracurriculars financially accessible to all youth, regardless of socioeconomic status. My research findings demonstrate a great degree of overlap with existing literature as to the socio-structural push factors, or risk factors, for why youth join gangs, but also differ in some respects and thus offer insight for new issues to consider. My findings point to a key issue to consider: how providing a pathway for undocumented Latinx youth to earn money outside of the gang can serve not only to help gang-involved youth transition out of gang life, but to prevent youth from turning to gangs in the first place. Another issue to consider for future research is how the absence of adult support networks in schools could serve as a potential push factor for gang affiliation among undocumented Latinx youth. Additionally, it is important to consider how the disappearance of mentors and extracurriculars can push youth into gangs. And finally, my findings suggest that a community-based rather than corrections-based prevention approach should be prioritized for this demographic of youth. I conclude by expounding policy recommendations based on my findings, including mentorship programs, individual and family therapy, counseling in schools for undocumented students, school- or community-funded extracurricular activities, healthy parenting classes for at-risk families, and employment authorization and opportunities for undocumented youth. The implementation of all of these policies would help address both the socio-structural conditions and individual factors identified in my research pushing and pulling undocumented Latinx youth into gangs.
Description
Dorian Alexis was a Bryn Mawr College student.