The Spatial Dimensions of Identity Development for Black, Urban Youth/ Between Love, Rights and Solidarity

Since the late 1990s, urban regions have been at the centre of contemporary law and order debates decrying deviance among black urban youth. These debates have been particularly concerned with the risk of black, urban youths’ appropriation into a culture of gang violence. Corresponding, state curtailment efforts have been informed by the institutional determination that the urban gang youth belongs to a violent minority of serious offenders, for whom penal administrators reserve their most punitive sanctions. Guided by field research conducted in London, England and Toronto, Canada, this presentation investigates how institutional management of deviance, in the urban, contributes to thwarting (and suggests how it might foster) the identity development of black, urban youth.