Why your cap and mine do not? The processes of identity construction in young people organized against police violence

Abstract

In criminological theories of juvenile conflict, youth are often referred to as a category that is homogeneous or limited to biological issues. For this reason, in the present work, it is first necessary to analyze the notion of youth, presenting in a schematic way the different aspects that analyze it and asumming one  approach of them.

For understand this complex phenomenon, it’s necessary to investigate other dimensions of interactions of young people, and not only those that come from penal system.  For this reason, through the qualitative methodology, it was analyze young people as urban citizens who build their group identities outside of the activities defined as illegal, constituting their collective subject  with social belongings. The young people interviewed are defined as belonging to one youth culture and they were analyzed from the dimensions that appear as relevant, such as appearance (clothing and especially the use of cap), music and the use they make of urban space, especially concerning  about the corners and places destined to practice soccer. Finally, it is mención the tensions from the look of the young people interviewed, what daily police interaction presents in this construction of colective identity.