Abstract

The focus of this article is the fabrication of gangs as a social problem in contemporary Spain. The mobilisation of several agencies during the last ten years to highlight, eradicate, heal this object-problem has created expert officials from different State bureaucracies, as well as models of relationship, career, cooperation and conflict. Using, in an heterodox way, some categories of critical thought and Bourdieu theory, the article explores ethnographically the functioning of this bureaucratic field, observing the policies and the policing of gangs, as well the everyday practices of agents of the right and left hand of the State in defining, constituting, managing, stigmatising these forms of subaltern youth sociability.