The MoDS project explores ”gang-ization” both on the level of the street and as a problem discovered from above. It studies 1) how authorities and the media define the street gang problem and how it should be treated 2) how marginalized youths become street-involved and negotiate on what it means to be a “worthy person” in online and offline worlds, and 3) how differing perceptions on what is right and worthy, and what is morally wrong, clash when street-level actors encounter street-involved youths and solve the gang problem on the ground. The ethnographic project combines observation data on youths´ everyday lives and encounters with the agents of the welfare state, interview data and policy and media texts. The project challenges understandings of street gangs as pathological subcultures. The findings of the study provide an analysis of the processes which produce the street gang problem from above and from below, and tools to prevent marginalization that creates gang-ization.

2023

2027