Of suppliers, friends, neighbors and barderos. About the work, crime and youth sociability in Greater Buenos Aires

Abstract

This article is based on an piece of research among young people from Greater Buenos Aires who commit crimes against property. In the first place, the article analyzes the impact of extended instability and precariousness of labor in the passage from workman’s logic to that of the supplier. The latter expresses the articulation of different resources which are placed between work and crime, showing the emergence of a segment of population that combines legal and illegal actions in order to survive. Secondly, the paper studies the sociability of these young people, pointing out their particularities in comparison with gangs presented in studies on other latitudes. Lastly, the article is interested in the relationship with neighbors; the dilemmas about stealing or not within the neighborhood, and the neighbors’strategies to make their relationship with these young people normal and foreseeable.