Urban Governance and Youth Gatherings in Montreal-Nord : On the Idea of Street Gangs

This article focuses on the concept of street gangs, discussing the historical context of the construction and "popularization" of this concept in North America. More precisely, it deals with the way in which the transformations experienced by contemporary capitalist societies (immigration, loss of public spaces, changes in the justice system) explain the diffusion of this concept. The purpose of the paper is certainly not to deny the existence of juvenile crime (individual or collective), but rather to reflect on the limits of one of the most popular concepts used to understand it. In this sense, it is possible to say that the paper seeks to deconstruct the notion of "street gang". The particular example used to illustrate this investigation is that of Montreal-Nord, a Montreal neighborhood that has often been associated with street gangs by the media and by public security services in Quebec.