Black Drug Dealers In A White Welfare State: Cannabis Dealing and Street Capital in Norway

Abstract

This study is based upon ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with ethnic minority cannabis dealers at a street drug market in Oslo, Norway. Three dealers’ socio-biographies are presented and used to illustrate three groups of dealers, and three ideal-typical trajectories to street drug dealing. The first trajectory emerges from migration and early experiences in war-inflicted countries. The second emerges from an increasing drug habit and early socialization in established criminal networks, and the third from an alternative search for identity. The analysis is based on the concept ‘street capital’, inspired by Pierre Bourdieu. This theoretical framework highlights the embodied character of cultural knowledge, the importance of early socialization, and the practical rationality involved when young people start dealing illegal drugs.