Exclusion, Civic Invisibility and Impunity as Explanations for Youth Murders in Brazil

Abstract

As a sociological analysis, this study of youth murders in Brazil focuses on victim-generating sociostructural situations and the social creation of victims. Rather than concentrating on individuals' predispositions or overt motives for murdering Brazilian youth, or on the victims' specific alleged misbehaviors and threats, or some generalized `culture of violence', we identify the particular conditions that transform particular kinds of Brazilian youth into `social problems' and `symbolic assailants', thus increasing their vulnerability to murder. It is this study's thesis that modern Brazilian social structures powerfully shape poor Brazilian youths' vulnerability to murder by strangers. These victims come from the segments most marginalized socially, economically and politically from Brazilian society — as poor, darkskinned, male teenagers. This marginalization renders such youth virtually powerless — political and social outcasts within the legitimate system, or, in civic and political terms, non-persons. When their presence on the streets as workers is combined with civic invisibility and social visibility as symbolic assailants, such youth are especially likely to be murdered by a stranger.