African Gang Research Articles

The myth of Australia’s migrant youth gang: examining the perceived association between ethnicity and gangs

ABSTRACT In Australia, as with other countries around the world, migrant young people receive significant media and political attention as the alleged perpetrators of significant criminal activity. This has been a consistent feature over time, with ‘Asian gangs’ in the 1990s in the US, UK and Australia, ‘Middle-Eastern gangs’ around the time of 9/11, ‘Turkish gangs’ and ‘Albanian gangs’ in the UK and Europe, and ‘African gangs’ in Australia since the early 2000s. In this research, we investigate the risk factors associated with youth gang membership in Australia. Using data from the Australia Youth Safety Survey from 2,945 young people aged 14–25 years, we examine the importance of first- and second-generation migrant status on gang membership. After controlling for known risk factors, we find that migrant status was not a predictor of gang membership. Results offer important insights into the prominence of morality and self-control as protective factors against youth gang membership, and speak to the role of neighbourhood context in which the young person lives.

‘African kids can’: challenging the African gangs narrative on social media

In 2016, following the ‘Moomba riots’ in Melbourne, the powerful and damaging narrative of ‘African gangs’ reemerged in Australian media and political discourse. The hyper-criminalisation and problematisation of Black African young people as violent and engaging in gang activity, created moral panics that exacerbated already existing anti-Black African sentiment in Australia. This racist ‘majoritarian narrative’ of Black Africans resulted in far-reaching consequences for the African community in Australia, particularly for African young people. Significantly, it has been noted that in the face of these overwhelmingly negative portrayals, African young people felt invisible, disempowered and psychologically defeated by the media. This paper employs the use of the critical race methodology ‘counternarratives’ to explore the use of social media by African young people in Australia to challenge the ‘majoritarian narrative’ of African gangs. Drawing on six months of social media ethnography and multiple participant interviews with African youth participants ( n = 15), this paper argues that social media is a significant site where African young people (re)claim their narratives as African kids who ‘can’.

When Law-And-Order Politics Fail: Media Fragmentation and Protective Factors That Limit the Politics of Fear

Abstract Law-and-order politics has long been a topic of scholarly work. The leveraging of fear of crime for political capital has been of particular concern. In the 2018 election in the Australian state of Victoria, crime and law-and-order became prominent political issues, particularly through racialized discourse about ‘African gangs’. That election provides a case study here. This article turns the traditional analysis of the politics of fear of crime around and considers some of the key reasons why law-and-order politics failed to gain decisive political traction in this instance. Media fragmentation and diversification continues to challenge the primacy of political primary definers in unpredictable ways. As such, electoral strategies that seek to leverage fear of crime and community insecurity need to be understood in the context of broader individual, community and social protective factors that might mitigate fear of crime.

Rethinking visual criminalization: news images and the mediated spacetime of crime events

This article explores the mediated spacetime of crime events to reconsider how criminalization works through visual journalism. Drawing on close analysis of 45 images from Australian newspaper reports about so-called ‘African gang crime’ events in the city of Melbourne, it develops a typology of five distinct ‘ways of looking’ at crime that news images can open for their viewers. Each extends unique imaginative demands and so conditions perceptual relationships of spatial, historical and political significance between crime events and those who watch them unfold through the news in distinct ways. Together, these ways of looking constitute an intertextual representational mechanism that the author calls kaleidoscopic visuality, holding fixed the ‘who’ and ‘what’ of crime events while endlessly shifting and destabilizing the ‘where’ and ‘when’. The concept of kaleidoscopic visuality helps clarify how and why hypermediated crime events and phenomena resist discrete and/or desecuritized interpretations of their political significance, and thus broadens existing accounts of how news images criminalize.

Smartphones for drugs: exchange relations in a South African gang since apartheid

ABSTRACT This article outlines the nature of exchange relations between members of the so-called Number Gangs in South Africa. Transactions between these township-based members changed after apartheid with political and economic liberalisation. Through the case of an active gang leader in Cape Town, who was previously a career burglar, I look at the material things that move between members. I argue that transactions inside the gang do not make use of money, but are rather characterised by in-kind exchanges. These have four interdependent outcomes which structure the gang: (1) gifts that shape obligations in young recruits and experienced offenders; (2) enduring barter transactions for the collection of stolen electronics following such gifts; (3) employment in a context of joblessness; and (4) control for leaders.

African Youth Gangs: The Marginalization of South Sudanese Young People in Melbourne, Australia

South Sudanese youth especially young male youth face racism and discrimination in Australia. This research was conducted with South Sudanese young people, and stakeholders within the South Sudanese community in Melbourne, Australia. The study explored how South Sudanese young people respond to the narrative in the media about ‘African Gangs’ and how this impacted their personal experiences of racism. The study used an exploratory, qualitative case study approach in a real-world setting, underpinned by the psychosocial conceptual framework. The analysis documented areas of concern, including the poor mental health arising from racism and racial profiling.

‘Swamped by Muslims’ and facing an ‘African gang’ problem: racialized and religious media representations in Australia

ABSTRACT Despite the implementation of multicultural policies since the 1970s, anxiety over cultural and religious ‘others’ continue to challenge Australia’s diversifying national identity. Problematic media representations of racial and religious minorities persist in Australia and continue to shape public perceptions and political discourses on issues of migration and intercultural relations. This paper examines how Muslims and Africans are contemporary scapegoats of Australian anxieties. These fears continue to be present in racialized rhetoric and attacks on Chinese Australians during the COVID-19 pandemic. Applying discourse analysis on two recent case studies as illustrative examples – the 2018 Bourke Street attack and the so-called ‘African gangs’ – this paper argues that despite substantial research and critique, mainstream media continue to rely on familiar and problematic tropes for framing racial and religious minorities that dehumanize them based on essentialized characteristics of crime, violence and anti-social behaviour. These characteristics tend to be exploited for political gain, with Muslims and Africans portrayed as a disruption to social cohesion and national security. A critique of the role of media and political discourses is presented, as they remain critical instruments in the pursuit of a new ethics of openness, respect and mutual understanding, which are fundamental to living well with difference.

‘Nobody feels safe’: Vulnerability, fear and the micro-politics of ordinary voice in crime news television

The new prominence of ordinary voice in crime journalism – claims to have seen things, experienced things, felt things ‘first-hand’ – has the potential to decenter elite perspectives and open up crime news narratives to the voices of systemically criminalized subjects. However, I argue in this paper that the political potential of ordinary voice can only be realized in and through concrete instances of its use, and so needs to be examined within news texts as sites of micro-political struggle over meaning. Looking at Australian current affairs television coverage of so-called ‘African gang’ crime in Melbourne, this paper approaches crime news texts as sites of vulnerability politics, where different and sometimes competing claims to vulnerability encounter one another and struggle for public recognition. A close multi-modal analysis of three episodes of current affairs television uncovers four specific strategies of textual composition and presentation by which the criminalization of Black African youth is able to persist despite the testimonial interventions of the criminalized: appropriation, marginalization, subjugation and calculation. The paper concludes by considering the implications of this analysis for future studies of ordinary voice and citizen testimony in news reporting.

Reporting ‘African gangs’: Theorising journalistic practice during a multi-mediated moral panic

This article uses Bourdieusian field theory to examine how journalistic practices contributed to a multi-mediated moral panic about ‘African gangs’ in Melbourne, Australia. Empirical insight is supplied via interviews with journalists who identified traditional media outlets as ‘secondary definers’ that amplified and legitimised this racialised threat construction. Participants attributed the intense and sensationalised media coverage to the political climate, the newsworthiness of racialised ‘folk devils’, and the economic and technological transformation of the journalistic field. These transformations were perceived to have negatively influenced journalistic standards by incentivising the efficient production of commodifiable content. Participants described how these structural changes were filtered through the social personalities of different news outlets; they shaped, and were reproduced through, distinct managerial cultures, editorial routines and journalistic habitus. The emergent nomos (‘rules of the game’) was perceived to constrain the autonomy of journalists, particularly those lacking cultural capital, and limit opportunities for contestation of the ‘African gangs’ narrative. Journalists seemingly adapted by engaging in practices which reflected their attempts to negotiate these conditions and establish coherent narrative identities. In some cases, this entailed the neutralisation of what journalists recognised as ethically questionably reporting practices.

‘African gangs’ in Australia: Perceptions of race and crime in urban neighbourhoods

In 2016, Melbourne experienced what was referred to in the media as the Moomba ‘riot’. This event led to a racialised political and media campaign regarding the problem of ‘African gangs’. Despite no evidence of actual gang activity, the backlash against black migrants in Melbourne was consequential with increases in reported racism and institutionalised forms of discrimination. In this study, we examine the neighbourhood context of exclusion against African Australians following the Moomba ‘riot’. Using census and crime data integrated with survey data from 2400 residents living in 150 urban neighbourhoods, we interrogate the relationship between sentiments (measured as anger) towards Africans and perceptions of neighbourhood crime and disorder. We further consider whether quality contact with Africans and neighbourhood cohesion mediates this relationship. We conclude with reflections on the significant and deleterious effects of the ‘black and criminal’ association on understandings of ‘Africanness’ in Australia.

Narratives of Gang Disengagement Among Former Gang Members in South Africa

Understanding gang disengagement is important for the development of effective interventions. This research sought to examine how former South African gang members understand their gang disengagement. Two rounds of life history interviews were conducted with 12 former gang members. Thematic narrative analysis was used to analyze the interview data. Findings revealed that personal agency was key to the participants’ disengagement, which included forming a purposive intention to change, committing to and maintaining this change, despite challenges faced, and taking personal responsibility for their pasts. It also involved actively drawing on protective resources—such as meaningful and practical support from loved ones—and prosocial identities available to them within their environments, thus illustrating how the disengagement process is an interaction between inner and outer resources. Therefore, it is imperative that gang-related interventions ensure that individuals have access to the kinds of resources that will support their disengagement.

Iphones and “African gangs”: everyday racism and ethno-transnational media in Melbourne’s Chinese student world

ABSTRACTBased on an ethnography of young women from China studying in Melbourne, this article explores participants’ experiences of living in a super-diverse city, and questions whether extant theoretical accounts of everyday multiculturalism are adequate to understand the experience of these residents. In 2016, Melbourne’s Chinese student community was rocked by a prolonged spate of mobile phone thefts that Chinese-language social media framed as ethnically targeted attacks on Chinese people by “African gangs.” This article considers participants’ responses to these incidents, alongside the racialized reportage of them on the WeChat public accounts that are participants’ main source of local news. The article mounts a critique of the media ethics inherent in this form of news delivery. It extends the everyday multiculturalism framework with an example that deals not with a strongly hybrid migrant youth culture, but rather with young migrants socialized into a monocultural society encountering everyday life in super-diversity.

The ‘African gangs’ narrative: associating Blackness with criminality and other anti-Black racist tropes in Australia

ABSTRACTThis article explores and theorizes anti-Black racist discourses that shape the ways in which the Australian media and other mainstream Australian institutions talk about and view Black Africans. It argues that the long-standing racist trope of synonymizing Blackness with criminality is widespread in Australia. Thus, among other things, this paper theorizes the Australian media narrative of ‘African gangs’ who are supposedly causing havoc in the State of Victoria, Australia. It argues that the January 2018 media reporting about the so-called ‘African gangs’ is a good example that illustrates how the long-standing racist trope of conflating Blackness with criminality is employed in Australia. The discussion is framed within a Black/African Diaspora theoretical framework that allows this study to conceptualize and connect the lived experiences of Black people globally.