Youth Gangs in Wales: Blocked Opportunities and Broken Transitions—A Generational Evolution from Troublesome Youth Groups to ‘Gangs’ in South Wales?

Blocked Opportunities and Broken Transitions—a Generational Evolution from Troublesome Youth Groups to ‘Gangs’ in south Wales? Jennifer Maher and Howard Williamson chart the history of groups of socially deviant young people in south Wales from the 1980s onwards, against a backdrop of worsening de-industrialisation. Williamson explored the development and subsequent life course of troublesome youth groups he first worked with on a social housing estate in the 1980s. ‘The Milltown Boys’ transition from teenagers to young adults coincided with the collapse of the youth labour market and the demise of traditional pathways from school to work for working-class boys. Three decades later, amid heightened societal fear over youth gang violence and criminality Maher, picked up the story in her ethnographic study of contemporary youth formations in south Wales. On the basis of this research, she developed a typology of the various groupings observed, ranging from embryonic to established gang-like groups. These gangs are contextualised by the historical perspective of blocked opportunities, fractured transitions, cultural change influenced by glocalisation and the widening opportunities for 'deviant enterprise'. Together these studies offer a unique evolutionary account of what might be construed as youth gang development in Wales, over an almost 50 year period.