UCL Institute of the Americas Public Seminar 2023/24 with speaker Elena Butti (IHEID, Geneva)

Across cultures, crime-involved youth are the object of substantial moral panic. Stigmatizing narratives about ‘dangerous’, ‘unruly’, and ‘rebellious’ youth abound, and are often utilized by conservative governments to justify repressive security policies. But how much do we really know about these young people, and about why and how they operate within criminal networks? Based on her long-term ethnographic fieldwork with drug-dealing adolescents in Colombia’s urban peripheries, Dr. Butti will discuss these questions within the context of Medellín. She argues that crime-involved youth are actually the most vulnerable elements of Colombia’s criminal machine: while they perform the essential tasks, yet they are also easily punished, displaced, or even killed if they make a mistake or become too ‘hot’. These young people – who bear all of the risk of the criminal enterprise, but earn none of the gain – should be supported rather than repressed. Based on her direct experience as a humanitarian practitioner and youth worked, Dr. Butti will also discuss different policy alternatives, arguing for a narrative shift away from ‘the youth problem’ and towards ‘youth-led solutions’.

Dr. Elena Butti is a Research Fellow at the Centre on Conflict, Development & Peacebuilding of the IHEID in Geneva, and a Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute of the Americas of University College London. Her ethnographic research explores the lives of adolescents who deal drugs for  criminal groups in the Colombian urban periphery, as well as instances of youth-led resistance and peacebuilding. Her current book project, titled We Are the Nobodies: Adolescents’ first steps into crime in Colombia, ethnographically explore the experiences of low-level drug dealers in Medellin, Colombia. She has collaborated with several international organisations on matters related to the Youth, Peace and Security Agenda. As a visual anthropologist, she has also produced several participatory film projects with youth in Colombia.

Chair: Kate Saunders-Hastings