Moral Juvenicides. from Youth Gangs to Migrant Minors

This paper present the preliminary resuts of the JUVENICIDE project, wich objective is to take stock of the current situation of two youth groups in Spain: young people of Latin American origin - especially those linked to gangs-, and young people of North African origin, mostly minors who migrated alone - and propose measures and policies to improve their living conditions. The project aims to take stock of the current challenges for social inclusion in the two central cases indicated in Spain in dialogue with two contrasting cases - maras in El Salvador and young people in street situations in Morocco. The concept of "juvenicide" is understood as the process of physical disappearance and moral exclusion of young people, as a result of actions exercised by criminal groups, state or parastatal forces. The relevance of this project is determined by the urgent need to focus the phenomenon from a knowledge-based policy - as an alternative to the knowledge-based police that is in force in so many countries - as well as to defend the human rights of minors and young people. It is important to understand the situation of minors and young people in the European diaspora, whose migration processes may involve a violation of their rights. The research is innovative in three aspects: (a) it proves the opportunity to extend the academic use of the concept "juvenicide" beyond Latin America; (b) it develops a comparative methodology to understand the phenomenon in the bases of qualitative and quantitative parameters; and (c) it develops a pilot model to assess the demographic, economic, social, political, and moral impact of the phenomenon, as well as the most effective strategies to prevent it.