Constructing meaning about the delinquency of young girls in public-housing neighbourhoods

UID/SOC/04647/2013 SFRH/BPD/116119/2016Rooted in the theoretical approaches of social ecology and in childhood studies, the Ph.D. research project on which this paper is based aimed to achieve a better understanding of children’s socialization processes in multi-problematic spaces, particularly concerning their involvement in violence and delinquency. A case study based on ethnographic research and child-centred methods was carried out in six public-housing neighbourhoods in Portugal, which were chosen because they had relatively high levels of social deprivation, violence and crime. The specificity of the social group under study—children aged from 6 to 12 years old—and their living conditions, led us to extend the data collected by trying to learn, from the girls, the reasoning and the meanings they assign to their own actions in daily social practices. The intention was to study the features of girls’ socialization in the field through their own accounts of their lives and to examine their perspectives on offending behaviours. The genderized process of social learning in delinquency identified in the girls’ conversation is an important variable, as familial and social experiences tend to facilitate their entry into delinquency. The transmission of delinquent values takes place essentially within the female family circle or via female peers, rather than from the influence of male individuals.authorsversionpublishe

Risk factors of aggression in preadolescence: risk domains, cumulative risk, and gender differences. Results from a prospective longitudinal study in a multiethnic urban sample

This article reviews a range of risk factors for aggression at age 11 derived from a prospective longitudinal study on the social development of children in a large multi-ethnic sample in Switzerland. The study uses a multi-informant approach that permits reliance on combined measures of social behaviour and covers factors derived from a wide range of risk domains. Besides analysing the effects of individual risk factors, the study also investigates the effect size of cumulative risk within and across risk domains. It further analyses gender differences in risk vulnerability. Results suggest that proximal behavioural and psychological risk factors most strongly predict later aggression, whereas more distal external factors related to the family, to school and to peer relationships are less predictive. The most distal factors (perinatal risks and sociodemographic factors) are only marginally associated with later aggression. Analysis of cumulative risk suggests a strong relationship between the number of risk factors and later aggression. Finally, results support the notion of a higher risk vulnerability of boys compared with girls. Results are discussed in the context of extant research