The primary question addressed in this article is how to understand and produce praxisdevelopment in the complex and contentious field of street communities of young marginalizedmen, an area highlighted almost on a daily basis in the Danish media under headlines with termssuch as ‘foreigner problems’, ‘ghetto problems’, ‘gang conflicts’ and ‘gang war’. Since 2009,activists and professionals related to this field have gathered at Grundtvigs Højskole where theyinitiated and inspired community building activities in relation to the recent gang conflicts in theCopenhagen area of Denmark. The article explores these practices and changes, including someof the communal initiatives arising in response to the escalating gang conflicts. The conflict andcommunity building activities are contextualized in terms of broader tendencies and changes inDanish society, from enduring struggles with ethnic othering of young minority men since the late1990s, to other societal changes escalating ‘gang-conflicts’ to ‘gang-war’. The article examineshow these changes produce new dynamics, tensions and dimensions of binary thinking, which inturn creates new dilemmas in the everyday lives of the people involved in social work practice,community building activities and praxis research
