This article focuses on the systematic police killings of young, male
crime suspects by local police officers in Mathare since 2002. It
explores the relationship between executions of young ghetto men
by police and notions of citizenship. It firstexmaines the impact of
such killings on positions of manhood among these men and the
different roles of ‘gangs’ in popular processes of becoming men. My
aim is to move away from the current association of young ghetto
men with violence and ethnic politics—i.e. as ‘thugs for hire’. One
of my main discoveries was that work and manhood are at least as
important to grasp processes of group formation among them. After
this, the article delves into the question of how to understand the
narratives that legitimise and perpetuate this particular form of state
violence. It concludes by discussing how processes of subjectivation
that constitute, and are constituted by, the dominant discourse on
citizenship produce positions of non-citizenship ascribed to ghetto
residents, and in particular to young ghetto men