“Part-time gangsters” – a social analysis on urban youth’s attitude toward school in a medium-sized provincial town in Denmark.

This analysis revolves around an ethnographic fieldwork carried out in the late summer 2014 on the town square of Lomby , Denmark. Various groupings of seemingly vulnerable young people claim the space around the skater facility in the city center. Among these grouping the fieldworkers, hung out among Thugz - a self-named pseudo-gang - with a general conflictual behaviour towards other groupings at the site, the social services and the police. However, follow-up interviews also depicted a surprising and contradictory side of the Thugz-members’ mental approach by looking at their attitude toward another authority, which affect their daily lives and future opportunities; the school (Gravesen & Frostholm 2015). In this presentation we will focus on this finding.In his classic book Learning to labour (1977), Paul Willis’ shows how the rebellious working class boys personified a so-called counter-school culture. Quite surprisingly, the confrontational attitude that the Thugz-members practice toward other authorities does not characterize their approach to school. The young boys in the group claim to believe in the idea of education and basically find that in order to lead a decent life, you need to do your best and be successful in school. Some key Thugz-informants explain that they have seen a lot of people facing social decline, and insist that they must learn from those people’s bitter experiences. In continuation of such insights the leader of the Thugz, Bezim states: “You’re much more of a gangster, if you cause trouble during leisure time and get your act together in school. At least, that’s what I’ve learned!”