Gang Affiliation and Radicalization to Violent Extremism Within SomaliAmerican Communities

Radicalization, Somali American , youth, violent extremism, alienation

The primary purpose of this project was to understand to what degree radicalization to violent extremism and gang involvement are related. We proposed to empirically assess the degree to which gang affiliation and radicalization to violent extremism among SomaliAmerican youth are related to each other, and potential divergences or convergences in these phenomena. Somali communities in North America offer a unique and important opportunity to explore questions of gang affiliation and radicalization to violent extremism within a discrete population that has had an unusually high base rate of exposure to psychosocial circumstances that can be related to these problems, such as discrimination, the challenge of developing one’s social identity while contending with acculturation, and the potential to feel alienated from the larger society