Paper short abstract:

Youngsters belonging to families connected to the ’ndrangheta: on the one hand the story of adults who remember their own childhood, on the other hand minors subject to judicial measures who are remove from their birthplace. Living the crisis inside and outside home: comparison of experiences.

Paper long abstract:

Belonging to ’ndrangheta is primarily based on the continuity of blood ties. The mafia cultural code and the feeling of belonging to its context are transmitted in family environment. Growing up in a ’ndrangheta family means having privileges and power, but also witnessing detentions, violent events and feuds.

In an attempt to offer youngsters the opportunity to choose a different life, since 2012, the Juvenile Court of Reggio Calabria has issued measures dictating the removal of minors belonging to ’ndrangheta families whose psycho-physical development appears to be compromised.

Thanks to the investigation that has been carried out to date, an attempt will be made to observe and analyze the crisis experiences that the ’ndrangheta boys live both within the family environment and when they are removed from it. If on the one hand anguish and a climate of terror pervade the lives of minors in the domestic space, on the other hand the youngsters are included in a community center outside Calabria, and deal with disorientation and despair due to the distance from their own socio-cultural references. Crisis of living in a family where one is confronted with the fear of death, and crisis of going through a path of re-education and re-elaboration of one’s experience.

The dialogue between the memories of whom lived in a ’ndrangheta family and the stories of the operators who welcome minors removed from Calabria, will bring out the different forms that crisis can take inside and outside home in the experience of these boys.