Aggression and Violent Behavior, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 35-45, 1998 ~) Pergamon Copyright © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in the USA. All rights reserved 1359-1789/98 $19.00 + .00 PI1S1359-1789(97)00010-4 YOUTH GANGS AND THE NEW SECOND GENERATION: A REVIEW ESSAY Carl L. Bankston III University of Southwestern Louisiana ABSTRACT. Changes in American immigration law in 1965 led to an enormous increase in the number of immigrants arriving in the United States and to a shift in the countries of origin of American immigrants from Europe to Central and South America and Asia. The children of this new wave of immigrants have been labeled "the new second generation. "At the same time that these children have grown to adolescence and young adulthood, violent youth gangs have become a prominent aspect of American life. While the children of immigrants are not the only participants in gang activity, many gangs have appeared in neighborhoods where immigrants have settled, and these gangs are often based on the ethnic identities of post-1965 immigrant groups. This essay discusses general theoretical trends in the literature relating to youth gangs in the post-1965 immigrant ethnic groups. It suggests that these trends may be classified as opportunity structure approaches, cultural approaches, and social disorganization approaches. The essay points out some of the major questions this literature raises or fails to address, and it suggests directions for the conceptualization of new ethnic gangs and for empirical research in this area. © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd KEYWORDS. Youth gangs, violence, adolscence, immigration. INTRODUCTION PRIOR TO 1965, immigration to the United States was severely restricted, both in numbers of immigrants and in the countries of origin of those immigrants. Since the 1920s, American migration policy had been governed by a system that set national quotas on foreigners in the U.S., based on the American population make-up. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 ended this quota system and expanded the number allowed entry. As a result, "immi- gration to the United States has shifted radically since the immigration reform acts of 1965, from Europe to Central and South America and Asia" (Barringer, Gardner, & Levin, 1993, p. 1). Following American military involvement in Southeast Asia and the fall of govern- ments allied to the U.S. in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in 1975, a large Southeast Asian refugee population became part of the new, largely non-European immigrant population. Correspondence should be addressed to Carl L. Bankston III, Department of Sociology and Anthro- pology, University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette, LA 70504-0198. E-mail: Bankston@usl.edu. 35 36 C. L. Bankston Ill By the late 1980s, many American-born or American-reared children of the new immi- grants had reached adolescence or young adulthood. Labeled "the new second generation" by sociologist Alejandro Portes, these young people have produced a surge in foreign-origin and largely nonwhite youths in American schools and cities (Portes, 1994; Portes & Zhou, 1993). The urban areas where these members of the new second generation are concentrated have experienced increased juvenile crime in recent years, in addition to increased ethnic diversity. The crime has not been simply a quantitative increase, either. Crimes committed by youths have become more violent in recent years. "Youth gangs of the 1980s and 1990s," reports one authority, "are more numerous, more prevalent, and more violent than in the 1950s, probably more so than at any time in the country's history" (Miller, 1990, p. 263; see also Spergel, 1995, pp. 33-42). Children of immigrants are not the only participants in this gang violence. Still, they are often among the participants and many of the gangs in which they are active are organized on the basis of shared ethnicity (Klein & Maxson, 1989; Moore, 1991; Toy, 1992). Many of these gangs began to appear in neighborhoods where the new immigrants settled after the 1965 change in U.S. immigration policy (Chin, Fagan, & Kelly 1992; Toy, 1992), suggesting a connection between the rise of violent youth gangs and the new migration. Sullivan (1993) has observed that in New York City "when youth gangs returned in the mid-1970s, they appeared primarily in Latino neighborhoods and Chinatown, almost as if the city's newest immigrants were claiming their chance at this urban tradition" (p. 17). Why has the newest wave of immigration made such a contribution to the youth gang phenomenon? What do the young people of the different immigrant ethnicities have in common with each other and with the disadvantaged youth of older stock? How can we account for the apparent rise in violence? This essay will discuss some of the general theoretical trends in the literature relating to youth gangs in the post-1965 immigrant ethnic groups. Further, it will point out some of the major questions this literature raises or fails to address. And finally, it will suggest directions for the conceptualization of new ethnic gangs and for empirical research in this area. THEMES IN THE LITERATURE O N ETHNIC YOUTH GANGS Three general themes run through the literature on ethnic youth gangs. Often, more than one of these themes may be found in a single work. Opportunity structure approaches stress the structure of American society. Opportunities may be purely economic: from an economic perspective, young people form gangs as a means of obtaining resources otherwise unavail- able to them. The intensification of violence, from this point of view, would be attributable to increasing competition for resources between individuals and between groups. Opportu- nities may also be seen as social in character: young people in new immigrant groups, as a result of their positions in the American social structure, may have only limited access to sources of social status. Therefore, gangs may form as alternative sources of prestige, and violence may result from the quest for prestige. If opportunities are defined as social, rather than simply economic, structural approaches come close to a second general theme in the literature, the theme of cultural approaches. Cultural approaches emphasize the beliefs, norms, and values of group members. Three types of cultural approaches may be identified: (a) a "culture of poverty" approach that traces the development of ethnic gangs to the norms and values of the particular ethnic groups to which they belong; (b) a "situational" approach that argues that gang norms and values are cultural responses to the particular social situations surrounding gang members; (c) a "youth culture" approach that attributes the development and the characteristics of ethnic immigrant gangs to American youth cultures, rather than to their own ethnic cultures.  Youth Gangs and the New Second Generation 37 Social disorganization approaches emphasize the rapid social change brought about by migration. From this perspective, gang activities are products of weakened social controls of adults of immigrant groups over their youth, or of a mismatch between immigrant social organization and life in American society. A social disorganization may see gangs as arising from the breakdown in social order within immigrant groups. Gangs may also be seen as providing an alternative form of social order in the face of the inadequacy or loss of traditional social controls. Opportunity Structure Approaches A number of authors, following Wilson (1987) and Kasarda (1983) have traced the devel- opment of contemporary youth gangs to the transition of the American economy to a postindustrial condition (cf. Anderson, 1990; Hagedorn & Macon, 1988; Huff, 1989; Taylor, 1990). In this view, the transformation of the economy from manufacturing-based to service- and information-based has led to a sharp decline in employment opportunities for the unskilled. Hagedorn and Macon (1988) argue that adolescents and young adults concentrated in cities, who are disproportionately ethnic minority group members, are disposed toward forming gangs as a result of their inability to find jobs. Jackson (1991) uses data on crime rates in large cities from the Uniform Crime Reports to test this thesis, and finds support for seeing gangs as products of the movement of jobs out of inner city areas. Gans (1992) applies the opportunity structure approach specifically to the youth of the post-1965 immigrant groups. He argues that the principal basis of intergenerational upward mobility available to earlier immigrants, such as blue-collar jobs, no longer exist in the urban areas where immigrants have concentrated. He maintains that upward mobility through education is still possible for children of immigrants, but that those who are unable or unwilling to excel in school are likely to "join the poor black, Hispanic, and other youngsters in standing jobless on street corners" (p. 183). Taking the view that gangs develop as a result of limitations of opportunity, one may see youth gangs as alternative economic organizations. This might lead one to see the drug trade as a central activity for many gangs because of its profitability. Williams (1989) presents drug trafficking as "moving up a career ladder and making money...where there are few visible opportunities" (p. 10). Vigil (1992), however, warns that drug trafficking varies among ethnic groups and Spergel (1995) and Reiner (1992) see involvement with illicit substances on the part of gang members primarily as a matter of use, rather than of sale. Du Phuoc Long (1996) describes young Vietnamese gang members as heavy users of drugs, but as only sporadic dealers. In general, then, drug-dealing would seem to be a way of earning extra cash and of obtaining access to drugs, but not an alternative means of progressing economically. Robbery, extortion, and theft may also provide fruitful areas of enterprise for young gang members. Chin (1990a) and Chin, Fagan, and Kelley (1992) suggest that extortion is the predominant criminal activity for Chinese gangs. Willoughby (1993) describes house rob- beries as the favored crime among the Vietnamese, a view supported by Du Phuoc Long's (1996) ethnographic picture of Vietnamese delinquents. Since young people in the new immigrant groups face especially difficult situations in finding jobs (Toy, 1992), they may be especially hard-hit by postindustrial joblessness, and criminal enterprise may therefore be particularly enticing. Variations in criminal specialization, from this point of view, may result from the positions of different ethnic groups in the postindustrial economic structure. The emergence of Chinese and Vietnamese middlemen in low-income communities and the development of Asian economies has created pockets of specific forms of relative wealth in "underclass" areas (Zhou & Bankston, 1992, 1995). Thus, Chin (1990a) and Chin, Fagan, and Kelly (1992) point 38 C. L. Bankston III out that Chinese youth gang specialization in extortion is due, in part, to the unique political economy of Chinatown. Willoughby (1993) describes how the informal economy of Viet- namese in America may lead to large quantities of cash in private households, providing tempting targets for Vietnamese youth. Dominican youth gangs in New York have specialized in the drug trade because of their access to foreign drug suppliers (Spergel, 1995). While criminal activities do have economic benefits, however, young members of new immigrant groups rarely enter into these activities with sufficient calculation and long-term rationality to make these plausible means of achieving upward mobility. Moreover, maximizing eco- nomic benefits would entail using violence only as a tool, rather than as an end in itself, and therefore limiting violent behavior. Gang members often appear to engage in excessive violence for "fun and thrills" (Katz, 1988), rather than in the rational expectation of accumulating profits. Therefore, although the seeking of immediate economic benefits from drug sales, extor- tion, or robberies may be a part of youth gang life, the seeking of social opportunities, such as prestige, may be more central to the new ethnic gangs. Joblessness makes members of the "new second generation" socially marginal, as well as economically marginal to their own ethnic groups. A number of authors have pointed out that the young people who find themselves in gangs are not only marginal to American society in general, but as newcomers and as people between mainstream and ethnic societies, they are also often marginal to the social and economic structures of their own ethnic groups. Vigil and Long (1990) maintain that Mexican-American gang members are cholos, people who are marginal to their own Hispanic society as well as to the surrounding Anglo society (see also Vigil [1988] on multiple marginality among Mexican-American gang members). Moore (1985) ties the multiple marginality of Hispanic gang members explicitly to the post-1965 influx of immi- grants. The influx of new immigrants, she indicates, brought in new waves of low-income Mexican-Americans, who were often unacceptable to members of existing Mexican- American communities. As a result, "gangs, gang members, and their families are more and more isolated" (Moore, 1985, p. 9). Thus, Moore and Vigil (1993) explain contemporary Chicano gangs as a matter of absence of employed for "choloized" (and therefore multiply marginal) young people. The Indochinese groups (ethnic groups from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos), as the newest of the new immigrants, had no existing communities when they began to arrive in the mid-1970s. Nevertheless, a similar process of multiple marginalization appears to have occurred among them. Vigil and Yun (1990) suggest that multiple marginality is the key to Vietnamese gang member- ship. Bankston (1995) finds that Vietnamese youth who engage in substance abuse are marginal to their own communities, as well as to the larger American society. Bankston and Caldas (1996) maintain that Vietnamese American young people form delinquent groups when they are both living in low-income, marginalized neighborhoods in the United States and when they are inadequately integrated into their own ethnic communities. Attributing the growth of gang activity among young people in new immigrant groups to their positions in the postindustrial economic structure of the United States, and to their multiple marginal positions as people who cannot find places either in that larger postindus- trial structure or in their own ethnic societies, seems to help explain why gangs have emerged among different groups and why these gangs are often based in large urban concentrations. It is, however, an incomplete explanation. Miller (1990) questions the idea of a structurally isolated "underclass" arising from the postindustrial economy. He argues that the contem- porary lower class is simply a further development of the earlier lower class, and that gangs are products of an historically consistent lower class culture. The emergence of many contemporary youth gangs, such as Hispanic youth gangs, from precursors (see the discus-  Youth Gangs and the New Second Generation 39 sion in Spergel, 1995, pp. 63-64; and in Moore & Vigil, 1993, pp. 42-44) suggests that there is an element of cultural transmission in gangs. Further, while youth gangs seem to have originated in inner city areas, and often retain bases in these areas, they are not limited to stereotypically "underclass" neighborhoods. In fact, it appears that gangs among the post-1965 immigrant ethnic groups are being exported to the suburbs. Moore, Vigil, and Garcia (1983) have argued that as some families of gang members move into suburbs, or as gang members form social ties with individuals outside their own localities, affiliations and gang-type behaviors can spread. Bankston and Caldas (1996) found that Vietnamese American delinquents had adopted styles and modes of behavior from the disadvantaged youth culture. Actions and attitudes associated with gangs, then, seem to be culturally diffused within and across ethnic groups, as well as culturally transmitted. The opportunity structure approach, consequently, should be viewed as delineating an environmental context within which ethnic gangs develop. Since youth of post-1965 immi- grant groups inhabit the same context as low-income native minority members, the former experience the same rootlessness and isolation as the latter. Still, social and economic structures do not evoke automatic and unvarying responses from those affected by them. Within those structures, people understand their experiences in terms of their personal histories and in terms of the histories of their social contacts. They form beliefs and attitudes and convey these to those about them. Cultural approaches to understanding ethnic involve- ment in youth gangs can therefore provide useful insights. Cultural Approaches Many cultural approaches to deviance and delinquency stem from the work of Oscar Lewis (1965), whose term the culture of poverty gave a label to a perspective. In this view, low-income people develop cultural characteristics that enable them to adapt to their circumstances. These same characteristics, however, tend to produce forms of behavior that perpetuate their poverty. Within the study of youth gangs, a "subculture of violence" may be seen as a particular type of "culture of poverty" approach. Much of the literature on the role of culture in youth gangs has focused on Chicano gangs (cf. Erlanger, 1979; Horowitz, 1983; Vigil, 1983; Vigil & Long, 1990). Erlanger (1979) observes that the literature on the subculture of violence concentrates on two questions: first, can value differences associated with ethnic groups be demonstrated, and, second, assuming the existence of value differences, should these be regarded as products of semiautonomous subcultures or as adaptations to "situational exigencies induced by social structure" (p. 233). In other words, are gang activities the result of existing ethnic cultural values, such as the value of "machismo," or are these activities the product of a subcultural response to the place of minority ethnic groups in American social structure? Looking at the Chicano barrios in East Los Angeles, Erlanger concludes that "while (Chicano) subcultural values may be different from those of Anglo society, and may exist independently of Chicano society, they do not directly condone or require violence. Rather, behavior is a product of the way in which structural conditions limit the expression of these values" (p. 233). The very existence of gangs among a variety of new immigrant groups would tend to suggest that they are not produced by the cultural norms of any one group. Nevertheless, cultural norms may interact with "situational exigencies" to produce varying outcomes. Joe (1994a) reports that "law enforcement officers, concerned policymakers, and journalists report that Asian gangs are engaged in similar antisocial activities as are other ethnic street gangs, but they are especially threatening due to Asian gangs' reliance on extreme violence" (p. 390). The violence of many Asian gangs also appears to be of a different character from 40 C. L. Bankston II1 the random drive-by shootings of other groups, involving close-up, personal forms of violence, such as the planned, deliberate torture of robbery victims (Du Phuoc Long, 1996; Willoughby, 1993). Varying traditions of criminal behavior may account, in part, for variations among ethnic youth gangs. Among Chicanos, for example, Moore and Vigil (1993) note that "by the mid-1960s there was a very well established gang tradition" (p. 42). Chicano gangs have become family affairs, with intergenerational involvement (Jackson & McBride, 1985; Moore, 1985, 1991). Asian youth gangs may be affected by an existing cultural pattern of organized crime. Chin (1990b), Chin and Fagan (1994), and Kelly, Chin, and Fagan (1993a,b) indicate that many Chinese youth gangs have developed close ties to adult organizations. "Shady" business- men's associations and criminal societies in Chinatown may make use of youth gangs as enforcers (Dannen, 1992). The links between immigrant youth gang activity and adult ethnic criminal organizations appear too weak to see the gangs as outgrowths of cultural traditions, however. As noted above, the most recent Hispanic gang members tend to be the newest immigrants, on the edge of Hispanic society, a marginalized subculture within the Hispanic subculture. Joe (1994a, 1994b) notes that while individual members of Asian gangs may have some contacts with organized crime, these contacts tend to be quite tenuous. Her research leads her to conclude that Asian gangs are not participating in any formally organized or hierarchically controlled organizations. Moreover, Spergel (1995) observes that "with the new waves of Chinese immigrants...established street-gang and criminal or adult business relationships have been disrupted" (p. 68). Gangs of the new second generation do not appear to be outgrowths of their cultural inheritances as much as breakaways from those inheritances. This suggests that youth gangs may be seen as expressions of what we might call "cultural pidginization": a youth culture composed of ethnically diverse elements, rather than expres- sions of any particula( ethnic culture. A New Yorker article on youth gangs in Chinatown wryly observes that the dress and behavior of Chinese gang members mixes "the cliches of American and Chinese gangster movies" (Dannen, 1992, p. 77). Chicano gangs blend cultural traits from a Mexican-American heritage with elements from the mainstream American culture (Moore, 1985). Bankston and Caldas (1996) report that adult Vietnamese frequently refer to Vietnamese delinquents as "Americanized." The literature suggests that we might see the youth culture of gangs, then, as composed of two basic parts: cultural traits that they derive from their own specific groups, and cultural traits that they develop as American minority group members in contact with other American minority group members. This perspective may help us to conceptualize the connection between post-1965 immi- gration and the development of youth gangs: immigration brought many disadvantaged youths from many different backgrounds together. This facilitated the development of a youth gang culture through a process of conflict and exchange. At the most basic level, the settlement of people from different ethnic groups in lower income areas produced a need for gangs. Chin (1990b) writes that in the 1960s, "Chinese students were constantly picked on at school and nearby playgrounds by members of other ethnic groups" (pp. 95-96). The first gang was formed for protection, and fought with Puerto Ricans, Blacks, Italians, and Whites. "A close examination of the Chinese gangs in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City in the mid-1960s," Chin (1990b) writes, "indicates that the gangs were formed in schools where racial tensions were high" (p. 95). As newer Chinese immigrants arrived, hostility developed between the native±born and the foreign-born Chinese, who formed separate gangs. When, in the 1980s, large numbers of Fujianese, or Fook Chow, began to come to the U.S. from southern China and Hong Kong, Fook Chow teenagers formed their own gang. Initially, according to Chin, this gang had close  Youth Gangs and the New Second Generation 41 ties to an adult ethnic organization. As the gang became more involved with violence with other street gangs, however, it became progressively alienated from its adult sponsors (Chin, 1990b). Large-scale immigration, then, can bring members of ethnic groups into conflict with other ethnic groups and with earlier arrivals from their own group. The conflict with other youths draws young people away from their own communities and, arguably, helps to produce a "culture of violence" that is specifically a youth culture. A report in the New York Times reflects this process occurring among Cambodians. When refugees from Cambodia first began to arrive in the late 1970s, they appear to have had no youth gangs. Following harassment, threats, and beatings by Hispanic youths, though, the Cambodians began to form their own gangs (Mydans, 1991). Vigil (1990) observes that new Latino immigrants began to form gangs to protect themselves from more established Latino youth groups, and that the new arrivals consequently developed solidarity and cultural identities. Contact among different groups leads to cultural exchange at the same time that it leads to conflict. Thus, this contact appears to lead to the development of a shared youth culture among native disadvantaged minorities and immigrant minorities in addition to the devel- opment of specific identities. Studying delinquent adolescents in a Vietnamese community, Bankston and Caldas (1996) maintain that: Young people who are not integrated into their community and into American society through their community become members of an age-segregated society. Once they have taken up with a society of peers rather than a society of adults, social learning becomes an important part of their delinquency. In learning to be members of an American youth culture, they take cues both from their coethnics and from African American youths, who make up almost all of the non-Vietnamese people in the area. In this youth culture, apparently a variant of a generalized American youth culture, race appears to be a basis for clique formation, but the cultural patterns learned appear to transcend racial boundaries. (pp. 177-178) This youth culture explanation would seem to help explain the broad similarities among gangs of different ethnic backgrounds, and it would help to explain the alienation of gangs from adult members of their communities. It might also help to explain the apparent upward ratcheting of violence, since intergroup competition is a key part of this youth culture. Focusing exclusively on culture, though, can cause one to lose sight of the fact that cultures are responses to social contexts. Also, much of the research on youth gangs has concentrated on specific ethnic groups. Therefore, there have as yet been few systematic attempts to compare the different gangs to see what traits they hold in common and what traits are peculiar to specific groups (Chin, 1990b, pp. 127-130, offers a brief comparison of Chinese gangs and others, however, his chief interest in these pages is the ways in which Chinese gangs are unique, rather than the ways in which they may be part of a common phenomenon). If similarities are identified, researchers will need to attempt to reach some conclusions about the extent to which these similarities result from living in similar circumstances and the extent to which they result from cultural interchange. Social Disorganization Approaches Social disorganization approaches to the development of youth gangs among new immigrant groups tend to see gangs as products of the breakdown of social institutions brought about by rapid social change. Bursik 0988) defines "social disorganization" as "the inability of local communities to realize the common values of their residents or solve commonly expressed problems" (p. 521). These values would otherwise be realized and the problems solved through the creation and maintenance of appropriate community institutions. Rapid 42 C. L. Bankston III population change in an area may undermine established institutions because new people are continually arriving while older residents are moving out (Bursik & Grasmick, 1993). The post- 1965 waves of Hispanic immigrants may, therefore, have weakened existing institutions in American Hispanic communities by continually bringing in people who were not partic- ipants in those institutions (Spergel, 1995, pp. 154-156). New immigration may also disrupt social organization by making it more difficult to agree on the "common values" or "commonly expressed problems." Chin (1990a,b) observes that the change of immigration laws in 1965 brought in many more newcomers than Chinese American institutions could absorb, and it brought together Chinese subgroups with little in common. Even when an immigrant community is able to create shared institutions, generation gaps introduced by the different experiences of American-reared children and foreign-born parents may disrupt the social controls of these institutions. Sung (1979) refers to the children of immigrants as "transplanted children." As a consequence, observes Chin (1990b), "those who grow up in a secluded and fragmented Chinese community are likely to feel alienated from both the community and the society, and they thus have only school and family to count on for support. However, instead of functioning as bonding agencies, both school and family can be sources of frustration and disappointment for immigrant youths" (p. 93). School, the primary integrative institution of the larger society, can be frustrating because of language difficulties and conflicts with other ethnic groups (Chin, 1990b, pp. 93-94). Families may be disrupted by the process of migration and parents who are unfamiliar with American society may not know how to raise children in the strange new environment. Harsh discipline by parents and the demand for autonomy by children with expectations formed in America can contribute to the alienation of adolescents from their families (Chin, 1990b, p. 96). Du Phuoc Long (1996) sees a similar sort of social disorganization, but perhaps even more severe, affecting Vietnamese adolescents. Without support from the extended family structure and village social ties of the native country, parents lose authority over their children. A 1993 FBI investigation of Vietnamese criminal activity, cited by Du Phuoc Long, recognizes "the disintegrating Vietnamese family structure" as a significant source of Vietnamese delin- quency (Du Phuoc Long, 1996, p. 77). For the newest immigrants, the unfamiliarity of parents with American society can render them unable to maintain the family as a traditional institution. Vigil and Yun (1990) describe how English-speaking Vietnamese gang youths can control the communication of their non-English-speaking parents with public school officials. B ankston and Caldas (1996) argue that one of the primary functions of institutions in an immigrant community can be bridging the gap between immigrant parents, who often have much less comprehension of American society than their children, and the institutions of the larger society, such as school and legal authorities. One of the problems with seeing gangs arising out of the disorganization caused by social change is that gangs are, as Klein and Maxson (1989) point out, a group phenomenon. If we were to see the delinquent behavior of young people as simply caused by the ineffectiveness or disappearence of community institutions, the behavior would logically appear as a Hobbesian war of all against all. Gangs, however, are organized associations of people, with their own forms of interaction and expectations. It may be plausible, then, to see them as alternative forms of social order. Jankowski (1991) focuses on the issue of how gangs work as organizations. He finds that gang members tend to possess what he refers to as a "defiant individualist" character, with the attributes of competitiveness, mistrust, self-reliance, social isolation, a survival instinct, and a Social Darwinist worldview. These would certainly seem to be Hobbesian traits, as Jankowski recognizes, and they can easily be understood as arising from inadequate social  Youth Gangs and the New Second Generation 43 controls. However, gang members are not asocial beings, and they do form cohesive associations with one another. Jankowski attaches an economic interpretation to the forming of groups by these defiant individualists. He argues that they believe that "the gang is capable of providing them with a number of advantages that they would otherwise not enjoy at all, or would enjoy only in part" (Jankowski, 1991, p. 30). Although he does not use the term rational choice, Jankowski is basically making a rational choice argument about the creation of gangs as alternative forms of social order. As I have observed above, however, many of the forms of behavior of gang members are distinctly irrational, in the sense that they are unlikely to maximize long-term benefits. Moreover, gangs seem to be held together by the loyalty of their members, a distinctly irrational motivation, and not simply by each one's calculation of self-interest. The Social Darwinist worldview that Jankowski observes appears to be less a matter of individual young people perceiving themselves as competing with all others than a matter of groups of young people perceiving their own groups as competing with all others. As Du Phuoc Long (1996) observes of young Vietnamese gang members, "these children are fanatically devoted to other 'homeboys' and their Big Brothers" (p. 124). Jankowski's presentation of gangs as alternative forms of social order is insightful, but he understands this social order in a manner that is too narrowly utilitarian. Gangs are not simply business organizations; they are sources of identity and foci of allegiance for their members. Social disorganization approaches may help to explain variations among ethnic gangs. For example, is the extreme violence associated with Southeast Asian gangs a product of the radical disruption of families and other social structures caused by sudden resettlement in an alien society? Is the persistence of Chicano gangs, noted by Vigil (1988, pp. 5-8), a result of the institutionalization of an alternative social order over the course of time? CONCLUSION This essay has attempted to identify major theoretical themes in the literature on youth gangs in the post-1965 immigrant ethnic groups. It has suggested that these themes may be classified as opportunity structure approaches, cultural approaches, and social disorganization approaches. Many researchers have drawn on all three of these approaches. However, a more systematic delineation of how opportunity structures, cultures, and social disorganization may be related in the creation of gangs is required. The relationship between immigration and youth gangs has only been treated in a cursory fashion in the literature. While there has been a fair amount of research on gangs in particular immigrant groups, such as Chicanos or Vietnamese, the extent to which gangs may be an immigrant phenomenon has not yet been thoroughly considered. There is also insufficient work on how and why immigration may be associated with juvenile crime groups. Has the new second generation given rise to new gangs simply because their families have settled in low-income, jobless neighborhoods, where gangs might exist even without massive immi- gration? To what extent does putting ethnic groups together create group competition that produces gangs? How does cultural exchange among groups promote the development of an adversarial youth culture? Does immigration itself contribute to the formation of gangs, by breaking down traditional social structures or by rendering these inadequate to the demands of a new environment? What is the nature of youth gangs as alternative forms of social order? 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