burgois by giraysuli

Phillipe burgois shows that those who become drug dealers due to many reasons. One has to do with the quality of work which they find in the legitimate sector of the economy.drug dealers, as he shows have had legal jobs , but they but they find their relationships with their superiors in these jobs unsatisfactory. In the incidents described here, the young Puertorican felt unable to use the ways of behaving that they learned in el barrio in mainstream jobs.

Phillipe burgois lived in east harlem for approximately three years during the late 1980's and 90's.
He lived in a irregularly heated , rat filled tenement. This neighborhood was known as el barrio or spanish harlem. The majority of el barrio's 110, 600 puerto ricans and african americans residents fell into ranks of the working poor.

all the crack dealers and addicts he interviewed had worked at one or more legal jobs in their early youths.Most entered the labor market at a younger age than any other american. One example is Primo, the night manager at a video game arcade that sells five dollar vials of crack in the block where Phillipe lived, pursued a traditional working class dream  in his early adolescence. Primo dropped out of Junior High School to work in a local garment factory due to support of his extended kin who were all immersed in a working class common sense.

The underground economy and the social relations thriving off it are best understood as logical products of US political and economical policies toward the poor. Most of the general public are not pursuaded by a structural economic understanding of Primo's self-destruction Social science research ignores the urgent social problems facing urban USA.