Anomie and Social Disorganization among Latin American Youth: A Durkheimian Comparative Analysis of Colombia and Mexico

The purpose of this paper is to comparatively analyze contemporary manifestations of anomie and social disorganization experienced by young people in Colombia and Mexico, considering Émile Durkheim's sociological theory. This paper seeks to understand how the processes of modernization, structural violence, social exclusion, and the weakening of collective norms have affected social cohesion and order in these two Latin American countries. This article aims to comparatively examine how the phenomena of anomie and social disorganization manifest themselves among young people in both Colombia and Mexico in Latin America, using Émile Durkheim's theory as an analytical framework. This paper seeks to identify the structural, cultural, and normative factors that weaken social cohesion and favor the breakdown of social order in both contexts. This article describes a new method in sociolegal research in Colombia, called the sociolegal method compared to the Durkheimian approach. It uses Émile Durkheim's theory of anomie as an analytical tool for understanding not only social processes but also normative effectiveness, institutional legitimacy, and the fragility of the legal order in contexts marked by exclusion, violence, and inequality. Using quantitative analysis, the authors illustrate with statistical data that this approach revitalizes the dialogue between sociology and law and does so from a structural-functionalist perspective that has been little explored in Colombian normative analysis. The evaluation of the effectiveness of the new method proposes the use of empirical indicators (such as homicide rates, labor informality, institutional trust, or perception of justice) to measure the degree of anomie, thus incorporating interdisciplinary tools that connect quantitative data with normative interpretation. The new research results complement studies that have been carried out by authors such as Albornoz-Arias et al (2023) and Ortegón Salazar (2020). The novelty and scientific contribution points towards a qualitative comparative analysis between Colombia and Mexico, which not only observes formal legal norms, but also how young people interact in weakened social structures, marked by phenomena such as drug trafficking, informality, corruption and forced displacement.