Stigmatized Grief : A hermeneutic phenomenological exploration of grieving experiences after gang-related homicide

This study explores lived experiences of stigmatized grief among bereaved individuals who have lost a family member to gang-related homicide in Sweden. While grief is a universal human experience, not all grief is equally recognized or supported. Through a hermeneutic phenomenological approach and reflexive thematic analysis of in-depth interviews with six co-victims, this research examines how stigma, marginalization, and institutional misrecognition shape the grieving process. Drawing on theories of intersectionality, stigma, the ideal victim, and territorial stigmatization, the study offers a sociological perspective that attends to both the experiential and discursive dimensions of stigmatized grief—and the ways in which they are intertwined. Findings show that stigmatized grief unfolds through a progression of misrecognition—across institutional encounters, media portrayals, and everyday social interactions. This process is shaped by the context-specific stigma of bereavement through gang-related violence, which participants interpret through their existing experiences of marginalization. In response, they engage in moral realignment: a complex process of reinterpreting their loss by identifying with the structurally marginalized position of the perpetrator. In doing so, they challenge the binary opposition between victim and offender and construct new frameworks of meaning that resist dominant narratives of deviance. The results highlight both the social containment of stigmatized grief and the socially negotiated conditions under which empathy and recognition are granted—or withheld.