‘Snatch’ is a movie filled to the brim with socially deviant characters. The plot follows several storylines, all connected through their involvement with an enormous stolen diamond. The film begins with the heist in which the diamond was stolen. Later we also meet two pawn shop owners, who are contracted to steal the diamond from Frankie four-fingers, the thief who stole it in the first place and is keeping it safe for transport to the U.S. Additionally, we meet a host of characters who are involved with the illegal boxing ring that the pawn brokers robbed in an attempt to get the diamond. Given the enormous amount of social deviance displayed in the movie, it may be interesting to analyse it using the theories we have learned in class so far.
        Among the other characters we meet are Turkish, Tommy and Mickey O’neill, two boxing promoters and a bareknuckle boxer they’ve hired to throw a boxing match. Mickey is part of a group called the Irish Travelers, who are known in the movie as ‘Pikeys’, an ethnic slur for the Travelers. From the moment we meet him, he embodies socially deviant behaviours with everything he does. With his smooth (though mostly unintelligible) talking he immediately cons Tommy into buying a broken-down caravan (The british term for an RV or trailer) which proceeds to literally fall apart before he leaves the Travelers’ temporary encampment. In the ensuing disagreement he challenges Tommy’s companion Gorgeous George to a bareknuckle boxing match which puts George in the hospital. As a result, he gets roped into replacing George in the fight. Mickey’s --mostly caravan-centered-- wheeling and dealing continues throughout the movie, as he demands increasingly expensive caravans for his mother in exchange for fighting. This and many other aspects of Mickey’s deviant behaviour can be explained through Differential Association Theory.   
The short way of explaining it is that Mickey’s subculture has taught him the motivations and techniques he employs throughout the film, and provides him the opportunities to do so. This is the essence of Differential Association theory: through one’s social connections, one learns definitions and techniques for deviance, and gains the opportunity to engage in deviant behaviour (Sutherland 27). In order to understand how this applies to Mickey, one must understand some things about the Travelers. Travelers do not participate in outside society in the same way as everyone else. They spend their lives traveling from city to city. They have no registered addresses, no social security numbers, no forms of official identification at all. As a result of this separation from mainstream society, the Travelers develop their own separate codes of behaviour and definitions of what is acceptable. For instance, Mickey is a Traveler bareknuckle boxing champion. Bareknuckle boxing is highly illegal in mainstream society, doubly so when betting is involved. The Travelers, however, view it as a normal practice. Since Mickey has grown up in this culture where bareknuckle boxing is seen as a laudable profession rather than a criminal activity, and since he likely doesn’t have as much of an association with the outside world, he learned over time to look up to bareknuckle boxers, and eventually became one. Of course, he certainly didn’t step into the ring on his own one day a champion; he had to learn how to fight. He likely learned the techniques of fighting from other Travelers or from watching fights. That, combined with years of intense training, eventually molded him into the champion boxer we see in the film. Lastly, all the desire and training in the world wouldn’t have made Mickey a boxing champ if he had never had the opportunity to fight. It’s implied in the movie that the Travelers operate some kind of boxing league or organisation. Since these people have no identification and travel constantly, it would be easy for such a boxing league to operate without any outside interference. This would’ve given Mickey the opportunity to fight without any danger of getting in legal trouble for it. 
