Sociétés et jeunesses en difficulté. Revue pluridisciplinaire de recherche Revue pluridisciplinaire de recherche

N°4 - automne 2007

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Wall after wall: youth confronted by the policy of urban renewal. A case study of the demolition of two popular housing districts in Brittany  

Solène  Gaudin

Demolishing and rebuilding program incited heavily since the Borloo laws on 2003 brings on deep social and morphological transformations in delicate districts. As a result, the young population, whose doings and scurvy reflect a very strong attachment to their living places feel a supplementary kind of violence. How are these populations taken care of, and what project society project is offered to them, so that they can build themselves? This analysis, consists on an interview series made to both young and institutional actors in two Brittany districts, Brest and Lorient, who receive financial support from the national agency for urban removal. If a part of these young, often those who know the smallest difficulties, accept with a a resignation feeling the projects offered to them, most of them express a feeling of rebellion and anger in front of what they consider like an expropriation act. After the quality of the urban projects proposed it is the capacity to master both their destiny and their private space what is here criticized.

The effects of a local policy on how the young move about the town. A socio-ethnographic approach

Véronique Bordes

Observing the interactions between a social group : the young people, and spaces : the city and its political organisation, makes it possible to understand the impact of a local policy towards youth on their ways of moving in public space. The strategies developped by each actor contribute to a constant readjustment of relations throughout interactional balance. If, on one side, political decisions oblige the young people to change their practices, on the other side, this adaptation of youth involves changes in policy. Urban space then plays the role of a scene where appearings and disappearings testifies that this balance is being built day after day between the young people and the local authority.

The social and spatial configurations of two contrasted deprived quarters. Comparison of observed data   

Francis  Bailleau, Patrice  Pattegay, Séverine  Fontaine, Abdel  Menzel

This paper is based on an ethnological research on the Youth day-to-day life in two deprived areas of the suburbs, « les quartiers ». A couple of researchers remained three monthes in each area, living with the young people.
We chose to study those two areas in two different medium cities, one of them being a traditionally middle-class city, the other a traditionally working class one, with a vivid history of social and economical struggles integrated to its life. The social differences between the city centres were essential to understand the situation of their deprived areas.
Space organisation and the function of the city centre have crucial consequences on the social organisation of the young people. It appears that the feeling of being relegated, aggressed, is greatly determined by the map, the landscape of the area, and the social and economic position of the actor. Living in an enclosed area, as in the first « quartier », leads to difficulties to go out, in real and psychological terms, hence, to find a job.
Travelling in and out the area depends greatly on the point above but, in both types of areas the girls are seldom present in the public space, in relation with the culture of the dominant minority, that spreads upon the others. If the deprived area is an enclosed one, the young males use to go to the city centre in groups, securing themselves in an hostile surrounding. At the reverse, in an « open area » individualisation and integration is possible.

Youth in sparsely populated areas : from experiencing autonomy to a risk of « captivity »

Fabrice  Escaffre, Mélanie  Gambino, Lionel  Rougé

Based on the conclusion of three different researches, this article deals with young inhabitants’ everyday life in sparsely populated areas (peripheral areas of Toulouse and Périgord vert). For this population, the relationship with place is central for the organization of their ways of life and their social relationships. Mobilities in particular are of importance because of their strong influence on their sociability and their relationships with studies or work. Social representations also invite to consider that what is at stake concerning number of young people is their own relation with place and with mobility. In this way, the three territorial figures described (the trap, the rampart and the claimed area) can be use as framework to analyse singular experiences.
Such observations, certainly still thin, question the direction of implemented public policies and their modifications, particularly in sparsely populated areas torn between a valorisation and a spatial integration and dynamics of social relegation.

Investing new territories when adolescent

Julie  Deville

The place of residence, often depending on the social position, induces a specific social experience. But if a part of the young people living in public housing districts tends to consider their neighborhood as a territory, many of them withdraw from it or go beyond its limits. Moreover, their practices will change with age and experience.
This paper deals with the progressive entering of teenagers in new territories where they may feel legitimate or not, according to circumstances and to their own trajectory. School life, peers’ group and juvenile activities, family and gender intervene in this rebuilding of the relationship with territory.
This dynamic relationship with territory is displayed through a research on adolescents between 15 and 20. For them, the neighborhood is an anchoring, but it is nevertheless hard for girls to build their place there. School and leisure offer opportunities to go through other urban spaces, but access to the city is often limited to commercial areas. This is as much due to a lack of willing of some young people to venture farther as to their apprehension of being considered as intruders.

« Micro territories » appropriated in the family circle's territory. A transition between « inside » and « outside »

Gilles  Henry

This paper focuses on the fact that a minority of young boys, aged 13 to 25, make use of « micro territories » close to their familie’s lodgings. It is based on an empirical research in the departement of Moselle. Methodology used is « symbolic interactionnism ».
The research data shows that, thanks to this process, youngsters gain a sort of control or property which will then be materialized by territorial signs (or markages) : empty beer bottles, cigarette butts, tags. These « micro territories » host informal but nevertheless social relations for different groups which develop daily during a few months or sometimes several years. The phenomenon is stronger in social housing areas where they become locus for experiencing interactive relations, for resting, between « cosmos and chaos ». The author argues that these territories are a passage between the inside, private arena and the outside, public sphere, thus enabling a dynamic where internal and external social interactions emerge, where territorialization and deterritorialization operate depending on.

 When peripheral youth comes down town : an example at Lyon. Thinking the city as a resource and mobility as a learning

Jean-Marc  Berthet

This article presents in a new perspective a research dealing with how suburbs’ youth from the « greater Lyon » practice the centre town, especially rue de la République, the main pedestrian thoroughfare of Lyon’s peninsula, and the shopping centre of La Part-Dieu. What ever do juveniles coming from the so-called difficult neighbourhoods of the greater Lyon when they are not taken in charge either by school or by leisure or sport organisations ? When they stand both outside (in the street, in public space) and inside (in the shopping centre, in the flow of the crowd). To answer those questions, an original method has been employed : observing and following their walking at random on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons over a year long. A vision then comes out : practising space as a series of tests for which strolling becomes a resource (the ability to move oneself on his own way for some, the ability to control behaviours for others) and shows what is at stake both for girls and boys (proximities, chatting up, distance keeping). Thus analysed, the two urban spaces present relatively opposed forms of regulation.

Abandoned Children or Social Orphans? Changes in social policy in Russia during perestroika and post-communism (1989-2004)

Dorena  Caroli

Following the dismantling of the socialist social protection system due to the collapse of the communist regime in Russia, a large number of children found themselves homeless, in the streets without protection or education. The official figures indicate that three to five million children were abandoned but only 700,000 were orphans or children removed from their parents' authority. The rest were children who were neglected by their parents or who risked living in dangerous conditions with neither protection nor education.
This article focuses on the measures to prevent child abandonment which were introduced between 1989 and 2004 by the Employment and Social Development Minister which is the main body responsible for chilcare programmes. It firstly examines the measures taken by the government, especially the 1999 law on the prevention of child abandonment and juvenile delinquency (creation of homes and new services). Secondly, it analyses the measures adopted for children guardianship and foster care services for families. Thirdly, it evaluates the introduction of children rights officers in many Russian cities. Finally, it looks at children's attitudes to life in orphanages and their chances of social adjustment as shown by various social surveys.
The combination of these measures make it possible to demonstrate both the contradictory aspects of transitional social policy and its social costs that are being paid mainly by the new generation who risk being condemned to permanent social exclusion.

Relais-accueil, a community home for « orienting » young people  

Francis  Lebon

« Relais-accueil », a volunteer organisation located in the 13th district of Paris, helps the « young workers » in their search of housing and employment. The history of this association, between 1966 and 2006, clarifies two aspects of the policies in direction of the working class young people. On the one hand, its community home proposes a frame based on a discipline of autonomy which supposes to act and to accept the assistance of others to become oneself. On the other hand, this association is a place that brings together militants of the « Jeunesse ouvrière chrétienne » (joc) and senior official reformists who wished « to modernize » the social state. Since the eighties, town councils have been coming out as privileged interlocutors of the state, to the detriment of Relais-accueil, then little supported by the council of Paris and in the absence of senior officials mobilized since the victory of the left wing at government in 1981. Because of the rise of massive unemployment and processes of precarisation, the community home accomodates now young people older than in the past and with longer durations of stay (students, young people in training course or without employment, etc), thus prolonging their state of dependence and transition.

Pour citer cet article

, «Abstracts», Sociétés et jeunesses en difficulté, 4, http://sejed.revues.org/document2463.html.