Contenu du sommaire : Les rapports entre générations en Europe.

When youth is examined from the angle of the social differences arising from gender, the diversity of European youth becomes easier to understand. During the time lapse stretching from puberty to the conception of a first child, women and, by association, men, play out a decisive game. Their goal is to attain true equality which will henceforth define them as adults, before assuming their respective sexual roles : "one is the other" before "XY" to use the terms adopted by E Badinter. The duration of their studies, their sexuality, access to the work market, establishment of a couple and the decision to conceive all pivot around this goal while taking on very different configurations from one country to another, especially in terms of East to West and North to South, as demonstrated by statistical observations.

The high level of unemployment of young people and the clangers associated to it in the European Union has certainly helped to conceal a strong heterogeneousness between countries. The analysis of young peoples' circumstances, actively employed, unemployed or inactive show that different configurations exist as a clear expression of intergenerational arbitration in terms of employment. Silhouetted against the layers of statistics are the various institutional dynamics linked to the nature of the training schemes to the employment markets and policies. By comparing the measures of inclusion in 6 European countries it emerges that the greater or lesser extent to which social actors cooperate has a perceptible affect on the conditions of transition.

Studies of the economic restructuring of the UK and other Western societies suggest that post-Fordist economies will be typified by increases in the numbers of workers unemployed or sub-employed in casual, informal, peripheral, non-standard jobs. Clearly the future working lives of many young people will be radically different from those of their parent generation, as full emploment in regular, relatively permanent jobs give way to more insecure and risky working lives. Some of the social problems that have accompanied the facturing of previous youth transitions are reviewed and the idea that such problems are indicative of the emergence of a deviant, anti-social, anti-work underclass introduced. The focus is upon Teeside in the North-east of England : a locality which reveals these broad social and economic transformations in the most dramatic way. Four themes which might inform future research on marginal youth transitions and social exclusion in the UK are outlined and, in conclusion, some of the implications of these changes for intergenerational relations are discussed.

In this article, it is argued that in Dutch youth policy of the 80's, there was a noticeable change of approach to young people. Before this period, policy concerning young people was based on the concept of optimal fulfillment, a psychosocial enhancement of the human. In the 80s, the psychological and educational point of view is supplanted by an economic approach of offer and demand. Young people need to be better equipped for the employment market. For that they must be cheaper, better trained and adapted. This swing signifies that the image of universal identity and of mankind has been abandonned. The differences between humans and the necessity for a différenciation between work levels and contents require a harmonization between the individual and society. Stress is no longer placed on man by means of psychosocial categories but on man through the procuring a job and of training.

The recession in the 90s had spectacular effects on the situation of young people. Among them, we can cite the problems of insertion in the working world, unemployment and marginalisation, the causes of which are little understood. This article looks at the targetted early intervention strategy, taking Helsinki as an example, and analyses the impact of the conceptions of adult society on youth. Young people awill also have to cope with the unpaid bills their elders will leave them. «Generation accounting» is a new subject in terms of youth policy.

Periodically, but with an undeniable constancy, societies re-stage the eternal debate on the question of generations. Inheritance, property transfers, relations, but also cultural transmission and the reproduction of social order or as is frequently the case nowadays, generation as a force of change, the word conceals numerous approaches. This paper addresses the question of generations with regard to the transformations of the system of values of modern societies. According to R.lnglehart, post-materialistic values are progressively winning over from materialistic values. At the heart of this process which is taking place with implacable force : the renewal of generations. But isn't there a risk of confusing cohort and generation when scorning the «social differences» which profoundly divide and differentiate those who have nothing more in common than being born during the same period.

The article pays particular attention to inter-generational relations in a disadvantaged region of the Mezzogiorno of Italy, Calabria. Within this social context, modernized and yet still characterised by a weak economy, contrasting cultural worlds, both traditional and modern, co-inhabit. Being young and growing up here means learning to combine the uncertainties of the present day with the historic assurances of the past. An essential point of reference for young people with relation to this is the sheer vitality of the family institution as well as its great capacity to remember.

Jules Vallès (1832-1885) originally from Haute-Loire, came to Paris to study and write and produced, after several attempts at stones prior to 1870, his most well- known book, The Child (L'Enfant) 1879, during his London exile ; it depicts a typical childhood, his own, which he considered unhappy but not cruel. He brought out this book in defense and as an illustration of «Childrens' Rights», to be declared after Human Rights. But he continued, as previously, to differentiate between unhappy children, physically or morally, and the misery of child martyrs, sometimes beaten to death by their parents ; this was his lifelong battle both as a journalist and a novelist.

An experimental training action was carried out by the Ministry of Culture and Francophonia in 1992-93 entitled "book mediators in districts", in collaboration with the association A TD Quart Monde. This initiative has now been extended. This professionnal training programme for street library militants, all from underprivileged backgrounds, run by a social work training organisation and by the Association of French Librarians (Association des Bibliothécaires Français), confers a qualification on the trainees involved. The conception of cultural mediation at work here would appear to stem from the ideology of cultural populism. Does it really further the renewal of the traditional activities of municipal libraries in its conquest of new public ?

Beyond the widey accepted consensus on the «democratic» value or the egalitarian model that the associative model represents, researchers in the field of the sociology of associations have highlighted the importance of the selection of elites and of institutionalisation as the outcome of a social dynamic in action and as highly significant social functions. The study of the movement «Peuple et Culture» de Haute-Savoie immediately after the war forces us to reflect on whether these two elements were not, in a paradoxical fashion, the start of the popular education movement at this crucial period in French history, providing us with an unusual social and cultural intervention model.