Contenu du sommaire : Pourquoi étudier ?

Given the queries about the value and use of qualifications, data on the professional inclusion of students is really quite reassuring. Nevertheless, a non-negligible proportion of students have little confidence in the value of the training they have received. It is true that students are not necessarily well-inf ormes, and that their situations vary considerably. « Utilitarian » motivation however, does not appear to be the prime reason for their choice of studies. Moreover, the undeniable attraction of « student life » as such is often a sufficient motive for prolonging studies.

Art colleges, higher education establishments of the Ministry of Culture have undergone very subsaantial changes over the past twenty years. Contrary to other colleges, they give greater importance to a more determinant educational and affective relation than to the relationship with knowledge. Nowadays, these colleges have become places of theoretical and practical learning covering a broad cultural spectrum of disciplines. Since these colleges have no obvious professional finality, their main purpose is to train adultes capable of confronting the complexity of on ever-changing world rather than produce true specialists.

Reading school magazines is a good way of finding out what young people think of studies. Not only do they call the « institution » as such into question, but also reveal a rather « sweet and sour » appraisal of an uncertain future. The question which occurs most frequently concerns the choice of studies and advice that young people give to one onather. The interest of these magazines is that they present a voice which is quite apart from any commercial circuit. Ans so one can find out about those fears and joys which are rarely espressed in the same way in classical surveys on young people. The problème is that they only represent a minority of young people. It has been estimated that more than three thousand pagazines of this kind are produced in France each year.

The attachment of students to their studies is so strong that they consider them as a necessary stage in their existence despite all the associated hardships. A psy- chanalyst looks at how the aspiration of parents become the choice of the child. For beyond the obligation and sheer pleasure of studying they have found a way of making it both accessible and attractive ; they have harded on a project. This current investment in learning might not last. Therefore it should be seen as an opportunity for society as a whole.

The reasons for studying are never the same. Firstly there is the anticipation of the social "benefits" linked to qualifications. Then there are students who study to achieve a « vacation ». Finally, there are those who simply study so as to participate in student social life. Nowadays, each of these reasons takes on different forms ans it is up to each student to link them together. This makes it possible to define the university hierarchies as university functions. Student mobilisation can hence be understood as the collective expression of these various reasons for studying.

This article is the result of four years of observation as « Youth Project Manager » at the Observatory for Professional and Social Inclusion in Languedoc/Roussi I Ion ; It looks at the professional practices and strategies of middle officers (trainers, training and guidancers, counsellors, officials in Job Centres, etc.) in the interface between non-indigenous young people and companies where increasing incidents of stigmatization are brought to light in the course of the hunt for employment or training. It is our moral duty to disclose to both young people and to public opinion the undeniable fact that being of foreign origin constitutes yet a further hurdle to employment for some young people already faced with an uncertain future.

The classical approaches to socialization by identifying the actors in the system no longer suffices to understand the passage to adulthood. For although acquiring autonomy merely requires an adjustment of position, a more a less conflictual experience, this process increases in complexity because of the proliferation of references and values, the difficulties families and schools have in finding their bearings and conveying information. The construction of this period of identication and experimentation assumes performance skills which transform the socialization process into a precarious tight rope walk. Analysis suggests that if positions and vales are no longer defined from the outset, adults themselves also become involved in a perspective where experience and fragility are the focal point.

François de Singly pointed out that non-qualified women tend to commit themselves to a conjugal rather than professional career1. This is the case amongst non-qualified women from a disadvantaged background. Some of them are highly distressed by this single status as child-bearer and mother. The notion of the construction of an identify through professional status seems especially to have caught on in the most disaffected areas. However, the maternal image portrayed through advertising implies a certain standard of living and hence a level of resources unattainable to unemployed young women, even more so given the circumstances of single parenthood which they frequently experience after the birth of a first infant.

In the light of the increased Aids epidemic amongst drug users, new strategies are required with regards to medical and social care. Professionals and politicians alike must measure the gravity of the problem and seek to address it, bearing in mind the psychological difficulties and social isolation of its victims. In the face of such an acute public health issue, the same therapeutic and preventive measures should be made available to all those stricken with the disease, without discrimini- nation. It is one of the principals of human respect and support, a major challenge in the current social and political debate.

This article looks at the contribution of youth movements to the training of the Kurdish executives and elite. The emergence of youth organisations is contex- tualized. The organisation of intellectuals and students round legal publications and the search for new forms of combat resulted in 1969 in the foundind of legal voluntary organisation, the DDKO (Revolutionary Cultural Clubs of the East). A close look at activities helps bring to the forefront the methods of political socialization of these militants and training of the executives and elite, further encouraged by the exercising of responsabilité within these clubs.