Contenu du sommaire : 25 ans de recherches sur la jeunesse (1995-2020)

This article provides a synthesis of studies that have explored youth from the perspective of inequalities over the course of the last 25 years. In the 1990s, the question of inequality between generations rose to prominence through the comparison of the fate of generations born in the 1960s with those of the first cohorts of the baby boom. Yet generations remain deeply marked by social inequalities. To account for the situations of successive generations of young people, we must combine the perspective of intergenerational inequalities with that of intra-generational inequalities. From 2010 on, studies based on European comparisons have provided the necessary tools to understanding the way in which public policy can impact on these two kinds of inequalities.

This article looks at academic inequalities in access to the baccalaureate and higher education, depending on the social background of students and their gender. Over the period between 1995 and 2020, inequality in accessing the baccalaureate was characterised by an openness of general streams toward disadvantaged social groups. In terms of higher education, moderate social openness was observed in non-selective courses, which was concomitant with stability – or even social restriction – in access to selective courses. Academic inequalities according to gender are characterised particularly by less inequality of access for girls to final year scientific courses and more traditionally masculine higher education streams.

Student insecurity is spectacularly visible today and is an aspect of the long-term democratisation of higher education, and the extension of downward mobility in western societies. The data that is regularly published by observatories of student life (OVE) have documented the existence of this phenomenon. The financial, residential, familial, or migratory aspects of this insecurity vary depending on social categories. They throw into question public policies on higher education, youth, and the ways in which social and gender inequalities are addressed. The “formidable demand for general culture” identified 25 years ago perhaps remains the strongest and most current avenue to pursue in order to take up the challenge of this paradoxical insecurity.

Entry into the labour market is an open sesame for access to independent living and citizenship, but this proves to be laborious for many young people in Europe. Over the last 30 years, policies to promote young people's employment have focused on insertion without sufficiently taking into account young people's attitudes towards work. In spite of the difficult conditions in beginning their working lives, young people remain marked by a relatively traditional attitude towards work, with a sense of ethics and duty, but also characterised by strong expressive expectations. Although work increasingly often fails to promote social integration, it is nevertheless still perceived as having this role and no alternative seems to be emerging. Perhaps it is time to think differently about the demand for labour.

This article looks at the expansion of public policy targeting young people over the last 25 years. It shows to what extent institutionalisation has been reinforced along with territorialisation of this policy, leading to a series of overlapping layers of complex programs and protocols, which are illegible, and which generate intergenerational and territorial inequalities. Adopting a transversal approach has not brought the coherence expected and, on the contrary, has led to a cognitive status quo that prevents the development of structural reforms.

Since the mid-1990s, the changes in the way young offenders are monitored in France have been marked by a controversial re-alliance between education and incarceration. The progressive opening of the new correctional facilities in the mid-2000's, structured around the goal of (re)education, emerge as one of the most striking symbols of this process. In this article we defend the idea that beyond the legitimate debates raised by these transformations in the incarceration of minors, these participate in the deeper transformations at work on the entire educational chain : from the services monitoring young offenders in open environments, to the services for non-custodial accommodation. These transformations demonstrate the increasing importance of a globalised logic of risk management in western countries, in which ways of managing juvenile deviants challenge – without completely undermining – the educational ambitions that have been historically fundamental to juvenile justice systems.

This paper presents an overview of the last 25 years of French research on young people's transitions from care to adulthood by integrating methodological and thematic approaches. Research focused mainly on the challenging period in their lives as leaving care, and identified young people's difficulties and resources in their residential and socio-professional integration when they have no parental support. In a context in which workplace integration is closely associated with an increase in the length of education, which in turn depends on abilities of young people's families, extended care after the age of majority allows to improved social integration.

Although student movements have maintained the characteristics and repertoires of action of their predecessors in the context of mass universities, they have nevertheless gone through deep transformations over the last 25 years. These are linked to the substantial changes in universities, moving towards greater autonomy, as well as changes to the missions of higher education. Themes strictly limited to universities have been broadened to those affecting society as a whole, such as labour laws, unemployment, or job insecurity ; and this has facilitated the convergence of struggles between students and workers. It is in these conditions that the collective representation of students, particularly by trade unions, has undergone substantial change, with the emergence of new organizations and new balances between them.

When we analyse how abstention has evolved since the 1980s, we can see that electoral participation is less and less automatic, and often young people are blamed for this. However, firstly it is intermittent abstention and not systematic abstention that is progressing. Secondly, the traditional explanation based on the political moratorium of young people, although still relevant, is no longer sufficient to account for the behaviour of French voters. Finally, the decentralisation of the vote above all relies on generational renewal and the transformation of civic cultures that results. In the generations born before the war, duty voting persisted but this is less the case for post-baby-boom generations. However, in recent cohorts, it is important to distinguish between citizens who are politically involved, for whom the vote is one form of action among others, and citizens who have broken away from voting but also from other forms of participation. For the latter, who we observe among those with lower levels of education and members of the working classes, this can result in political silence. Their absence from voting booths and social movements is a major challenge for French democracy.