Contenu du sommaire : Quelle pertinence de l'âge dans les politiques publiques en 2022 ?

Although age is seemingly indifferent to time, it remains a social and state construct. Using age in public policy cannot be reduced to a simple demographic or budgetary measurement. Through its measurements and rankings, age builds social conceptions of population categories and age standards. This article compares the way in which youth employment policies implemented over around fifteen years in various contexts elicit specific conceptions of the age of youth, of its role in the labour market and the economy, and of the ways in which public aid serves young people. The results help identify various mechanisms for regulating the age of youth within programmes designed to train and qualify young people as capital for the economy; or to individually enable young people to be social resources; or to integrate young people as a way of resolving their difficulties, which are seen as an existing challenge for the labour market. The results are based on a documentary analysis (descriptive and semantic) of more than 80 youth employment policies and programmes in Canada, Quebec and France. The documentary analysis is complemented by an interpretative analysis of semi-structured interviews with the coordinators of the key policies in each context. A cognitive approach is used to examine youth employment policies, which are often analysed solely based on descriptions of programmes and social and economic conditions.

As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, young people's right to a minimum income was placed on the political agenda in France. Some stakeholders have called for an earned income supplement (RSA, revenu de solidarité active) for young people under 25 years old, but the French government preferred to reform the Youth Guarantee (Guarantie jeunes) programme by introducing the Youth Commitment Contract (CEJ, Contrat d'Engagement Jeune). Are we witnessing a structural change to public aid in young people's favour? After putting forward a typology of young people's right to a minimum income in Europe, this article examines the reform path, from introducing an age limit of 25 for the minimum integration income (RMI, revenu minimum d'insertion) in 1988 to launching the Youth Commitment Contract in 2022. The reform path shows that the paradigm is indeed shifting on account of an “institutional compensation” mechanism in the sense that the integration policy has gradually “compensated” gaps in minimum income as a way of allowing unemployed young people to receive income support.

As soon as they reach adulthood, foreign unaccompanied minors automatically move from a child protection mechanism to a regulation mechanism that, depending on the child welfare professionals involved, can include implementing a quick and professionalising training strategy. This requirement, arising from public policy relating to these young foreign nationals and supported by local stakeholders involved in occupational integration, nevertheless raises the question of the gap between institutional occupational integration injunctions and young people's educational and professional expectations. It also questions the complex nature of age thresholds faced by young people approaching adulthood that in just a few months turn them from a child in need of protection into a supposedly self-sufficient adult.

This article returns to the issue of “youth” as an object of social representation on the part of professionals at Missions Locales (local youth support offices) that offer support with finding employment. We question this representation by analysing a trial system that forms part of the Skills Investment Plan (PIC, Plan d'Investissement dans les Compétences), which is designed to improve support for refugees (asylum seekers for more than six months and beneficiaries of international protection) with finding employment. Young refugees have a background and social experience that sets them apart from most other young people who receive support from Missions Locales, which raises the question of whether they are young people like any others in the eyes of the professionals who help them. This difference leads professionals at Missions Locales to construct a new representation of these young people that is different from their representation of other young people. We therefore suggest that this social representation of young refugees, which differs from the representation of other young people, dissociates the refugees from “youth” as an object of representation by professionals at Missions Locales. At the same time, support for these young refugees could be seen as contrary to the support given to other young people in some respects. We therefore also suggest that this difference in support sets young refugees apart from other young people. As a result, these differences in perception and support lead to a category of recipients seen as “refugees” rather than “young people” and who therefore do not receive help tailored to young people specifically.

Sheltered homes called logements-foyer, created in 1957, were renamed résidences autonomie in 2015 by the French law relating to the adjustment of society to population ageing. Refocusing the aim of these institutions around preventing loss of autonomy has built an image of housing that brings together only self-sufficient elderly people. This study, which is the result of a one-year immersion in a sheltered home and is structured around interviews with members of the institution's team, shows a more nuanced reality. Résidences autonomie are home to a mixed group of residents, some of whom are not self-sufficient within the meaning of the regulatory framework or who blur the boundaries of autonomy, especially residents with mental disorders. Social representations built around the ideal of elderly people as independent and active members of the community – a view shared in part by professionals involved in the operation and monitoring of the sheltered housing – are therefore at odds with the variety of situations encountered and the needs that all these situations create. The resulting tension among teams and the lack of suitable solutions both bring into question the ability of sheltered homes to tailor to their residents and, more generally, how elderly people are categorised as part of policies relating to ageing.

The article puts into perspective the relative change in two different health and social care systems – in France and in Quebec – and thereby highlights that the systems have changed in relatively similar ways, with a shift to focusing less on age when defining public policy. However, while chronological age no longer plays as defining a role as in the past, other forms of categorisation have taken over, especially a relatively binary categorisation that tends to dissociate “young elderly people” from “old elderly people” and that refers to two different public policy frameworks. Nevertheless, we believe that the criticism towards the stigmatising effects caused by age categories is valid. The criticism certainly should be updated in light of age criteria losing momentum and the emergence of categories with better defined boundaries but whose consequences as regards discrimination are undoubtedly even more severe. This is what the article intends to show, taking into account how public policy has changed in both France and Quebec.

Given France's homelessness crisis, the creation of more boarding houses is encouraged. Such sustainable and supported housing is open to people who are largely excluded from society. More than just a roof over their heads, a boarding house is a space that provides identity. Based on a participatory study, the article strives to shed light on the home-identity of boarding house residents who were homeless in the past.The study was conducted in boarding houses and involved a group of residents, social workers and researchers. Data was collected using semi-structured interviews, focus groups and participants' observations.According to our findings, access to housing does not automatically lead to a rupture. Home-identity is built through recurring loops between past and present habits that create new perceptions of oneself and one's environment. The feeling of ontological security is the bedrock of home-identity. While the sustainable nature of the housing seems crucial to develop ontological security, it is the residents' trust in the lasting nature of the change from their previous life that helps strengthen the feeling of security and stabilise their home-identity.

In late 2021, in issue 3 of the Revue française des affaires sociales, Jean-Charles Basson, Nadine Haschar-Noé and Marina Honta devoted a dossier to “The Production of Social Health Inequalities” in which they emphasised the social construction of health inequalities, the undermining of the legitimate access to health-related rights and healthcare use, and lastly the political production of health.In light of the Covid-19 pandemic, the authors revisit their questions and launch an international call for the deconstruction of the social production of health discrimination. They are joined by Michelle Kelly-Irving and Cyrille Delpierre, whose work in social epidemiology contributes to the much-needed interdisciplinary understanding of the phenomenon.