The youth is an age group.

Approaches and definition

The most common approach and oldest of youth is based on criteria of age. If it is about a method of classification convenient, it is inevitably arbitrary and reducing: is it of the 15-20 years, the 18-25 years, less than 30 years? The public policies in direction of youth differently operate from ministry or from one organization to another, the logic of each organization conditioning the age bracket. It is not undoubtedly there about a valid scientific approach. These criteria of age run up in fact against uncertainty as for the delimitation of youth. Often defined by defect according to the ages which precede it or which follow it poses a problem of demarcation. Finally the Roman definition of the juvenes, that which is not adolescent any more but not yet adult, that which is not yet socially and materially independent appears righter than a definition-chopper by the age.

Another more dynamic approach is the sociological approach based on a theory of the cycles of existence. This approach is that developed and studied since about fifty years in the Anglo-Saxon countries and in Quebec. The youth seen under this angle is a time of transition, of passage marked by locatable stages leading to “the adulthood”. This approach is included and developed in the years 1990 per Olivier Galland, who refers as regards sociology of youth in France. It distinguishes four successive phases thus: end of the studies, the departure of the family home, insertion in the job market, formation of a couple; each individual bringing into play these various phases according to its free will. The various moments mark the realization of various independences. The limit of these models is that they are based on a reference which is “the adulthood”, which is not linear but unstable, flexible, fact of outward journeys and returns. The evolution of the insertion of the young people in the Western companies brings a questioning: the supposed stages to mark out the entry in the adult life are not also any more clear.

A third approach taking account at the same time of the desynchronization of the phases of insertion and the nuances brought to a fixed notion of the adulthood is the processual approach. The time of youth is then put in prospect compared to the process of autonomisation on the one hand from the point of view of insertion, on the other hand from the point of view of the chain of the generations. From this point of view the components of youth are made socializations, of construction of identities, autonomisation but also of générationnelles inscriptions. This step in term of process gums the terminals and the stages with the profit of concepts of flow and dynamics. The experimentation appears the channel by which the young people are integrated into the company and become citizens. By bracket, this approach singularly calls into question the policies turned towards a youth limited arbitrarily by ages, and pleads for a recasting of the actions based on the analysis of the processes and the social reports/ratios. The bursting and the diversity of the situations of the young people bring a major interrogation. Can one still speak to speak about youth? Such an approach means that there exists a series of common denominators, crystallizing elements making it possible to distinguish clearly like groups social “youth”. However we are opposite the report of attitudes and increasingly individualized youthful behaviors, with an obliteration of the terminal-borders delimiting youth as a specific group. While seeking to operate a sorting according to logics of identification and distinction, the result is to burst the homogeneous group youth to lead on youths, made up of heterogeneous sub-groups: young people of the suburbs, young workers, students… It is the dissolution of the categories it and youth (S). Individualization is dynamic and unstable, it is related to effects of age, sex or class and can vary for the same individual according to the moment. In this fluctuating context it becomes difficult to carry out regroupings and to assign to the individuals categories. Force is to note that with this individualization of the courses a new entity " emerges; jeunes" , which comes to replace the exceeded model which is " the jeunesse".

Other significances

In the Media S French, the word " jeune" like correct term Politiquement is frequently employed to indicate a Voyou or individual having made reprehensible acts, often in a significant context.

Literature

• Olivier Galland: the Young people , 6th edition, Collection Reference mark, Editions the Discovery, Paris, 2002,124 pages. (ISBN 270713645X)
• Gerard Mauger: Hippies, Zulus, hooligans: marginal young people of 1968 with today , Collection Political and Social Problems, French Documentation, Paris, 1998.
• BASTIEN Bernard, BATTLES Philippe, Conseilleriez you with one (E) friendly (E) to come here? To live in FJT, for an interpretation of situations of youth, Paris, editions of the workshop, June 1998
• PUGEAULT-CICCHELLI Catherine, CICCHELLI Vincenzo, RAGI Tariq, which we know of the young people, Collections social sciences and company, Paris, University Presses of France, 2004.
• “the entry of the young people in the adult life”, political and social Problèmes, Aubervilliers, French documentation, n°794 of December 5th, 1997.
• ELLEFSEN Bjenk & HAMEL Jacques, “Citizenship, youth and exclusion. Social link and policy per hour of precariousness”, RIAC, Montreal Quebec, n°43, spring 2000.
• SCHEHR Sebastien, “Process of singularisation and forms of socialization of youth”, RIAC, Montreal Quebec, n°43, springs 2000
• LAGREE Jean-Charles, LONCLE Patricia, “Young people and citizenship”, Problems political and social, Aubervilliers, French documentation, n°862 of August 31st, 2001

See too

• three ages of the life: Youth | adulthood | Old age
• Publications intended for youth
• the webzine of the young people of Quebec
• Day of Young youth
• Culture ()
• Generation
• : Ministry for youth: Gate of information of youth
• : site of promotion and diffusion of the results of the university research at the University of Montreal and the Laval University in Quebec, places at the disposal a very good search engine set of themes, many articles are available free, downloadable with format pdf.
• : site of the National institute of Youth and Popular education, the information center of the INJEP places at the disposal on the site a documentary search engine set of themes, and certain press reviews and of magazine are available on line, like all the synopses of the publications of the INJEP

External bonds

• the passage of the young people at the adulthood - File DEUG of sociology

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