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This paper presents an ethical and methodological reflection of a ten-year lasting biographical research with young people from foster care in Germany. For this purpose, the paper gives an introduction into pedagogical biographical research, which is established in Germany, but rather unknown in other countries, and introduces the reader into the German-speaking discussion on research ethics in German educational science. Furthermore, the author presents her research context and hitherto research projects. On this background, she reflects her experiences with biographical research with young people from foster care. In several steps, methodological and ethical question are discussed on gaining interviewees, conducting interviews, analysis and presentation of results. Throughout the paper it is obvious that biographical research is very productive in producing relevant research results, but at the same time complex and challenging for the researcher. At the end of the paper, ideas are presented on how structures could be created that support the researchers in this challenging task.

The authors question the use of the term “non integrable” (multi-problem young people) in the French scientific literature about difficult adolescents. In the first part of the paper, they mention the genealogy of the term, defined at the intersection of the educational, juvenile Justice and health fields. They describe the social circle in which this term has appeared. The authors then show the diversity of terms used in the French language to name these young people: “limit case”, “heavy case”, “difficult adolescents”. In the second part of the text, they put forward one hypothesis about the reasons of the rise of this term. The authors suggest that child psychiatrist Flavigny would unintentionally stand at the origin of the rise of that term by having proposed the exclusion of the term “antisocial personality disorder”, and thus has opened the way of thinking about this pathology, by considering the social and institutional dimensions after having eluded the individual view.

From the years 2000, the Quebec state has adopted public policies aimed at preventing young adults from resorting to social assistance. The resulting social and professional integration support measures are characterised by an open programming offering a flexible framework to the staff working with young people in difficulty, and at the juncture of the community, different community-based organisations and institutions. In Quebec, the IDEO 16-17 measure is a recent example. This measure, implemented in the carrefours jeunesse-emploi (CJE) offers increased coaching to youth aged 16 and 17 who are encountering major difficulties on the social, professional or school levels. It seeks a local partnership and includes many nationally coordinated activities. The article is grounded in the evaluation report of the IDEO 16-17 measure (Yergeau, Bourdon, Bélisle & Thériault, 2009) and highlights an original analysis of open programming. The quantitative and qualitative data collected during interviews with 24 staff members, 52 young people and 20 directors from the CJE constitute the main corpus analysed. This paper sheds light on some of the challenges related to open programming in the particular context of social and professional integration support aimed at vulnerable youth.

Study of violence proposed in this paper is based on the assumption of the existence of potential violence in the teacher discourse. Through the practice, teacher runs some forms of violence called here educational or rationalized violence. Educational violence can be defined as verbal aggression and psychological control on the learner. It can affect the motivation of learner and his relationship with his teacher. Educational violence is a hidden form of violence. The problem which this type of violence is the link between interactional models exposed to school and youth training.

This paper examines the first results of a research about institutional trajectories of multiproblem young people. Based on files and semi-structured interviews of professionals, we reassemble the elements of two different trajectories in child protection. We sketch a portrait of the troubles presented by two different youngsters and their home environment. We review each of the child protection measures that form chaotic and complex trajectories. The results show both an accumulation of negative events in the life of these two youngsters and an accumulation of malfunctions of the institutions of which the consequences are a sequel of problems. Although the two subjects present troubles which have things in common with the antisocial personality disorder, we wonder about the inability of professionals to classify these subjects in this psychopathological frame that might allow them to understand the problem they are confronted with. Finally we question the connection between educational and psychiatric institutions. Each of these two institutions tends to reject theses youngsters because they consider them as out of their skills. We elaborate the idea that the educational institution might care efficiently for them, if the containing function of health professionals, who would maintain supervision systems in order to protect the team of the attacks of the youngsters, was provided.

This paper examines conceptions of the addictive behaviours of minors in detention and highlights several factors that put it into perspective and relegate it to the prison environment. Focusing first on the real-life experience of the people we met, the survey study shows that the use of cannabis by detained minors is a commonplace practice in their daily lives, both inside and outside prison. The consumption and representations of cannabis contribute to the relativisation of this practice, which is not associated with a health issue, also because recourse to treatment is resisted and is reserved for emergency situations. Despite the feeling that health is deteriorating in prison, the representations associated with healthcare in prison reinforce the mechanisms of non-take-up which are already rooted in the daily lives of young people. In addition, the particular situation of unaccompanied minors requires particular attention, since they present specific characteristics in terms of trajectories and poly-drug use. The article goes on to examine other factors that relativise and relegate addictive behaviours, relating to the spatial, temporal and social constraints of the prison environment. On the one hand, the survey study highlights the impact of location on young people’s drug use and access to treatment in prison, which is affected by both material and abstract? constraints. On the other hand, this study highlights the contradictory nature of time spent incarcerated, where the long period of imprisonment is contrasted with an experience of urgency and uncertainty. This contrast hinders a nuanced understanding of addictive behaviours by young people and professionals. Finally, while social ties in detention are altered, weakened and under constraint, there is a limited understanding as to their role as resources when it comes to addictive behaviours. This contributes to their being relegated to its relegation to the field of intervention of professionals. The third part offers a perspective on the socio-professional space of detention, where the material and organisational conditions contribute to the silencing of Addictive behaviours, from the lack of resources to the lack of coordination between actors and institutions. While the lack of training contributes to the relativisation of the addictive behaviours of minors, it nevertheless appears that informal skills can be mobilised by professionals in the field to compensate for this unthinkable fact.

Non attended minors searching for an asylum right are more and more numerous in the European Union. So as to obtain a refugee status such minors have to prove, just like their older people, that they risk serious problems if they ever return to their country of origin. If a young person stands without official papers, he must also prove he is a minor. But the technics in use by national authorities are far from being without gaps and deficiencies. In Europe, a legal representative has to be nominated. He will assist the vulnerable minor to take the numerous steps asked by national authorities. The minor’s representative must warrant the child’s superior interest. Common norms are derived from European directives, they concern the competences and the missions of the minor’s representative. Nevertheless, each State has a large panel of solutions: thus competences are widely different from one State to another. So the variety of national solutions influences the efficiency of the whole system. The effectiveness of the adopted rules is then imperfect and minor’s protection still includes numerous gaps.

The current paper explores the experiences of youth care workers in the context of their relationships with adolescent girls placed in residential care. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 youth care workers in two residential centers in the province of Quebec (Canada). Findings indicate that youth care workers intervening with adolescent girls placed in residential care experience a range of difficult and sometimes negative emotions. Furthermore, the complexity of youth’s needs and profiles, difficulties in engaging parents, and the pessimism of colleagues with regards to placement outcomes are important sources of doubts and concerns for youth care workers in their dealings with adolescent girls placed in residential care. While some youth care workers are confident enough to overcome such fears and still emotionally invest their relationships with adolescent girls, others were overwhelmed with apprehensions to the point of keeping adolescent girls at a distance or even withdrawing from the relationship. In general, our findings suggest the need to offer practitioners the support and the space to question their ‘psychological availability’ with regards to establishing and maintaining trust-based relationship with adolescent girls in residential care.

This article dialogue with sociological studies about the involvement of youth in dynamics of violence and crime in poor neighborhoods and suburbs of major urban centers. It presents the main results of an empirical research about youth gangs and armed groups operating in the slums of the metropolitan region of Belo Horizonte (RMBH), capital of the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. From a theoretical point of view, we adopt the assumption that, in Brazil, the emergence of youth gangs and its involvement with crime dynamics in the favelas must be understood according to the relationship that these groups have with the context of profound socio-spatial exclusion and institutional violence that characterizes the life of large segments of the youth population in Brazil, in recent decades. In this sense, this paper describes not only how gangs and armed groups is structured in the slums of the metropolitan center of Belo Horizonte, but also the characteristics of its violence.To promote such discussion, the article presents data from a study conducted between 2009 and 2011 from three sources : 1. in-depth interviews with 40 adolescents undergoing rehabilitative measure, because their involvement in crimes such as homicide or drug trafficking ; 2. official records on violent crime in cities of the metropolitan area of Belo Horizonte ; 3. A database from the intelligence services of the police as well as studies led by the Minas Gerais police, about the action of gangs and armed groups in RMBH.

This paper results from a recent collective participatory research project (ANR Pop-Part 2017-21). It focuses on the trajectories of young people from working-class neighbourhoods in Ile-de-France. Media and even sociological views often polarize on two complementary figures in the educational pathways of young working-class people the rarity of exceptional trajectories doubles the number of failures and difficulties. On the contrary, the aim here is to highlight the heterogeneity of social and educational trajectories in working-class neighbourhoods. They are concerned by the general increasing complexity in the transition to adulthood. We examine the socially situated ways in which young people describe their lives. Understanding the heterogeneity of trajectories implies a detailed approach to social positions, crossing social origin, family configurations, gender and sexuality, as well as inter-generational migration trajectories and religious practices. The first part presents four ideal-typical ways of telling one’s story in an interview, illustrated by several portraits, which make it possible to bring out contradictions in the story, and proximities or porosities between the narratives. The second part shows the differences in position in the social space between these young people, in order to grasp the effects on their relationship to the world.

In the context of legislative changes, this paper compares the institutional responses to juveniles accused of a crime or offence in Brazil and in France. Research on juvenile justice, in the context of both countries, systematically highlights the major changes in the laws relating to juvenile delinquency which have occurred since the 1990s. For this reason we chose the cities of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and Lille in France. To analyse the institutional responses to juvenile delinquency, taking into account legislative and regulatory changes, we relied on the evolution of police, justice and prison administration statistics in the two countries. The article shows that the legislative history of Brazil over the past twenty years has not been the same as that of France. However, the deep history of violence and human rights violations in Brazil, especially violence against children and adolescents, has led to the incomplete and inadequate adoption of the doctrine of comprehensive protection. This has helped to maintain the punitive treatment inherited from earlier periods without taking their rights into consideration.

From the experience of an on-site research realized by a Social Work Training Centre team and seized from an ethnographic approach, the article proposes to show the meaning of doing research in a setting designed by and for social work. This is based on the experience of a survey carried out onto Custodial Education Facilities by a research crew made of both academic researchers and professional trainers. The paper aims to give insights of the concrete way the survey was performed and organized (approach and method) and on the issues raised by this kind of work. This especially regarding scientific interest, social usages, chiefly in terms of knowledge benefits.

The feeling of injustice amongst young residents of a working class housing estate This paper helps us understand the views held by the youth of a working class housing estate in the Paris suburbs on our institutions and society. It is based on participative observations and the transcriptions of informal discussions between the youngsters in their residential area. These youngsters are not a homogenous group because of age differences, schooling and also cultural practices which colour their vision of our institutions and society. Students are mainly interested in the world of employment, which they consider discriminatory, delinquents feel that they are in conflict with the police and practicing Muslims dread the presence of intelligence services. However, despite different routes, these youngsters also share a common past based on migration, working class social origins and share the same residential space which, paradoxically, leads to a common perception where cynicism accompanies their views of the society in which they live.

The place of residence, often depending on the social position, induces a specific social experience. But if a part of the young people living in public housing districts tends to consider their neighborhood as a territory, many of them withdraw from it or go beyond its limits. Moreover, their practices will change with age and experience. This paper deals with the progressive entering of teenagers in new territories where they may feel legitimate or not, according to circumstances and to their own trajectory. School life, peers’ group and juvenile activities, family and gender intervene in this rebuilding of the relationship with territory. This dynamic relationship with territory is displayed through a research on adolescents between 15 and 20. For them, the neighborhood is an anchoring, but it is nevertheless hard for girls to build their place there. School and leisure offer opportunities to go through other urban spaces, but access to the city is often limited to commercial areas. This is as much due to a lack of willing of some young people to venture farther as to their apprehension of being considered as intruders.

Autonomy and participation in decisions by adolescents placed in care (France, Germany, Russia) This paper looks at the socio-educational practices in relation to adolescents placed in residential care in France, Germany and Russia. It especially analyses the conception of autonomy that underpins these practices that are defined, most of the time, in reference to an autonomisation objective. It also looks at the consequences on the participation of the youngsters in decisions that relate to them which principle is recognised and guaranteed by the international Convention on the Rights of the Child and national legislations in the three countries involved. Through this comparison, the concept of user’s participation, linked to the decision-making process as well as to tasks of daily life, appears as an instrument that can be used to help adolescents to learn to be autonomous. The practices studied are replaced in the institutional and legislative contexts that govern them. This comparison between the different levels in each minor protection system shows the similarities between the ways the users participate in the legal or administrative procedures that lead to their being placed in care and the method of participation for the minors placed in care within the receiving establishment. To occur in reality, the principle of user participation in decisions that concern them can not be limited just to receiving establishments but must also be extended to decision-making at all levels.

This paper describes a successful experiment of partnership among educational professionals, namely between teachers and street educators, in a junior high-school of an underprivileged urban area. First, the scheme which was implemented to drive all pupils to success is firstly exposed. Secondly, we shed the light on the conditions which allowed the scheme to last several years and those that let it to its termination. The exceptional nature of such a collective endeavour and its fragility are pointed out. Overall, the article highlights that professionals do not benefit from enough institutional support for handling the problems they face.

This paper exposes the main outcomes of a study about adolescents at risk. The article is based on the case study of a young woman put in residential care several times since her birth, in 6 secondary schools from 12 to 16 and who, at last, runs away from home. The theorical background is the case study proposed by Becker. Several points of view are collected (the young woman, her family, professionnals working in different institutions and concerned by the case). The frame and the methodology are first exposed, then Kelly’s case is presented. The following developments are devoted to compare Kelly’s case with the other youngsters’ of the study.

Senegalese families have been deeply affected by recent economic and social change, generating children’s marginality. The analysis of young girls’ biographies at Thiaroye Center shows that their marginality is generated by the bad quality of social ties resulting from several factors : plurality of absences, confusing references connected with their parents way of life, economic vulnerability (insufficient food) and daily experience of conflict, violence and maltreatment. The paper also shows that young girls can develop resilience when in care in a trustful environment.

Violence in lower secondary school is more present in deprived backgrounds than in another social environment. However, strictly school factors are also important in violence experience. Why, in equivalent sociological profile, a number of school establishments succeed better than others in doing good school atmosphere? According to results of international research, we adopt the hypothesis that a preventive atmosphere against violence depend on a strong and respectful management, kindly to the teachers and to the pupils. The effective management regard the pupils with their difficulties and their potentialities.The method of this paper is an analysis from a documentary produced by Thierry Delestrade in 2001, entitled “Madame la Principale”. The film presents the life of a lower secondary school in Saint-Denis (suburb of Paris), well-known to be difficult for teachers. “Madame la Principale” manage this school for three years at the time of the documentary.The analysis of sequences shows the specifications of a management able to regulate many conflictual situations and anticipate violence at school. The necessary conditions for the reduction of incidents are located in a fair and effective management of the life of the school that improve the atmosphere of the school.

The outlook of rejection of the traditional forms of social or political participation and the analyses of the new forms of youth engagement provide us relevant understanding to grasp the involvement of youth at risk. However, following the results of a doctoral research, it appears that these analyzes do not fully understand the development of an alternative to participation developed in the everyday situations of marginality, among others. Issues of invisibility, illegitimacy of certain forms of engagement as well as the characteristics of non-engagement postures can be an extremely difficult issue in conceptualisation. But, experienced in everyday life, in the socialization experiences, some forms of engagement underline youth at risk’s forms of participation in public space, more or less visible and recognized. Through the results of a comprehensive study, this paper aims to analyse the outlines of the engagement of marginalized youth and to propose another reading of these with the "alter-engagement" concept.

This article deals with the stadium ban measure related to the French law for the sport events security (called Alliot Marie Law, 1993). In this article, the stadium ban will be considered as a “turning point” of the football fan’s career within a group. How this event drives him to reconsider his commitment, his memberships and his identity? This article proposes to work on the way that the Government regulates the practices of the ultra fans, by punishing some of their activities (use of pyrotechnical devices, invasion of the pitch, violence). How do the fans experience this sanction? What are the different consequences on their career? What is the particular fans’ everyday life who are stadium banned? How is this sanction collectively experienced by the ultras' group? What is its impact on the ultras’ social world? This article aims to show how, into this world, ultra fans who are stadium banned form a specific micro-world with a proper identity that is deviant labelled. The stadium ban of ultra fans, and the way they experience it, is analysed in this paper from ethnographic data of a field work, mainly realized by participant observation and semi-structured interviews with French ultra fans.

This paper presents the results of a statistical analysis of delinquent acts committed by teenagers in Belo Horizonte. Our data come from administrative sources of this city, and include unusual geographical indications, that are fine enough so as to test various hypotheses identified during ethnographic fieldwork campaigns of the ANR Project SpaceControl. We focus particularly on the role of the neighbourhood ; the way teenagers use the territories ; and the points of concentration of acts that are independent from neighbourhood. We mainly used contiguities matrices.

The affective and sexual relationships of street-involved youths are often examined in terms of survival, with few considerations for their subjective experience. Relying on sociological work focusing on individual agency, this paper describes the representations of affective and sexual relationships of street-involved youths in Montreal. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty-seven street-involved youths (16 women, 11 men) aged 18 to 25 years. Testimonies reveal that for some participants, involvement in affective and sexual relationships strengthens a sense of belonging to the street context. Other participants keep their emotional and sexual relationships involvement minimal, as they worry that such relationships may compromise their odds of exiting the street. This study highlights the strategic dimension of affective and sexual relationships among street-involved youths in order to improve their living conditions.

The two researches characteristically involve “weak actors” (Payet, Giuliani, Laforgue, 2008), respectively: Brazilian children from a “favela” (shanty town) and French children with special needs, integrating representations of the socially produced categorizations, as well as the educational normativity, such representations hindering their active participations in the research. This paper highlights “the need of unlearning” so that the children can become actors in researches. It is by means of the methodology, regarded as a dynamic process being constructed along the research (Passos, Kastrup, Tedesco, 2014), that this unlearning can be achieved. The ethics issue is important in this process. Encountering differences is essential for destabilizing, and thus collectively creating something new. The ethics issue also consists of a political view (Freire, 2013) in the sense of creating new means of existence and of acting, and, at the same time, other ways of organizing the world. Therefore, several effects of this kind of “research with” the children are to be pointed, not only from the individual perspective, but also from the collective and scientific perspectives.

This paper reviews, from two complementary perspectives, literature on the school-shooting concept, i.e. shootings carried out in schools by students. Firstly, it examines how the concept was coined in public debates in the United States in relationship to another form of juvenile violence, that of large-city gangs from lower social classes, before forming an autonomous form of violence after the Columbine High School massacre. The article thus traces the creation of the “school shooting” category in the late 90s and early 2000s by highlighting the bifurcations and boundaries used to determine it. This demonstration exemplifies how school shootings cannot be confused with other forms of violence, despite what might potentially be learned from the study of this phenomenon when compared to connected areas of studies or comparable extreme conducts. Then, the article discusses the main areas of research developed with the emergence of a sub-field of research related to school shootings. After a brief review of the reasons why this form of violence falls into the realm of moral panic for specialists in the field, the article examines the models and explanatory variables available. This complex phenomenon is shown to be irreducible to single variables or a combination of necessary conditions. With the internationalization of this phenomenon of violence at the beginning of the 21st century, the limitations of the first explanatory attempts are raised.

Our research examined an NGO which applies educational measures in open environment. Inspired by non take-up benefit of social benefits theories, it aims at studying how the translation process of users’ demands operates at local level of social policies.This article presents an issue considered as problematic by professionals : release decision taken in situations where they “don’t know what to do anymore”. Release is expected to be sentenced when there is no more need of protection or no more requests for assistance. Here it would rather mean the renunciation of assistance. And the acknowledgement of powerlessness allows the no commitment of resources. Theses situations reveal the tensions between the imperative to do with the family, the concern for protection of children, and the difficulty in mobilizing the right means at the right time. A specific case is considered : the paper describes how the educational stakeholders (dis)qualify the parents, leading to point out both their inability to act and their responsibility in the failure of situation.However the timeline reconstruction of the social support record shows some acceleration moments and some caesura during the measures. It makes appear that each actor is successively able or unable to act depending on the framing of the situation. Therefore, responsibility and ability to act seems to be distributed between all the stakeholders, human and non-human (reports, order of the judge, working hours, knives, institutions, partners, territory), which should be better recognized. Firstly, from a care perspective, more open negotiations should be maintained. Secondly, community work should really be developed.

Educational care trials This paper presents the results of a qualitative study conducted on youngsters taken into care under judicial youth protection. The study analysed 39 interviews that updated the different aspects of the life of the person in care. This was based on objective factors: the legal basis for the care order (civil or penal) and the methods of care (family, residential care or foster family) and also on an evaluation by the youngster of his condition of « being in care ». This evaluation conditions the nature of the relations with the educational institute and the length of care.

This paper focuses on the fact that a minority of young boys, aged 13 to 25, make use of « micro territories » close to their familie’s lodgings. It is based on an empirical research in the departement of Moselle. Methodology used is « symbolic interactionnism ».The research data shows that, thanks to this process, youngsters gain a sort of control or property which will then be materialized by territorial signs (or markages) : empty beer bottles, cigarette butts, tags. These « micro territories » host informal but nevertheless social relations for different groups which develop daily during a few months or sometimes several years. The phenomenon is stronger in social housing areas where they become locus for experiencing interactive relations, for resting, between « cosmos and chaos ». The author argues that these territories are a passage between the inside, private arena and the outside, public sphere, thus enabling a dynamic where internal and external social interactions emerge, where territorialization and deterritorialization operate depending on.

A Body-based Classification. The Anomalous Postures at School as an Indication of « Deviance » Based upon research concerning school difficulties of the middle school pupils coming from the lower working class, this paper shows that the body, through postures which fail to comply with school norms, represents an institutional indication for « school deviance » and maladjustment. Since it gives shape to a « school abnormality », the pupils’ body not only points out the existence of more serious « disorders », but is also interpreted as the symptom of « inner disorders » revealing a « childhood in danger ». This perception of unruly, unteachable bodies lead to the institutional identification and categorization of certain postures as deviant postures. The results of this classification are not restricted to the school field. They are extended to the educational and judicial level. Thus the school classification of the middle school pupils postures contributes to the prevention of what is thought as a risk of subsequent disorders at school or outside.

This paper is based on an ethnological research on the Youth day-to-day life in two deprived areas of the suburbs, « les quartiers ». A couple of researchers remained three monthes in each area, living with the young people.We chose to study those two areas in two different medium cities, one of them being a traditionally middle-class city, the other a traditionally working class one, with a vivid history of social and economical struggles integrated to its life. The social differences between the city centres were essential to understand the situation of their deprived areas.Space organisation and the function of the city centre have crucial consequences on the social organisation of the young people. It appears that the feeling of being relegated, aggressed, is greatly determined by the map, the landscape of the area, and the social and economic position of the actor. Living in an enclosed area, as in the first « quartier », leads to difficulties to go out, in real and psychological terms, hence, to find a job. Travelling in and out the area depends greatly on the point above but, in both types of areas the girls are seldom present in the public space, in relation with the culture of the dominant minority, that spreads upon the others. If the deprived area is an enclosed one, the young males use to go to the city centre in groups, securing themselves in an hostile surrounding. At the reverse, in an « open area » individualisation and integration is possible.

The paper presents a qualitative research on interventions of empowerment and support for parents whose children are in care. The research, focused on the region of Milan (Italy), aims at analysing social workers’ discourses about their action towards families. It is based on in-depth interviews involving twelve people who work in nine different social services. The interviews facilitate gathering data on social workers’ more or less implicit representations of families, children protection, professional care.The analysis shows a complex frame where the practices and the different institutions’ points of view (judicial system, social care, boarding structures, etc.) are mingled. It is then possible to identify some paths of innovation with regard to the organisational structure of social services, the relation between parents and social workers, the systemic perspective on children well-being.