Sociological researches on youth in France and their links with political and administrative concerns

Abstract

The present paper makes a historical account of the way French Sociology has responded to current concerns of public services about youth in the course of years; such concerns never failed to trigger studies on specific topics, highlighting various ages of life. However this does not necessarily entail a connection between political debates, the requests of public services and the specific content of sociological researches —such a standpoint would cast doubt on the relative autonomy of scientific production. It merely indicates that, at a given time, political discourse and scientific research shared a common interest in some particular groups of individuals and thought it a matter of urgency to deal with specific topics concerning these groups. Although the political and the scientific discourses were motivated by different drives (a decision-making capacity vs a quest for knowledge), they both came to identify and define some age-group categories. Thus the young, the young adults and more recently the adolescents have progressively turned out to be the protagonists of the news whether they are viewed as society’s threatened victims or as its threatening victimizers