Les jeunes en France: naissance et construction d’une identité sociale. Essai d’historiographie

Youth in France: the genesis of a social identity
This essay explores the historical construction of the category of youth in France through the lens of the historiography devoted to the subject in the last forty years. Because social scientists had often caracterized youth as a temporary stage in an individual life-cycle, it is difficult to build a coherent historical category of youth. Each generation seems to stand alone in conflict with the previous one. It is possible to bridge the gap by pointing to the main moments of change in the concept of youth history. Reviewing the ways in which historians had been dealing with youth from the middle ages to today in France, this essay highlights the many facets of youth activities within the family, the military and the many peer groups that have been studied. Youth rituals function as essential ways of reproduction of the hierarchical family and society into the modern era. It is paradoxical that the studies devoted to youth have become, after the decades of social upheavals, much more centered on the delinquent youth, or the gendered aspect of social control of youth. The author argues for the adoption of an encompassing theoreti- cal framework that could give the young their right place as full historical agents.