Contraintes et conditions d’émergence de l’engagement des jeunes en situation de marginalité

This doctoral research attempts to outline the understanding and interpretation of the conditions leading to the emergence of engagement of young people on the fringe of society. Studies have shown that being on the fringe is a serious obstacle to engagement, due to a lack of personal, organizational and cultural resources. The general tendency is to emphasize the fact that young people do not want to be activists, when in fact, significant collective actions (student or community movements) or initiatives led by individual citizens (blogging or signing petitions) contradict these assertions. In fact, in some cases, taking a standpoint, particularly within the private sphere, elude all analyses and are mistaken for non-involvement, individualism or even apathy.  Based on a qualitative, exploratory and interpretative approach, the methodological process of this research favors participative observation and focus groups in order to collect the point of view of young people on the subject of their engagement or non-engagement, as well as observing a certain number of collective actions. Through the intervention of community organizations for young people (OCJ) in Montreal, we were able to meet with about hundred young people between September 2010 and December 2011. The iterative data analysis is based on the principles of Grounded Theory. The first level of descriptive analysis allowed us to highlight the constraints and conditions of the emergence of involvement, as well as performances of youths on the fringe of society. Various forms of engagement have been explored, then put in perspective of the following spaces: “original”, “intermediary” and “negative”.   The “original” space corresponds, in this research, to traditional means of action (voting, political activism). Our results show that the positioning of young people within this frame is much divided. In fact, not only do these modes of action rarely emerge, but when they do, they are mostly supported by social worker. In another space, young people sometimes develop particular, more radical positions or, on the contrary, positions of withdrawing and non-involvement. This reflects what could be called a negative space. In that case, constraints inherent to their marginal situation push some young people to distance themselves from engagement and to position themselves at the margin of the spaces of involvement. Opposition to all traditional forms of engagement leads some young people to consider more radical forms of action that may also be included in that negative space. Finally, one finds totally different dynamics as to how some young people position themselves within what we have called the intermediary space. The scope and preferred means of action are as eclectic as the street itself, the personal social circle or the underground creative production.  More complex and sometimes ambivalent, the positioning of the young people we have met towards engagement demonstrates a search for an alternative: the elaboration of particular means of action. The dynamic analysis of the constraints and conditions of emergence of engagement of young people shows that their positioning youths go beyond the simple dialectics of involvement vs. noninvolvement. Thus, what could be called “alter-engagement” emerges through the positioning of these young people, particularly within the intermediary space. This concept is developed to outline forms of engagement that are more intimate, more linked to the community or to artistic forms of expression. Alter-engagement therefore defines itself as a critical, a-political standpoint, in reaction at the same time towards traditional engagement, positions of withdrawing and more radical positions.

Keyphrases: engagement, non-engagement, performances, Marginal Youth, involvement, critical position, non-involvement, collective actions, involvement spaces, conditions for emergence of engagement