Abstract

COUTANT, Isabelle. From street to job: integrating juvenile delinquents. Etnográfica [online]. 2010, vol.14, n.1, pp.71-95. ISSN 0873-6561.

Since the 1970s, given the transformations of the job market and the changes in “street culture”, professional morals replace “street morals” less easily than before, and the shop floor is less integrative for juvenile delinquents. In that sense, the importance of the role played by the institutions involved in the process of normalization has grown in proportion. By studying an integration system for juvenile delinquents, in a French banlieue, it is precisely that sort of ambition I wished to apprehend. Through the case studies of three young men, I explain the reasons why the young people involved in the system participate in it, and the conditions that need to be met for a street educator’s moral authority to be acknowledged. I underscore the acculturation that takes place at the heart of the system and the type of competences that can be acquired there. I show also, the stigmata linked to a delinquent past can always get in the way of the process and reactivate habits developed in the “street”.

Keywords : Juvenile delinquency; educator’s authority; moral conversion; capital of conformity; stigmata; banlieue.

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