Abstract

COUTANT, Isabelle  and  EIDELIMAN, Jean-Sébastien. “These days, it's hell to have boys in France!”: emotion management in a French adolescent center. Etnográfica [online]. 2015, vol.19, n.2, pp.229-246. ISSN 0873-6561.

How do contemporary health policies, especially those concerning the mastery of emotions in the psychiatric sector, weigh on individuals? Based on fieldwork in an Adolescent Center in a disadvantaged Parisian suburb from January 2010 to March 2011, this article analyses what these institutions reveal of and contribute to the fabrication of individuality in western societies. In these institutions at the crossroads of psychiatry and social work, the management of emotions appeared to be a useful tool for analyzing the transformation of power over individuals at the bottom of the social ladder, especially immigrants. Our analysis shows how the effects of this work are ambivalent, and vary according to gender and social trajectories.

Keywords : psychiatry; gender; immigration; emotion work; shame; France.

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