"YOUNG
PEOPLE & SOCIETIES
IN
EUROPE AND AROUND THE MEDITERRANEAN"
As society
evolves, relationships between the various social groups undergo continuous upheaval: their lifestyles, the
positions they hold and the roles they take on are constantly at stake in a
process of perpetual reconstruction. Young people (taken in the most usual
sense of the term and not withstanding their specific qualities), to the extent
that they can be considered as a social group, are without doubt an excellent
example of this. Young people are at the very crossroads of social concerns:
much of their behaviour is perceived as largely symptomatic of social problems.
However, the viewpoint that we are more interested in is that they also serve
as a very loquacious pointer to some more fundamental issues. In particular,
through their divers components, multiple forms of behaviour and acute divides,
young people highlight one of society’s major problems: the difficulty in
opening up to social changes, reducing inequality and encouraging mobility.
Youth is a
decisive stage in the socialisation process. Social legacies, mindsets and
plans are intensely scrutinized at this age. The individual’s socialisation is
caught up with trends and developments in society as a whole, and young people
do not enter a frozen social world, but one that is constantly transforming
itself. No doubt these two processes do not proceed at the same pace… Whilst
socialisation results from a process in which individuals incorporate social
structures, this process in turn contributes to modifying these social
structures. Thus, from the outset, we should consider the entry of new
generations into social life as a factor likely to influence its course:
whether consciously or otherwise, new arrivals can speed up emerging trends,
take them on and carry them forward, assert them and even proclaim them,
sometimes sparking them off or slipping into their flow or on the contrary
attempting to curb them. Young people spark cultural trends, sometimes
suggesting new standards and working on society as a whole. They develop
language, modes of communication, forms of sociability, value and belief
systems and relationships to work and family that interfere with instated modes
of regulation and sometimes change their course. Young people integrate into a
changing society and in turn they influence these changes. Between their
personal biographies and social history, young people construct their own
original position.
In light of
the complexity of the socialization process and the vast range of studies it
inspires, we recommend that an annual event be created to provide an
opportunity for all those who are interested in “the youth issue” in Europe and
in Mediterranean societies to share their work, questions, perplexity or even
their discoveries. We will raise questions of sociology and invite specialists
from other fields – anthropologists, economists, historians, psychologists,
linguists etc. – to shed their own light on these questions, discuss
viewpoints, redirect questions and contribute to the various “outlooks”.
The first
conference will be held in Marseilles
in October 2003 and will be a Symposium that formally
inaugurates all the other conferences to follow. At this first event, we shall
review the current state of research on young people and their modes of
socialisation in order to reformulate the questions in light of the
reconstruction presently underway in society. We will seek to identify transversal
issues, inspire new viewpoints and encourage debate. Without attempting to
cover the whole range of possible fields in the first conference, we plan to
address five guiding themes: (1) training, access to employment and
professional socialization; (2) developments in systems of social relationships
and sociability networks; (3) poverty, consumption and social inequality; (4)
values and cultural & religious practices; (5) citizenship, relationships
to politics and collective forms of expression. These five topics are explained
in more detail below and will serve as markers as we seek to formulate
transversal questions that lead us from one to the other.
… followed by many other conferences!
Every year
in autumn, a beautiful season in Provence, we shall have the opportunity to
pursue our discussions with two objectives in mind: broadening our discussions
and organising the contribution made by work carried out or completed during
the previous year. We have chosen the word “organising” deliberately, since we
believe that the challenge today and in the medium-term future is to give some
kind of consistency to knowledge in the field of young people, as today this
knowledge is disparate and at times fragmented. One of our permanent objectives
will be to structure this knowledge in a consistent manner to ensure that new
questions are constantly raised and that research remains dynamic.
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