Delivered. “Young people have often occupied a prominent place in political projects aimed at reforming society. » This is how the book by Camille Peugny, professor of sociology at the University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines begins, For a youth policy. The Popular Front pushed back the age of the end of compulsory schooling by one year and developed a network of youth hostels. In 1958, the Gaullist government appointed a high commissioner for youth and sports. Barely elected, on May 10, 1981, François Mitterrand glorified the victory of the “forces of youth”.
More recently, François Hollande targeted young people in his campaign, making them a priority. And the list is still long. In short, concludes the sociologist, youth is a “indispensable political object”, even if rhetoric does not always translate into action. For twenty years, it has also served as a guarantee for a whole series of reforms, often painful: those of pensions, those aimed at reducing public spending and the debt… Each time, the principle of equity is brandished loud and clear intergenerational.
Despite this omnipresence in the debates, it is clear that a “real youth policy” is lacking, continues the academic. Instead, there is a “yarrow” illegible, devices sprinkled on the right, on the left, in fact addressing sub-categories of young people.
However, the situation is worrying. Our youth is pessimistic, much more than many of our neighbors. 100,000 young people leave the school system each year without any diploma or with only the college certificate. Unemployment, the absence of stable jobs and precariousness are the lot of a large part of this age group, which is also the first adjustment variable during crises. The student public has grown, but is partly very fragile. The pandemic has served as a reminder of these realities all too well.
Many inequalities
The book invites us to think about youth with its own challenges. However, the author does not see it as a homogeneous group. It is multiple and fractured by many inequalities, depending on social, ethnic, spatial origin, gender, despite the republican meritocracy displayed.
The sociologist pleads for an overall policy, which must have “two goals”. On the one hand, limiting the “gap between generations”, which can quickly increase in an aging society, where old age and dependency are major problems. On the other hand, to restrict the inequalities between the different segments of youth.
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