Discussion of France’s youth fluctuates between talk of threat and opportunity, fear and hope. Public policies reflect this ambivalence: the Conseil Interministériel de la Jeunesse (Interministerial Council for Youth) that François Hollande set up is still making do with general guidelines without the means to develop the projects on its agenda.

According to sociologist Chantal Guérin-Plantin. there are four reference models: fragile youth, messianic youth, dangerous and/or endangered youth and “citizen” youth. These models co-exist, and are capable of either amplifying or cancelling each other out.

Fragile youth, the first model, is seen as needing protection by a special justice system, as well as through press and entertainment censorship. This vulnerability can also be used to prevent minors from participating in civic life and denying them any autonomy. I attended a youth council steering committee meeting in a town in the Midi-Pyrénées region where the question of young people’s role on the committee arose. Representatives of those organisations present wanted to limit it on the grounds that the questions being discussed would be hard to understand. A researcher who was asked for an outside perspective expressed surprise that the issues were so secret or complex. He was told the young had to be “protected”, prompting him to ask whether the aim was for the young to be recipients or participants in the programme. It was eventually agreed that two carefully selected youth representatives could take part.

There are plenty of examples of adults taking control of initiatives aimed at minors and organising them according to their own vision of society. Young people’s responses are telling, and make their frustration plain: “We asked for the organisation of the council to change. We wanted something that was better suited (...)