From Vulnerability to Disaffiliation: Analyzing Differing Relationships with Institutions and Deconstructing the Public Policy Category of “Invisible Youth”
Drawing on the life narratives of young people labelled (Becker, 1963) as “invisible,” this article deconstructs the public policy category of “invisible youth” by exploring young people’s differentiated relationships with the institutions responsible for their care. The analysis is based on the initial results of a study conducted with such young people by youth workers at local employment and social integration centres in France, a study launched in the spring of 2020 amid public health, social, and economic crises. Faced with a so-called biographical injunction (Astier, Duvoux, 2006), the young research participants described themselves as both culprits (bad students, drug dealers) and victims (of hardship, of family violence). Analyzing their stories makes it possible to gain an understanding of invisibility as a process rather than a state (visible/invisible), and to describe the factors that lead young people to make themselves visible (or not). The article identifies three broad categories of youth: “good students,” who meet institutional expectations; young people who are “on the edge,” oscillating between following the advice of professionals and relying on external supports; and, finally, “outsiders,” who makes strategic use of institutional resources. More broadly, the analysis of young people’s relationships with institutions, work, and family provides a window on their movements within social space, especially in situations of vulnerability and disaffiliation (Castel, 1995).