Roommate practices of middle-class youth: residential strategies of self-assertion in a context of uncertainties?
In this article, we question the role that sharing practices can play in the pathways to independent housing for middle-class young people in a context of precariousness of this population. The article is based on a corpus of 25 semi-structured interviews conducted with 33 young people aged between 18 and 30 at the time of the interview (19 women and 14 men in the sample). The interviews were conducted mainly in a medium-sized conurbation between 2018 and 2020. As the residential pathway is closely linked to the lifecourse, a biographical perspective was deployed to capture the paths, junctions and temporalities that mark the entry and exit of shared accommodation. The article shows that the practices of home-sharing allow young people to escape from residential decline. Moreover, these practices are presented as a means, certainly to respond to economic difficulties, but also to build one's identity by opting for collective lifestyles. Finally, according to the young people, these practices can be thought of as parentheses while waiting for a couple to settle down or as sustainable lifestyle choices that challenge the dominant norms of the transitions to adulthood. In conclusion, the article insists on the fact that young people's co-tenancy practices can be seen as a means for individuals to construct their identity in a context of uncertainty and risks of social and residential downgrading for middle-class youth.