Abstract EN:

The thesis assesses the “Nouveaux-Services; Emplois-Jeunes” program, designed specifically to combat youth unemployment. In stressing the conditions that characterize young people's first foray into the working world, it seeks to demonstrate the process by which the young create new identities for themselves and build a relationship with the working world. Eight “ideal types” of professionals - affinitaires, instrumentalistes, faux-fuyants, sublimes, proscrits, funambules, ambivalents, and sursitaires - are identified, which permits an assessment of the transformations that have affected current professionals as well as the consequences that two decades of mass unemployment have had on France's young. These ideal types also allow the concept of “youth” to be redefined as something distinct from the process that ends in “adulthood. ” Finally, this thesis examines the sociological methods and the professional trajectory of the author, a young civil servant who works in the French territorial administration.