UCL - Socio-anthropology of precariousness

[SOC2030]

[30h] 5 credits

This course is taught in the 2d semester.

Teacher(s): Pascale Jamoulle

Language: French

Level: Second

Aims
Main themes
Content and teaching methods
Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Aims

This course will reinforce the students' knowledge and competences concerning the reference frame-work, the logics and the life styles of the precarious young people and families in our northern con-temporary society. It will give them elements helping them to seize and to open to the social worlds and the life itinerary of these people, their identity resources and their identity self-construction. This knowledge facilitates the dialogue with them. The student will also acquire new competences facilitat-ing the contact with these public and manage their relation with them while working as researcher on the field. He will develop his critical perspective on public policies addressed to this public. Taking into consideration their reality. The students will elaborate adapted modes of intervention.

Main themes

Principal socio-anthropological work, the theoretical debates and orientations of research relating to precarious-ness will be developed gradually starting from the broad topics which structure this field.
1 The fabrication of precariousness. In the reduced to poverty districts, processes of social and mental insecurity are particularly active: the passage of wage-earning to the underground economy, social housing and urban seg-regations, exile disorders and springs of culture conflicts. Which is the meaning of risk practices and addictions in these contexts? And the consequences of certain public policies?
2 Itineraries. Feminine and masculine, we will cross the point of view of young people living in these districts on school and "the school of the street". We will explore the evolution of relations between women and men, the family structures and the paternal figure. To then recompose, the circle of the great precariousness, its psycho-social, health and legal dimensions.
3 Social supports. We will explore the inventiveness and the 'bricolages' of the precarious populations to im-prove their condition and face their difficulties as well as the adapted modes of intervention (in prevention, Community health, proximity, reduction of the risks....) the last meeting will be devoted to the prospective evaluation of the course.

Content and teaching methods

The above mentioned presentations are based on expert knowledge as well as on the experiment of the popula-tions, met during my own investigations:
- Drogues de rue (Drugs of street): an exploration of the life styles in the district of Charleroi, with prosti-tutes and young people implied in drugs and small traffics.
- La débrouille des familles (the way families manage) : Mothers and grandmothers, living in the social city hennuyères, telling their condition. Many are overflowed by risk practices (conduits à risque) of one of theirs.
- Des hommes sur le fil (men on the wire): Fathers and sons of old mining cities report their experiences. They give meaning to their risk practices in their living environment, the construction of their identities and their life itineraries.
- Amours et solitudes aux marges sociales (Loves and lonelinesses when living at social margins) (in pro-gress): exiled, relegated populations of Brussels, make the experiment of the instability of the bonds and the places, and live in permanent state of alert.
The pedagogy of the course will be inductive and interactive. The majority of the sessions will be cut in 3 dif-ferent periods: - presentation of a concrete ethnographic material (observation, account of life) about the ex-plored topic. - a theoretical contribution and a presentation of reference works on the matter - an appropriation and an exchange of interactive knowledge with the students, in order to exchange knowledge and discuss conse-quences of the public policies.

Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Personal essay, based on reading and field research related to the courses themes.

Professor's books :
- Des hommes sur le fil. Les constructions identitaires dans la précarité, La Découverte, 2005.
- La débrouille des familles. Récits de vie traversés par les drogues et les conduites à risques, De Boeck, 2002.
- Drogues de rue. Récits et styles de vie, De Boeck, 2000.

A list of references will be distributed during the first lesson.