Introduction. Le(s) « nous » des jeunes des quartiers populaires : évolution des frontières et des affiliations

This special issue, built from participatory collective research, focuses on young people from working-class neighborhoods and questions what constitutes commonality and diversity among them. This question is not new: it has been studied by numerous researchers in sociology, who have placed as much emphasis on “the shared feeling of a solidarity of destiny as on that of the differentiations which make up the groups” (Combessie, 2005, p . 6). Likewise, Nathalie Kakpo (2006) wanted to highlight both a community of experiences and a diversity of trajectories among these young people. It is this “we with variable geometry” (Marlière, 2005, p. 270) that we would like to capture in this issue, through the study of the experiences and trajectories of young people who live in working-class neighborhoods. The different contributions brought together here question these shifting and fluctuating forms of belonging, and what they convey: do these young people feel like they belong to one or more “us”? Do they feel perceived as a “we” and, if so, which one? Are they aware of it? Do they adhere to it? How do interactions, experiences of confrontation and cohabitation with others contribute to the strengthening of this “we”, or, on the contrary, to the porosity, to the construction or deconstruction of boundaries between social groups and to the evolution of affiliations and lines of distinction?