Jeunes de banlieues. Construction identitaire, représentations de la sexualité et comportements sexuels a risque

Abstract

The suburbs of Paris are shared between towns and neighbourhoods with different social characteristics, defining personal behaviours and social representations at the most intimate spheres like sexuality. From the observation of student’s populations, we try in this paper to evaluate the importance of social condition and school contexts over sexual behaviour and representations, as well as their knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and practices regarding HIV infection. My purpose was to understand the configurations and layouts of the representations and behaviours by taking into account the scholar, social and cultural contexts of the subjects.The sexual representations and experiences of individuals are too marked by the gender they belong to, which induces social roles and differentiated ideals and determines behaviours, namely those that concern the body and sexuality. The speeches of young people questioned in an ethnological investigation on sexual representations and existences in the Eastern suburb of Paris, denounce the opposition between feminine and masculine values, and show the difference between the representations and behaviours of young males and females