Le projet étudie l’influence de la famille et du système de références sociales sur le développement d’attitudes et de comportements racistes. Il s’intéresse plus particulièrement à la mise en évidence de «sentiers de développement» dans la biographie de jeunes ainsi qu’à l’analyse des mécanismes de transmission entre les générations.

Résumé des principaux résultats: The project analysed the influence of the family and immediate social environment in the development of racist attitudes and behavior among young people. The special interest was to analyse the influencing factors leading to the development of racist attitudes and behavioural disposition among young people in an interactive and generative dimension. Since these influences can reinforce, relativise or cancel out each other, it appears that the only way to handle these issues is by a highly intensive and detailed analysis of selective biographical processes. In this context, it was of special interest to uncover the biographies' "development paths" and "junctions", which would enable one to hermeneutically reconstruct and understand the genesis and intensification of racist interpretation and behaviour patterns. This method is supported by more recent findings which unanimously warn against any tendency to rely on the results of socialisation while neglecting that the acquisition of social disposition is a process which is highly individual in character.

The adolescents and families researched by our study are no “modernisation losers”. The phenomenology of the 26 youths and their families is, on the contrary, evidence that there is a large degree of “normality” in their life scripts and lifeworlds. In fact, we found attributes reflecting a high level of social integration in a large proportion of our sample. Surprisingly, social marginality, which is usually interpreted as the result of economic and social changes, plays only a minor role, despite theoretical expectations. Even more often, deprivation or disintegration is the result of domestic violence, parental conflicts and their consequences within the family system.

The following development clusters were found:

I. Dissociation by Over-adaptation – Radicalisation of the Values and Standards of the Social Environment of Origin
This development cluster is characterised by the fact that politically right-wing attitudes and behavioural dispositions are already found in the adolescents’ parents, grandparents and other close attachment figures, as well as in their cultural environment. The adolescents see themselves as an executive power in a widely accepted culture and sociality. Their political statements and actions earn them recognition and acceptance. Unlike Development Clusters II and III, there is no direct link between being right-wing and coping with familial conflicts or socialisation conditions experienced as difficult. Instead, there is a connection in this development cluster to “non-extremist” or “hidden extremist” tendencies. On the level of the biographical developments studied here, there are traces of influence that lead directly into the centre of society and culture.

II. Violence, Disregard and the Search for Recognition
The biographies of the adolescents displaying this development cluster are characterised throughout by the violation of their physical, psychic and social integrity, in the context of growing up as a member of their respective families. What they experience, as well as how they try to deal with it, constitutes a central topic of their biographies and is connected to the familial and intergenerative issues as well as the adolescents’ rightist extremist patterns of interpretation and behaviour. The inner-familial experience of physical powerlessness and both social and personal disregard entail a fundamental lack of relationships of recognition with their primary attachment figures. This loss, or rather, this lack of habitualised recognition conditions has an effect on the socialisationally generated ability and disposition for empathy and thus also on the possibility to recognise and acknowledge other human beings in social contexts. Such effects can be shown in the deregulated way in which these adolescents commit violent acts, as well as in their uncertainty vis-à-vis social relationships. In the process of right-wing group rituals, this biographically acquired disposition is condensed into a habitus.

III. Non-perception and the Search for Experience, Visibility and Difference
This development cluster is not characterised by the experience of physical violence, open and aggressive disregard or contingent actions by the primary attachment figures of the adolescents’ immediate family. As in Development Cluster II, that we have called ‘Violence, Disregard and the Search for Recognition’, the absence of communication and direct experience and thus the lack of recognition conditions again has an effect that is biographically relevant. The central characteristic is a lack of interaction and communication in the family circle, which are mutually perceived as relevant and meaningful, and as significant from a subjective perspective. The phenomenology related to this is multi-layered, ranging from rigid authoritarian patterns of behaviour to mutual ignorance, spatial and temporal absence (by parents or children), unauthentic parenting behaviour and the belief in an unrealistic ideal of how an adolescent should be that has nothing in common with reality. Achieving visibility through difference and by breaking through the isolation by means of an affiliation (right-wing group, virtual home, ideology) is of significance as a space of experience, in particular for the affiliated adolescents in this category. Overall, there is a need for interpretive and behavioural patterns for dealing with threat, insecurity or marginalisation.

Communiqué de presse du 17.1.2008: [Education et extrémisme de droite] (document pdf)
Abstract: [Parenting and Right-wing Extremism – Analysis of the Biographical Genesis of Racism Among Young People] (document pdf)
[Rapport scientifique septembre 2005] (document pdf)

Informations supplémentaires concernant le projet

Contexte, problématique: Dans une perspective des sciences de l’éducation, l’actualisation d’attitudes et de comportements racistes et d’extrême droite se rattache dans une très large mesure au contexte individuel. De ce fait, l’analyse des questions de la recherche s’appuie sur une approche qualitative, structurée dans le cadre d’études de cas, de l’évolution biographique de jeunes et intègre des facteurs plurigénérationnels. Cette démarche est étayée par les résultats de recherches récentes qui s’accordent à mettre en garde contre une concentration unilatérale sur les facteurs liés à la socialisation en négligeant le caractère processuel et individuel de l’acquisition de dispositions sociales.

Objectifs et méthodologie: Par le biais d’analyses détaillées de cas individuels, la recherche sonde le sens subjectif des parcours biographiques. Afin de déterminer plus précisément les modes de transmission de styles éducatifs, de valeurs et de schémas d’interprétation à l’intérieur des rapports familiaux intergénérationnels et de pouvoir quantifier leur influence sur le développement d’attitudes et de comportements racistes, le concept de recherche tient compte d’une perspective plurigénérationnelle. Les parents et grands-parents, ainsi que des personnes de référence significatives de l’environnement familial et social des jeunes, sont associés à l’étude.

Pertinence: L’analyse des liens entre l’éducation familiale, l’extrémisme de droite et le racisme menée dans le cadre du projet a pour but de contribuer à surmonter les clivages entre des concepts sociostructurels d’une part et des questions relevant des sciences de l’éducation ainsi que des modèles d’action pédagogiques de l’autre.L’étude vise ainsi à permettre une meilleure compréhension des interactions entre le développement de valeurs personnelles, schémas mentaux, attitudes racistes ou leur concrétisation dans des contextes individuels ou spécifiques à des groupes. Ces liens semblent être d’une importance décisive en vue de la conception d’approches de prévention et d’interventions d’ordre juridique et sociopédagogique.

Durée du projet: 1.4.2004–31.3.2007

Dr. Thomas Gabriel
Universität Zürich
Pädagogisches Institut
Sozialpädagogische Forschungsstelle
Freiestrasse 36
8032 Zürich
Tel. +41 (0) 1 634 45 60
[gabriel@paed.unizh.ch]

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