Article
French
ID: <
10670/1.xabzky>
Abstract
`titrebThe Father figure and the exclusion and seclusion of the son in the migration process`/titrebIn interviews and focus groups with male adolescents and young adults in prison, we learned about the complex relationship they have with their fathers. We found severe difficulties to construct an adult identity, as well as difficulties in identifying with the father figure. The relationship to the father appeared as being strongly influenced by the father’s fragility, byt also by stigmatizing representations of the “bad father”. The young interviewees seemed to be imprisoned by their own ambivalence, torn between filial allegiance and the desire to escape from loyalty. They described their fathers alternately as being unmatchable and/or inequitable. Why do we find this difficulty in dealing with the Law-of-the-Father with the rules of society? What is the sense of these young males’ transgressions? What was lacking in intergenerational transmission? In this paper, we try to give an answer to these questions while using material from two research projects we made in a prison and in a closed institution for delinquent adolescent minors. We analyzed the way the young participants talked about their relationship to their father, how they identified, mostly in a negative way, with many ambivalences, refusal and denial of the father figure.