History of the Hearths of Young Workers:

The Hearths of Young Workers belong to the great movements of popular education which were born and developed after 1945 under the difficult conditions of after war. The Fifties are remembered by two very important basic phenomena: the housing shortage and the rural migration.

For the young people who migrate massively towards the cities in the Fifties, there is a rupture social and family, wanted or undergone, to which difficulties are added of placing themselves and of nourishing themselves under salubrious and decent conditions. However the moved young people have work, but their incomes are weak. Vis-a-vis this problem of many initiatives a little everywhere flower. They emanate voluntary the often resulting ones from the catholic social militancy. Many hearths for young workers are created a little everywhere but they are insulated. Regrouping of a score of hearths of the west of France is born on February 6th, 1955 an association called National union from the Hearths of Young Workers (become in 2006 National union for the Habitat of the Young people, UNHAJ).

The period going the Fifty at the Seventies is marked by the need for building. For the FJT that is not possible without the intervention of the State. Impossibility for the FJT under renting residences HLM constituted an important obstacle then. This obstacle will be raised, and this projection will allow collaborations between the offices and the FJT, the first manufacturers and owners leaving to the seconds management buildings.

Gradually, the FJT which solved the preoccupations with a construction will leave the simple logic of lodging to concentrate on a socioeducational mission. The accompaniment of young people towards autonomy arrives in a new context, where the concern to give a roof and a decent housing is not any more the priority. The children of the baby-boom grew and the Sixties are remembered by the emergence of the “Jeunesse” as a specific group: the effect of generation replaces the communities of membership, which they are of origin or professional.

The professionalisation of the personnel in the FJT, related to the evolution of the mission of housing towards the socioeducational one makes it possible to return visible and to show the effectiveness of the actions led to the public authorities. That will lead in 1971 on the one hand on the creation of a line “Assistances with the young workers” in the budget of the ministry for the social affairs, on the other hand to the eligibility of the FJT at the stations subsidized by the Fund of Co-operation of Youth and Popular education (FONJEP). The institutionalization of the hearths is concretized when the State publishes a circular defining the role of the Hearths of Young Workers and fixing conditions at their approval.

End of the year 60 is marked by a new phenomenon, it there sometimes vacancy of housing in the FJT, which in reaction open from now on with public young people having other statutes that young workers, in particular the students. That contributes to a mixing and with a certain social diversity, the population is less homogeneous and more claiming. A new period begins with the oil crisis from 1974 and the massive development from unemployment. Second half of the Seventies is for the hearths the period of the report of the embrittlement of the young people vis-a-vis employment. In 1974, the lowering of the age of the majority has as a consequence the new and important arrival of major young people in family rupture. Vis-a-vis this total evolution of the accommodated public and to the new problems of employment, which touch mainly the little qualified young people, the FJT will try out education acts in direction of the residents. Gradually the courses of the evening of handing-over on level given by voluntary students are transformed into training courses aiming at qualifications framed by trainers, and that becomes new branches of activity with whole share for many Hearths. To the socioeducational mission de facto that of professional insertion is thus added. The UFJT, from now on privileged interlocutress of the public authorities on the relative questions with youth, will make recognize this new role related to the evolution of the public. In 1976 then in 1977 two ministerial circulars come to modify and supplement on these points the circular of 1971.

The economic situation which is degraded more and more in second half of the Seventies strikes full whip the young people. The terms of precariousness and exclusion appear to indicate the new social problems. The Hearths once again widen the criteria of reception to answer this new category of precarious young people. Always in collaboration with the State, the UFJT obtains that the ministry for the social affairs can grant a “Help of breakdown service” to help the young unemployed to reach a housing in FJT. The reception of young unemployed in places created to help of the “young workers” is a rupture important symbolic system. With beginning of the year 80, the Hearths of Young Workers do not lodge mainly any more of the “moved young people” come from the campaigns towards the city to work. From now on, of many town young people are accommodated. They live out of their family for various reasons: formations, ruptures, studies… That is accompanied on the one hand by shorter stays on the other hand by the use of the hearths like mode of housing among others for the young people. It is not any more privileged intermediate housing being used as place of training between the departure of the family and autonomous housing.

The “economic austerity” imposed by the State touches in their management the FJT as well as many other social or sociocultural structures. The government aid decreases, and the hearths must as well as possible manage their resources to survive. The passage of 600 hearths in 1964 to 470 in 1991 holds of that mainly. The FJT which did not take the turn of “the social economy”, new concept which emerges with the turning of the Eighties, have for a certain disappeared number. At the entry in the Nineties, the situation in the FJT is analyzed like a flashback. Indeed, the hearths built in the Sixties first of all badly aged, and then have an unsuited pallet of habitat from now on. The majority offer of the Hearths of Young Workers remains individual room in great collectives, which does not correspond any more to the request. The frame degraded and claims heavy rehabilitations. Paradoxically the hearths are filled because the young people pain to place themselves, because of their precarisation and of the shortage of social housing. The public of the hearths extremely is précarisé and parcelled out; for a long time already the “workers”, within the meaning of those which have a stable job and full-time, are in minority. The function of the FJT is from now on to make in kind avoid exclusion with the young people who are lodged there, this by crossing the missions of lodging, of sociocultural accompaniment and insertion, the whole with an increasingly marked partnership dimension. A symptom of this evolution is that from now on in many socioeducational teams there is at the side of “traditional” the organizers of the teachers, the advisers in social economy and family and sometimes even of the psychologists.

Years 2000 are remembered again by the crisis situation of the housing which increases in a context of fall of public finances, delays taken in the programmes of social housing and considerable rise of the prices on the market of the real estate: for the young people, the share of the income devoted to housing passed except assistance to housing of 29% in 1988 to 40% in 2005.

See too

• Hearth (housing)
• Workers' home migrants