French Literature Reviews - 2026

Youth in Quebec. Margins, Institutions, and Representations, Globe vol. 8 no. 2
History, Politics and Society

PUBLICATION OF THE LATEST ISSUE OF GLOBE. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUEBEC STUDIES

“Youth in Quebec. Margins, Institutions, and Representations”
edited by Lucie Guillemette (Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières) and Claire Le Brun (Concordia University).

As Pierre Bourdieu pointed out in “Youth is Just a Word,” the relationship between social age and biological age is highly complex. What does it mean to be young? Who is considered young? The answer varies across time and place, across societies and even microsocieties. It also varies depending on the academic discipline. Thus, the definition of youth differs for specialists in children's and young adult literature compared to psychologists or sociologists. The articles gathered in this special issue on youth in Quebec address multiple issues and unfold along two main research axes. The first, structural, examines the institutional, social, and economic frameworks that shape young people as they undergo identity formation. The second, cultural, focuses on the representations and self-representations of adolescents in youth literature and graffiti practices.
First, Madeleine Gauthier offers a critical overview of sociological research on youth, dividing “into four major periods the representations of youth that define the relationships between those termed 'young' and other age groups.” Adopting a microhistorical perspective, Christine Hudon and Louise Bienvenue then highlight the mechanisms of youth control revealed through the correspondence and diaries of teachers and students at the Collège de Sainte-Anne at the turn of the twentieth century. For her part, Sylvie Ménard examines “the role of institutionalization in strategies for controlling juvenile delinquency in Quebec between 1869 and 1950,” analyzing the specific case of the Saint-Antoine Institute. Juvenile delinquency associated with youth gangs is explored by Marc Perreault, who investigates the urban phenomenon of youth presence on the streets. Contributing to the second theme of the issue, Franck Le Coroller traces the identity trajectories of young graffiti artists in Montreal, seeking to capture both the ritualistic dimension and the creativity inherent in this form of self-representation. Lucie Guillemette analyzes the figure of the adolescent female in three novels by Anne Hébert, demonstrating that these heroines, although constrained by the romantic ideals of patriarchal fiction, nevertheless manage to articulate their desires and perform actions that transform them into true agents. Adolescent representation is also central to Claire Le Brun’s contribution, which outlines the characteristic figures in the novels of Raymond Plante and demonstrates the strong presence within these narratives of a romantic ethos linked to marginality. Finally, Suzanne Pouliot’s study of twentieth-century youth publishing not only sheds light on the history of the book and reading in the past century, but also assesses the impact of “social transformations that [...] are reflected to varying degrees in the production of novels and picture books,” thereby making youth publishing “a privileged site for observing social change” (Madeleine Gauthier).
Founded by Daniel Chartier and currently directed by Éric Trudel and Michel Lacroix, *Globe: Revue internationale d'études québécoises* has the mandate to foster connections between Quebec specialists and international Québec studies scholars around contemporary multidisciplinary themes. Subscriptions to the journal are available via its secure website: www.revueglobe.uqam.ca. *Globe: Revue internationale d'études québécoises* gratefully acknowledges the support of the Université du Québec à Montréal, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Ministère des Relations internationales du Québec, and the Department of Canadian Heritage.

Source: Manon Plante, Université du Québec à Montréal, (514) 987-3000, extension 1407, revueglobe@uqam.ca.

The academic study of youth encompasses diverse disciplinary approaches, moving between sociological analysis, historical documentation, and cultural critique. Scholars in the humanities and social sciences frequently examine how generational categories are constructed through institutional practices, educational frameworks, and legal structures. By investigating the boundary between social age and biological age, researchers seek to understand the shifting mechanisms of socialization and control that operate across different historical periods and microsocieties.

This special issue of Globe: Revue internationale d'études québécoises, edited by Lucie Guillemette and Claire Le Brun, brings together varied contributions that examine the structural conditions and cultural expressions associated with youth in Quebec. The articles address institutional frameworks, historical mechanisms of control, urban street phenomena, and literary representations of adolescence in novels and picture books. Readers interested in Quebec studies, sociology, and cultural history may find these multidisciplinary perspectives relevant to their inquiries.