Group homes that receive adolescents from urban housing projects are here envisaged as places of contact between two cultures – the shock of two cultures. Educators must create structural liaisons between the world of adolescents and that of discipline, to work to transform the shock into a cultural crossroads. This implies a rearrangement of the institutional setting.
The placement of a youth in a group home is here envisaged as a situation similar to migration. Without negating the relevance of the usual interpretation of transgressive adolescent behavior as symptomatic, a different, and complementary reading is offered here. These behaviors are a attempt by adolescents to maintain their inscription in the world they come from, and more generally, to deal with a conflict of norms.
The example of a runaway illustrates this argument.