Young people from immigrant families are disadvantaged from recruitment onwards

The urban disturbances which occurred two years ago in France attracted attention to the problems faced by some of the young people from immigrant families, i.e., those who were either born in France of immigrant parents or arrived in this country at a very early age. Access to employment is no doubt the most serious of these problems. Since the early 90s, several studies have shown that people's origins, i.e., the country where their parents were born, are far from being a negligible factor on the labour market. This factor is also associated with characteristics which people do not easily speak about in France, such as the colour of a person's skin. This rather delicate topic necessarily comes to the fore when it is proposed to analyze changing patterns of youth transition to work, since the problems encountered by young people from immigrant families tend to persist, even during periods when better opportunities become available.