Abstract

This paper aims to understand the way young people from minority groups placed in the care system deal with identity issues. The different spaces foster children to spend time in leading important processes of renegotiation of identity: intergenerational links are re-defined in a context of childcare in which new significant spaces and persons play an important role. Two identification modes that young people elaborate may be distinguished: in the first mode, young people oppose the biological ties to the affective ones that they daily build, sometimes even considering them as their «roots». In the second mode, young people recur sometimes to resources found in their foster homes, sometimes in their families, and in this way they build identities in motion.