This thesis is about a special type of institutional treatment called family-work. It can be described as different ways to involve the families of the youth in their treatment programme. The locus of the study are special treatment homes which provide treatment for youth with serious social and behavioural problems. The study concerns three units at three institutions. The thesis has a qualitative and interpretative approach with using of observations, field studies, combined with interviews and field notes. The study focuses at the pre-conditions for the local "family projects" run by the care workers. With "project" means a process where different actions take place. The Theory of Action concept facilitates the understanding of these types of process and the importance of the internal(subjective) and external(objective) conditions in proportion to the space of action. Several local conditions influenced the pre-requisites for the staff to be able to carry out a "family project" and decide how to realize an intention. Important conditions were commissions given by the social services and the treatment focus at the units. The units are functioned as kinds of overall social "project contexts" with four basic characteristics: the treatment focus and structure, the professionalism and the organisation of the work. The conclusion from the study is that none of the "project contexts" at the three units provided good pre-requisites for family-work. "Family projects", realised by care workers were however professional and seem to have helped both the parents and the young persons, but "the project" were, in total, relatively few. It appeared that a successfully completed "family project" is the last step in a long process in which many different conditions contribute to the destiny of the "project". A clear family focused structured treatment at a unit can provide the employees with good conditions for realising the opportunities they see for working with families.

Cette thèse propose une analyse des transformations postcommunistes en Roumanie à partir d’une étude de la structuration de trajectoires familiales. La réflexion sur les itinéraires très variés de ces trajectoires familiales met en valeur les pratiques développées par les familles dans la construction de leur mode de vie quotidienne après la chute du communisme. L’approche utilisée privilégie deux axes d’analyse. Le premier vise les aspects socio-structurels concernant les cadres de la vie incluant les aspects matériels, alors que le deuxième, l’axe socio-symbolique, concerne les aspects subjectifs liés au vécu des acteurs en corrélation avec le contexte social en mutation. L’analyse est fondée sur des éléments issus de la théorie de la structuration qui ont contribué à la construction du cadre conceptuel. Elle s’appuie aussi sur la méthodologie qualitative qui comprend des récits de vie obtenus à partir des entretiens semi-dirigés réalisés avec les membres de 11 familles. Les thématiques retenues après l’analyse du corpus de données nous ont permis d’identifier des stratégies que les familles ont mises en place et les projets familiaux qui ont orienté leur parcours de vie durant la période de transition postcommuniste. Ces deux concepts révèlent des éléments liés à l’ordre général permettant ainsi la mise en évidence des tendances structurelles de la société postcommuniste. / This thesis presents an analysis of the process of post-communist transformation in Romania, through a study of the structure of family trajectories. An examination of the wide variety of family trajectories highlights the practices developed by families in rebuilding their way of life after the fall of communism. The approach adopts two axes of analysis. The first is the socio-structural framework for life including material aspects, while the second axis, the socio-symbolic axis addresses subjective aspects related to the experiences of actors within their changing social context. The analysis draws on the theory of structuration in its conceptual framework. It is also based on qualitative methodology which includes life stories obtained from semi-structured interviews conducted with members of 11 families. The themes selected after analysis of the data corpus allows us to identify strategies that families have put in place and family plans that have shaped their life course during the post-communist transition. These two concepts reveal elements related to the general order allowing the identification of structural trends of post-communist society in Romania.

Cette thèse propose une analyse des transformations postcommunistes en Roumanie à partir d’une étude de la structuration de trajectoires familiales. La réflexion sur les itinéraires très variés de ces trajectoires familiales met en valeur les pratiques développées par les familles dans la construction de leur mode de vie quotidienne après la chute du communisme. L’approche utilisée privilégie deux axes d’analyse. Le premier vise les aspects socio-structurels concernant les cadres de la vie incluant les aspects matériels, alors que le deuxième, l’axe socio-symbolique, concerne les aspects subjectifs liés au vécu des acteurs en corrélation avec le contexte social en mutation. L’analyse est fondée sur des éléments issus de la théorie de la structuration qui ont contribué à la construction du cadre conceptuel. Elle s’appuie aussi sur la méthodologie qualitative qui comprend des récits de vie obtenus à partir des entretiens semi-dirigés réalisés avec les membres de 11 familles. Les thématiques retenues après l’analyse du corpus de données nous ont permis d’identifier des stratégies que les familles ont mises en place et les projets familiaux qui ont orienté leur parcours de vie durant la période de transition postcommuniste. Ces deux concepts révèlent des éléments liés à l’ordre général permettant ainsi la mise en évidence des tendances structurelles de la société postcommuniste. / This thesis presents an analysis of the process of post-communist transformation in Romania, through a study of the structure of family trajectories. An examination of the wide variety of family trajectories highlights the practices developed by families in rebuilding their way of life after the fall of communism. The approach adopts two axes of analysis. The first is the socio-structural framework for life including material aspects, while the second axis, the socio-symbolic axis addresses subjective aspects related to the experiences of actors within their changing social context. The analysis draws on the theory of structuration in its conceptual framework. It is also based on qualitative methodology which includes life stories obtained from semi-structured interviews conducted with members of 11 families. The themes selected after analysis of the data corpus allows us to identify strategies that families have put in place and family plans that have shaped their life course during the post-communist transition. These two concepts reveal elements related to the general order allowing the identification of structural trends of post-communist society in Romania.