This thesis investigates the relations between the literacy practices used in two
community-based organisations and those of the young people in a situation of
precarity (aged 16 to 30) who attended their activities in Québec (Canada). These
organisations supported them to find work, housing, return to education, improve their
social relationships, and integrate in society, which I refer to as social and professional
insertion. Drawing on the New Literacy Studies (NLS), in this study literacies are
considered as social practices rather than technical skills. The thesis brings together
NLS and francophone studies on literacy, and uses terms originating in French and
which have no precise equivalents in English. Examples are ‘rapport à l’écrit’ and
‘situation of precarity’. The methodological approach is ethnographic, critical, and participatory. The study
had two phases of data collection. In the first phase, the chosen techniques were
participant observation and semi-structured interviews, and the second phase involved
participatory workshops. The findings indicate that the young people had extremely rich and complex literacy
practices. The literacy practices used as part of the organisations’ activities and
workshops for young people were hybrid; combining school-related, digital and
vernacular literacies with practices associated with counselling, work, social
relationships, and relations with the state. Some young people whose education got
interrupted reconciled themselves with education and school-related literacy through
their participation at Le Bercail and L’Envol. With the support of the youth workers,
the young people were encouraged to learn by doing, a form of learning that can be
identified as apprenticeship. The literacy practices used in the organisations were not exclusively controlled by the
research participants. Some sponsors of literacy (e.g. the state and institutions) were
imposing various literacy demands they had to respond to. The youth workers acted as
literacy mediators with regards to some of these. Literacy mediation at Le Bercail and
L’Envol can be qualified as a form of ‘powerful literacies’ since it can offer an
alternative to counter dominant literacies and it can support learning. A new
term―literacy intermediates―is suggested to describe the kind of literacy mediation
that the youth workers were doing.