They and they are in their twenties. In the heart of the cities of Etoile and Salvador-Allende de Bobigny – a tangle of rails, roads and HLM towers – these young women and young men are at the forefront of the biggest construction sites of the moment in Ile-de-France. : those linked to the hosting of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (JOP) of 2024 and those generated by the Grand Paris Express, a public transport network which must be delivered by 2030.
However, this proximity is not synonymous with the professional horizon that emerges for these young job seekers. In this department, where the unemployment rate for people under 25 was around 31% in 2019, they are told that these construction sites are all opportunities to join sectors in tension., such as construction, security, hotels, restaurants or transport. But these promises often come up against the realities on the ground: the desires and background of young people, long training times, experience necessary to meet the requirements of companies, reduced mobility of people, etc.
While the counter installed in front of the headquarters of the department indicates that the Olympics will take place in less than five hundred days, the transplant is struggling to take. “We talk less about the Games than about the Champions League” football, says Kamel Bouajila, who runs the Companions Builders local, on the ground floor of a tower in the Salvador-Allende city.
This national association helps precarious families to renovate their homes and trains them in the basics of construction. Here meet elderly people providing know-how, young people remobilized through educational projects, organizers of various schemes such as the regional youth integration plan (PRIJ), set up by the region and aimed at “invisible”, those who escape school, employment center or local missions.
“I would like to go, me, to the Games”, says Mohamed Diawara, 20, who would see himself attending a swimming event. Kamel Bouajila tells him that he can also enroll in the program of “volunteers”, who will be mobilized in the summer of 2024. This seems far to the young man. With the support of the PRIJ, he is in the process of redefining a project, after a vocational baccalaureate in electricity obtained in 2022, without materializing on the job market.
Eli Timaitre, PRIJ referent in the district, went through the list of professions highlighted by the Grand Paris Express with him. Mohamed Diawara identified that of “draughtsman”which develops “the technical plans, for example, for the electrical equipment of a building”. “I understood that he knew this profession and its specific software, that he had a real desire”, says Eli Timaitre. It remains to find training and go to the end of the project. The educator knows from experience that nothing is won.
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