Résumé
How do children view the specialized political universe? This dissertation studies children’s political knowledge, beliefs and opinions. It aims, through the study of this specific population, to contribute to the literature on ordinary relations to politics. It presents the results of an empirical study which was led in eight socially-diverse schools and combines both quantitative and qualitative methods. The study investigates whichelements are available to the children in order to understand the political universe, and it pays attention to the differences between them, in particular regarding their political competence. The examination of the impact of variables such as age, gender or social environment contributes to understanding the roots of the inequalities in politicization. The dissertation also looks at the way children manage, despite of their generally limited political competence, to make sense of the political universe, in other words to understand and judge it. It studies the intertwining between cognitive and normative dimensions of political socialization: it indicates that judgments and opinions are interiorized by children as if they were evident, just as if they were factual knowledge. It thus shows that individual relations to politics are built on the re-appropriation of the plural messages coming from the environment.