In a context where urban youth are viewed negatively, particularly since the riots of autumn 2005, this paper attempts to move beyond the ideological controversies regarding insecurity and its management. In order to do so, it attempts to define and understand the social experience of the feared inhabitants of housing projects, particularly the young people who are seen as “aggressive” and who have confrontational relations with the established and emerging actors who work with underprivileged populations. This paper presents data from a study on the paroxysmal relationship between public and semi-public social regulators and youths who represent “disorder” in working-class neighborhoods. More specifically, this paper describes the new feelings of domination young people experience in housing projects that are undergoing a process of ghettoization (poverty, ethnic divides, political/institutional conflicts, and highly visible idle and stigmatized youth). It also describes the responses and strategies developed by these young people to overcome a process of “mutual reification.”