We are witnessing profound changes in European societies, including in the matter of the ‘conditions of education’ and teachers’ training (Blais, Gauchet, Ottavi, 2008). The signifier ‘risk’ can be defined as the possibility that something bad could happen in the future, that situations we are facing are uncertain and unstable, ‘liquid’ rather than ‘solid’ (Bauman, 2000). In the light of this definition, we may say that we live in an ‘Era of risk’ as suggested by the title of the Conference, but that doesn’t define precisely what has to be understood by ‘risk’ neither what skills and capacities are needed in this complex situation.

The symposium will be an opportunity to discuss various ‘devices’ in use in three different European countries in the context of educators, teachers and social workers’ training at university. Those devices have been organized to promote work on the ‘subjective involvement’ (Penot, 2006) during training in Higher Education. Using the term ‘devices’ about what is set up in professional training at university in the aim to promote the conditions of possibility of the subjective involvement of the participants lead us to examine proposals potentially in contradiction. More specifically, works of authors who think the devices as structures able to subdue the soul and the body (Foucault, 1975) or to produce and control subjectivity (Agamben, 2006) are confronted in our research with other works where devices are considered as structures in which interactivity between people is solicited, in relation to their ‘groups of belonging’ and their ‘network of internalized interactions’ (Rouchy, 1983) or structures in which the singular wish can emerge and be focused (Guattari, 2003).

The research results presented in the symposium come in part from collaborative work conducted by several European university teams (Paris, Milano, London and Luxembourg) for three years now. This inter-European cooperation in the field of training and education has already given rise to first publications (Geffard, 2016; Orsenigo & Ulivieri-Stiozzi, 2018).

The research works of the symposium participants are all guided by clinical approaches close to each other, such as for data collection, which is mainly based on interviews with participants in the training, the writing they produced and note-taking by those responsible for training, during the sessions or immediately after. Another proximity between the works presented at the symposium lies in the status of the fantasies (Freud, 1900) that can appear during the working sessions. In the devices used, they can be understood both as a defensive structure but also as ‘a meaningful structure constituting the subject’s commitment to reality’ (Lapping, 2016).

The differences that allow a confrontation and a discussion of the results obtained are related to the contexts of reference of the various devices put in place. The training device set up in Italy is based on the work of Ricardo Massa, a philosopher and pedagogue who is at the origin of the ‘Clinica de la Formazione’, an approach focusing on education as a pragmatic device promoting subjective encounters between those who are involved in the process of training. What has been organized in Germany is linked with the concept of a ‘Therapeutic Milieu’ (Redl & Wineman, 1957) used in the field of education in relation to the project to create a form of ‘potential space’ (Winnicott, 1987) able to support the students' development. The main reference for the device put in place in France is the ‘Institutional Pedagogy’ (Oury & Vasquez, 1967), an approach which pays attention both to the group dynamics and the unconscious processes in education and training.

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