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Based on two clinical case studies of adolescents taken into care by the legal protection services for juveniles and minors, this article addresses the function of sibling relationships within the family dynamics and the role they play in the process whereby adolescents living in an intercultural situation construct their identity. We show how sibling relationships can open out an intermediate space for the psycho-affective and cultural development of adolescents and their families. Such relations can help adolescents in terms of self-assertion and socialisation. Conversely, they may also symptomatically convey with them the anguish and failings that attend shortcomings in the exercise of parental duties.