Abstract EN:

At the junction of the sociology of social mobility, the history of« elites » and the ethnography of educational policies, this dissertation examines the conditions of possibility and the life experiences of people who benefit from upward social mobility through elite selective education in France. Through the study of widening participation policies of the « grandes écoles» (elite schools) and preparatory classes to these schools, we show how and why such prestigious institutions implement specific programs for working class students and how the latter abandon, redefine or maintain their dispositions, as they move away more or less from their original milieu. This research draws on historical documents, statistical data, in-depth interviews, direct observations and rushes from a documentary film. The first part shows that the unequal social access to elite schools, at the center of debates or policies since 1944, only became a central public issue at the end of the 1990s, when different actors borne by their interests and/or family legacy became the heralds of the cause of widening participation. The second part focuses on a preparatory class located in a prestigious high school which trains youth from working-class areas to enter a group of elite schools (Instituts d'Études Politiques). We examine the practices through which the teachers try to instill in these students a new attitude toward culture and the future. The third part analyzes the factors that explain that students go through with, slow down or interrupt their trajectories of social displacement in the years that follow the competitive entrance exams to these schools, and the consequences of such attitudes