Abstract EN:

Since 2007, the French Ministry of Defense has implemented an Equal Opportunity Plan (Plan Égalité des Chances or PEC in French) which consists in eight actions benefitting more than thirty thousand young people. It integrates the wider dynamic of the Espoir-Banlieue (Hope-Suburbs) plan in 2008 designed to promote social diversity in the access to higher education. The present study focuses on one of these actions entitled “Social Inclusion in Defense High Schools”. As they enroll students with a civilian status, the Defense high schools are managed jointly by the Ministry of National Education and the Ministry of Defense. Although the PEC and its action are aimed at scholarship pupils, the label “Cordée de la réussite” of two schemes “Officier pourquoi pas ?” and “Internat pourquoi pas?” developed in a Defense high school introduces an eligibility criteria: coming from a partner establishment. These schemes rely on a partnership between the Defense establishment and a number of secondary and high schools located in underprivileged areas with specific educational or urban policy programmes. The first scheme “Officier pourquoi pas ?” aims to guide the career of “deserving” scholarship students who originate from scientific final year classes with the “potential” to integrate preparatory classes for higher education. The second scheme “Internat pourquoi pas?” targets scholarship final year secondary school students with “average to good” educational achievements. Our qualitative sociological study focuses on both the institutional and organisational implementation modalities of these two social opening schemes, and on the secondary socialisation of the students concerned.