Abstract EN:

This study examines how foreign born allophone students from working-class families who attended French schools in the eighties managed to succeed at school and graduate at university. A qualitative approach has been chosen and the analysis is based on data collected through in-depth interviews of the comprehensive type. The pannel of informants illustrates the many forms of domination which affect such students, i. E. Social, cultural, symbolical, historical dominations - among others. However, these students have overcome these dominations and they have also reversed the expectations of the school institution : when they deal with non-native French speakers, official instructions between 1970 and 1973 illustrate how the school institution expected children from immigrant families to follow roughly the same social pattern as their parents. A thematic analysis of the corpus of interviews has been carried out: first stages of the learning of French, work of the teachers, how students relate to the learning process, individual careers at school, respective status of mother and second tongues and cultures, role of the parents, construction of the self through differences and shame. When they started attending French schools, the informants became efficient and active actors of their school life. However, success is often obtained at a high cost for the individual and it is not achieved without sufferings. When some, not only cross social boundaries but also cultural ones, it is painful for them to feel estranged from their own families.