Revisiter sa trajectoire académique

Abstract

Despite the statistical data from the post-World War II period highlighting the poor educational chances of children from large, rural families, my access to high school as a scholarship holder confirms the dual function of a school system that promotes certain hand-picked students and turns away from the others, so that there are no academic miracles. As a Sorbonne student and employee, and later as a mother, success in exams is the result of arrangements between material necessity and incessant “cramming”, a tension alleviated by the support of allies and climbing groups. Entering EHESS through the back door places me in the lowest regions of the hierarchy of centres, while ensuring an upward social transition, which at some point becomes irreversible. Against a vision of the individual as the maker of himself and his destiny, my academic career is the matrix of my social migration, and attests that becoming a class defector is a collective construction.

Keywords

• gender
• trajectory
• academic field
• class defector
• statistical exception