La contribution de l’entretien biographique à l’étude de l’hétérogénéité de l’expérience étudiante et de son évolution dans le temps

Abstract

In this article, we show how the method of biographical interviews, when connected to the theoretical concept of career and the instrument of interpretative analytical typology represents and allows us to understand the heterogeneity of female experiences as well as their evolution over time. Initially, we explain our procedure in constructing a typology of six types of careers which will allow us to understand the heterogeneity of the relationships to time and to the students’ studies. Secondly, we show how the notion of typology is not an end in itself and that, once constructed, it represents a powerful instrument of analysis of narratives designed to seize the heterogeneity of logics, this time not between students, but over time, within one and the same biography. The article shows that the concept of career and typology are instruments making it possible to circumvent the impression of fixation and a blotting over of lived experience induced at once by the a posteriori reconstitution of one’s life by the candidate in the interview situation and by the effort of objectification of careers by the researcher. The demonstration is based on two biographical accounts collected in research relating to the mobilities for studies of French-speaking university students coming from a minority milieu in Canada.