La discipline du choix. De l’orientation scolaire après le bac en Seine-Saint-Denis

• Main Author: Fabien Truong
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: ENS Éditions 2013-11-01
• Series: Tracés
• Subjects: orientation; choice; discipline; higher education; Seine-Saint-Denis
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/traces/5794

Through an intensive, participant and longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork, this paper examines the choices in terms of higher education made by high school pupils from so-called priority education zones in Seine-Saint-Denis, North of Paris. It shows the constitution of a discipline of choice, that is to say a set of rules for considering options and deciding between alternatives, as well as finding adequate information to do so. This discipline of choice acts as a common rationale for subaltern students who remain undecided about their future, showing the importance, in choices, of territorial stigma and the rejection of university, as opposed to more closely supervised higher education are valued. This rationale leads to ambivalent and contradictory attempts to escape from multiple categories suggestive of illegitimacy. In this sense, it illustrates how what is deemed possible, probable, desirable and acceptable are brought together in changing patterns which have been produced by and against the school system, underlining its internal contradictions.