L'Emploi étudiant et les inégalités sociales dans l'enseignement supérieur

Abstract

Despite a "massification" of the student population, access to higher education is still determined by social inequalities: depending on their class background, young people face variable chances not only of becoming students, but also of reaching the more advanced diplomas and the curricula leading toward the highest social positions. Such inequalities are strengthened by the reliance, throughout the university years, on student jobs that vary enormously in terms of their nature and their impact on student performance. Illustrated by statistical data, this social differentiation of student jobs becomes particularly salient when ethnographic surveys contribute to fleshing out the ways in which students make use of these jobs. The paper outlines several distinct logics, which correspond to different types of linkage between the university and the job market and to different ways of envisaging the future. This suggest how these forms of "professional experience" contribute to reproducing social inequalities.