Habitus culturels des adolescents et schémas représentatifs des professions.

Do adolescents with different cultural habituses represent occupations in the same or in different ways ? A survey involving 573 youngsters in 6 different educational programs (pupils in their penultimate year of senior high school in 4 streams : literature (A), electronics (F2), medico-social secretariat (F8) and science (S) ; adolescents in their last year of training for the vocational training certificate in management and bookkeeping (B.E.P. C.A.S.) and apprentice car mechanics revealed differences in relation to cultural habitus regarding their approach to the evaluation of occupations. Generally speaking, those with “socially distinctive” customs had a more discriminant vision of occupations. They also perceived esteemed and intermediate occupations with more nuances than those with “popular” tastes. These differences in views of occupations according to habitus were, however, less than those seen between different educational programs : current educational experience plays an important role in the development of occupational representations. It is nevertheless possible to identify, within a given type of educational program, the viewpoints of certain minority populations. These specific views of occupational activities can be considered as a way of interpreting current educational experience in the light of a socially unusual personal trajectory. These findings are compatible with the following hypothesis : the conversion of a popular primary habitus to a more distinguished habitus (as resulting from the streaming of young people of modest social origins in esteemed programs) could take on different forms (hedonist, ascetic, etc.). Each of these forms would result in those high school students experiencing a degree of “social advancement” (linked in particular to the special features of their own school stream) to combine in a defined manner schemes based upon popular attitudes to occupations with others corresponding to a distinctive vision of those occupations. However, none of the differences found reflects any radically heterodox vision of occupations.