Is ‘diversity’ a liability or an asset in elite labour markets? The case of graduates who have benefited from a French positive discrimination scheme

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the obstacles faced by graduates who benefited from a positive discrimination scheme at an elite French higher education institution. It adopts a Bourdieusian perspective enriched by research on the barriers encountered by socially mobile individuals from disadvantaged and stigmatised categories and studies the experiences of graduates who lack the economic, cultural, and social capital necessary to compete with traditional holders of elite positions and who, due to their ascribed characteristics and/or the positive discrimination label itself, are prone to self-eliminate from elite positions or be subjected to discriminatory practices. Using data collected through interviews with 42 beneficiaries of this scheme still in the early stages of their professional careers, the article shows that the graduates’ disadvantages and ways of coping with them, as well their chances of being stigmatised and reactions to this process, vary considerably. This variation can be explained by different family backgrounds and ethnoracial characteristics but also by axiological positions towards employability and social mobility, with ‘purists’ more likely to invest in increasing their technical cultural capital to make up for ‘handicaps’ and ‘players’ more likely to put forward ‘soft skills’ including, in some cases, those associated with their ‘diversity’.

KEYWORDS:

• Employability
• non-traditional graduates
• diversity
• positive discrimination
• categorical inequality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Conférence des Grandes écoles, L’Insertion des diplômés des Grandes écoles, June 2021. Ministère de l’Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche, Note Flash du SIES n°29, December 2021.

2. Grandes écoles were initially designed by the state as ‘special schools’ training military and civil engineers to increase the state’s capacity to rule and intervene in different aspects of social life. Management schools later copied this model conceived as the polar opposite to that of universities, which are routinely criticised for being overly oriented towards scholarly pursuits despite increasing efforts to improve students’ preparation for the job market, for instance through professional bachelor’s degrees.

3. Until 2018 Sciences Po did not deliver undergraduate degrees, only Masters. Its curriculum comprises a common 3-year undergraduate programme (with the third year spent abroad) followed by a specialised 2-year graduate programme.

4. The CEP procedure underwent significant change when it was integrated into a revised general admissions system in 2021. Although CEP students are now evaluated according to the four criteria used for all students (1- baccalauréat marks; 2- marks in school reports and school career; 3- three pieces of written work: a personal statement, a presentation of extracurricular activities, and a short essay; 4- an interview), their applications are still examined and ranked separately.

5. V. Tiberj. 2011. Sciences Po. Dix Ans Après les Conventions d’Education Prioritaire.

6. The mean number of years after graduation among individuals in the sample was four and a half years.

7. ‘Lower-class’ graduates come from families where both parents are manual workers or employees or where one parent belongs to these categories and the other is unemployed or doing unpaid work at home; ‘lower-middle-class’ graduates have parents who are self-employed or have intermediate professions or come from families where one parent is in this situation and the other is either unemployed or doing unpaid work, or belongs to the lower class; middle-class graduates have either both parents in managerial or professional occupations or one parent who is in this situation and the other unemployed, doing unpaid work or in a lower-middle-class or, much more exceptionally, lower-class occupation. Following the Ministry of Education classification, I also consider ‘middle-class’ those students who have one or two parents working as a teacher.

8. The most popular choices of master’s specialities were Finance and Strategy (8 graduates), Urban and Territorial Strategies (5), Economic Law (3), Economics and Public Policy (3), Communication (3), and Public Affairs (3).

9. (Garfinkel 1956) defined ‘degradation ceremonies’ as ‘any communicative work between persons, whereby the public identity of an actor is transformed into something looked on as lower in the local scheme of social types’ (420).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Agnès van Zanten

Agnès van Zanten is a Senior research professor working for the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) at the Centre for Research on Social inequalities at Sciences Po, Paris. She is interested in class-based educational inequalities, educational markets and policies, elite education and transition to higher education. Her most recent research includes a study on the qualitative effects of widening participation schemes on students’ experiences and trajectories.