Going beyond cultural capital

Children of working-class immigrants in France appear to be particularly poorly suited for study in the classes préparatoires. These are after all the schools where France prepares its future elites for the entrance examination to the grandes écoles. One’s cultural capital plays a central role in these establishments, where students are often evaluated on ways of thinking, speaking, and writing first inculcated by their families, and subsequently confirmed by the French educational system. On first view, coming from a family that does not necessarily speak French at home and that has only recently arrived in France would seem an obvious and major disadvantage in a prépa. However, this account fails to take into consideration the role of certain French professors who work especially hard with students of immigrant origin to compensate for their lack of cultural capital, emphasizing rather their effort and potential to overcome hardship and succeed in French higher education. This article explores these relationships between professors and students through an ethnographic study of a prépa located in suburban Paris

Art · Capital (architecture) · Cultural capital · Disadvantage · Ethnography · Ethnology · Humanities · Immigration · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Anthropology · Education and experiences of immigrants and refugees · Education, sociology, and vocational training · History · Law · Multilingual Education and Policy

• Trajectories of Immigrants' Children in Secondary Education in France

  Open Access•Yaël Brinbaum, Annick Kieffer•Population (English Edition•2009

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