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

Agnès van Zanten, Senior Researcher CNRS, Sciences Po - CRIS

Journal of Education and Work
Volume 36, 2023 - Issue 1: Positionality and social inequality in graduate careers

Available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/13639080.2022.2162016

This article analyses the obstacles faced by graduates who benefited from an ambitious positive discrimination scheme called conventions éducation prioritaire (acronym CEP) which was launched by Sciences Po in 2001 and which had involved 2,262 young people by 2020. The scheme (which operated from 2001–2020) represented a radical departure from the main admissions procedure at the time, which was based on a competitive written exam including several essays on traditional academic subjects.

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’.