| Summary: | The question of ethnic identity at school: an attempt at desconstructing the problem School pupils in difficulty are often described in term of “ethnicity”, particularly for those that reject school by strongly affirming their particular identity. These self affirmations in terms of ethnicity constitute a form of adolescent reaction to the feeling of being relegated, relegation which itself is expressed in ethnic terms. This article analyses this process of opposition through identity and places this phenomenon in the context of confrontation between different kinds of youth socialisation.Several “common sense” ideas about “ethnicity” are deconstructed. The ethnic perception of difficulties in school is not just a matter concerning young people with immigrant origins, but on a wider level, it involves pupils from all the underpriviledged social groups. It is not so much a specific problem as a consequence of a generalised difficulty in integrating knowledge. It is not only imported into the field of school work. On the contrary, the school institution participates in its emergence when it focalises attention on the question of ethnicity, particularly by giving value to the “origins” of the child and by not proposing to pupils any other categories to help them think through the distance that separates them from the learning culture of the school. The “identity” of pupils is not fixed by their “origins”, school contributes to its development. Ethnicised rejection of learning is not a fatality.
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