Using a comprehensive approach based on the analysis of life histories, the next two chapters continue our reflections on how an event can impact the individual and collective paths of participants. Having used statistical methods to show what consequences the event produced, we must now seek to understand how it was able to alter the trajectories of protagonists and how they reacted to these biographical changes and the ensuing identity negotiations. Asking how means analysing the mechanisms for setting aside, transferring, converting and importing dispositions for protest, in various spheres of the participants’ lives. Asking how means also asking about the political context, the objective constraints (social reintegration, responsibility for children etc.) and the subjective constraints (particularly being faithful to oneself) – that shaped the destinies of ‘68ers in different ways. Whereas the statistical approach in the previous chapter aimed to be exhaustive, here we focus on a limited number of cases to explore the destinies of ‘68ers working – both politically and professionally – to break down social reproduction. In so doing, this chapter questions the consequences of activism for social mobility and the consequences of social mobility for activism (Leclercq and Pagis, 2011). It explores the inversed trajectories of the workers who went to university and the établis who left university to work in factories. It also looks at how political interest in “the people” was converted into professional interests for the working classes, particularly in areas of social and community leadership. The study of these trajectories allows us to give the statistical observations of the previous chapter new temporal depth, taking into account the possible interactions between determinisms and encounters (particularly romantic). This will shed light on the much-neglected biographical consequences of breaking down social barriers.

Students in factories and workers in universities: inversed trajectories