Refuser de travailler pour les entreprises polluantes. La conscience écologique des étudiant·es de l’élite scolaire face à leurs valeurs du travail

In March 2018, a group of elite school students launched a petition to select employers based on their environmental responsibility. The Student Manifesto for an Ecological Awakening gathered more than 30,000 signatories from the most selective schools in higher education and, to a lesser extent, from less prestigious schools. This initiative proposed to evaluate the environmental responsibility of large corporate groups and to provide signatories with information to guide their career choices. Beyond the success of the petition, in this article we analyze the difficulties confronted when refusing to work for polluting employers. We show that the proposal to select companies according to environmental criteria is challenged by work expectations that are antagonistic to an ethical choice of employment, particularly for students in business schools. Furthermore, we show that signatories who are most involved in ecological issues turn away from employment in large groups in favour of non-profit sectors.