Des milieux sociaux au marché du travail : les questionnements sur la société française pendant quarante ans d’enquêtes «Formation et Qualification Professionnelle»

The French Surveys on Training and Vocational Qualifications (Formation et QualificationProfessionnelle) examine thoroughly the various stages in the course of the surveyed personwhose history they are retracing. They yield answers to a variety of questions about societyand economy. Having been repeated six times in forty years they supply data about theevolution over a relatively long period. During this time, however, the political considerationsthemselves have changed, as have the questions raised by research. This paper dealssuccessively with five main fields of investigation: social ascent, migratory paths, schooling,vocational training, job mobility. For each field we stress the outstanding evolution of thequestionnaire, and try to go further by highlighting the reasons and the context of thesechanges. By the end of this analysis three very different poles have appeared: upward mobilityand social background, planning of workforce resources and needs by qualification,and valorization of resources (human capital in particular) on the job market. From one poleto another the concerns differ in terms of the policies to evaluate, but variations also occur inthe theoretical frameworks, and even in the disciplines which are involved, as well as in themethods for using the data and, finally, in the definition of what can be considered scientificevidence.