A constrained private world

Based on the case of working-class families with a child who has dropped out of school and is being supported by specific measures, this article examines how school shapes these families’ relationships to the institutions they have to deal with. It explores the impact these situations can have on the “private” dimensions of their family lives and the educational practices of the parents, as well as their representations. It also examines the way in which the proliferation of institutional interventions that often accompany the support of school dropouts can lead families to play on the different institutional logics at work and to draw resources from them.