This conference aims at shedding light on the many ways in which mobility participates, alongside the deployment of a geographically organized offer, in the social and territorial structuration of the educational system and, more generally, of a society in which Paris competes with the “province”, big cities with medium-sized ones, and urban areas with rural ones. The purpose is therefore to question the specific logic that undermines, on the one hand, the way educational offer is deployed, and, on the other hand, the organization of individual and collective mobilities. We can also wonder how both are linked and whether they are complementary or competing.
To that end, the conference will cover, a priori, all teaching institutions – should it offer an elementary, secondary, higher or vocational teaching. It will consider public schooling as well as private institutions. We welcome papers dealing with mobilities on different scales within the French space (inside a city, as well as within the colonial Empire), as well as on movements of French students abroad. However, the arrival of foreign students to France – a form of mobility that constitues an extremely rich field of research – will not be included in our study, unless it sheds a direct light on our primary question.
Leading up to the present time, this conference wants to encourage a dialogue between history and social sciences that study mobilities, their motivation and their impact on our contemporary society. Geographers, sociologists, political scientists, and so on, are thus welcome to submit papers, alongside historians: through the hypothesis formulated and the originality of the empirical material collected, we are looking to enrich our collective reflection on former or recent transformations that have affected the French social and political model.
By focusing on the French situation, we wish to create favorable conditions for a real work of periodization, knowing that the phenomena studied are closely dependent on the specificities of a certain State, territory or population. Yet, presentations on other national spaces might find their place in the conference if they actively contribute to the formulation of hypothesis relevant to the French situation.
