Aux frontières du « petit » salariat public et de son encadrement : de nouveaux usages des concours ?

B-type public employment is about to go through a number of drastic social and legal transformations. On the one side, the « Nouvel espace statutaire » (NES) reform will very likely change the social structure of this group of intermediary public sector employees. On the other side, most candidates to the competitive examinations leading to such careers are postgraduates, even though these jobs actually require a graduate degree, which serves to weaken the hierarchy juridically based on degree levels in public employment socio-professional groups. What is the new social position of public sector employees? What kind of career do they build? The secondary exploitation of a series of statistical surveys (Insee?s FQP 1993 and 2003) does show a downgrading of their social status. And the study of an ethnographic survey explains the meeting between postgraduate students and these jobs. This configuration does not only result from the so-called concept of ?overeducation?, which consists in a depreciation of higher education diplomas. It is a junction between an unaccomplished academic socialization and what seems to be a ?frustrated? personal history of competitive examinations.