Introduction

The construction of school-success trajectories in working class milieus is currently an important object of study in national and international scientific literature. Considering school failure as that which, in statistical terms, most often characterizes schooling in working classes, such studies ultimately seek explanations to cases of atypical school success. Thus, several studies have specifically focused on researching the trajectories of students who, despite coming from these social milieus, have good academic performance and have had-many of them-access to the highest and most prestigious levels of the education system, thus conducting that which has been called a “sociology of improbable cases” (^{Draelants; Ballatore, 2014})¹.

In the international context, the subject has been highlighted as an object of study mainly in France. There, one of the first studies on the subject was that of ^{Zéroulou (1985}). The author compared two family groups of Algerian immigrants with similar socioeconomic characteristics, but distinct children’s school performance. Analyzing the social position occupied and the migration conditions of the families, Zéroulou states that, for those whose children ascended to university, their academic success was a matter of honor and had been obtained through intense family mobilization. Another French study on the subject was carried out by ^{Terrail in 1990}. The author researched the school trajectories of 23 intellectuals, of both sexes, who were “class defectors,” that is, children of workers who had attended higher education in France (Terrail, 1990). ^{Laurens also researched the subject in 1992}. The researcher studied school trajectories of children of workers who had studied engineering. Based on statistical data, he concluded that their chance of obtaining an Engineering degree was of the order of one in 500 (Laurens, 1992). The research conducted by ^{Lahire in 1995} can also be noted here. The author examines the relations between the school positions of 26 students in the second grade of the corresponding elementary school in France, from working-class strata, and their family configurations. Although Lahire addresses the schooling processes of children rather than university students, as in previously mentioned studies, he specifically focuses on the reasons for the statistical improbabilities that constitute, among other forms, “brilliant school successes” (Lahire, 1997²).

More contemporaneously, this subject of atypical school trajectories continues to be studied in France, as demonstrated, for example, by the studies of Panabière (2010), ^{Romainville and Michaut (2012}) and Daverne and Dutercq (2013).

In Brazil, this type of research was initiated in the 1990s with the contribution of studies by ^{Zéroulou (1985}), ^{Terrail (1990}), ^{Laurens (1992}), ^{Lahire (1997}) and others. According to ^{Nogueira (2014}), the first Brazilian study on the subject was ^{Portes (1993}), which interviewed 37 students from working classes, of both sexes, aged 19 to 43 years, attending different programs at a Brazilian public university. The second study on the subject reported in Brazil was ^{Viana (1998}) (Nogueira, 2014). The researcher interviewed seven students (men and women) who had in common the fact that they had entered higher education and came from families with economic difficulties and were children of parents with a low level of education, currently (or previously) being predominantly blue-collar workers. In the 2000s, school trajectories of students from working-class milieus who had accessed higher education continued to be the object of research, as demonstrated, for example, by the studies of Portes (2001), ^{Barbosa (2004}), ^{Lacerda (2006}), and ^{Piotto (2007}). More recently, the subject continues to be addressed, as shown by the studies of ^{Tarábola (2010}; 2016), Piotto and Alves (2023), and ^{Almeida (2020}), to name just a few and only for illustration.

Generally, both the pioneering and subsequent studies have shown how these trajectories are, at the same time, individual and social, resulting from a collective process based on a support network, whose factors vary in nature, importance and relevance in each singular story.

In 2009, with her doctoral thesis on the admission of children of rubber tappers to the Federal University of Acre, Souza, M. conducted state-of-the-art research on the subject³. The author analyzed pioneering studies by ^{Portes (1993}, 2001), ^{Viana (1998}) and Souza and Silva (1999) and later studies by ^{Barbosa (2004}), ^{Lacerda (2006}), ^{Almeida (2006}) and ^{Piotto (2007}), corresponding to the available research on the subject in Brazil as of 2008⁴. She noted four elements constituting the school-success trajectories found in them. The first element, called “the family as a fundamental sphere in the construction of improbable school trajectories,” addresses the presence of the family in the analyzed trajectories. According to Souza, M. (2009), the family was considered, in some of the studies, as a sine qua non of school longevity in working-class milieus. The second element noted by the author is “the mobilization of the individuals themselves in the constitution of atypical school trajectories.” In most of the works analyzed by Souza, M. (2009), students appeared with an active and central role in their school longevity trajectories. The third element constituting atypical school trajectories was “the role of other reference social groups.” According to the researcher, the studies (with the exception of one), with greater or lesser emphasis, indicated that contacts with social life spheres beyond the family (such as school and work) were important mediatiors for the prolonged school trajectories under analysis. Finally, the fourth and last element noted by Souza, M. was “the meanings that parents and children associate with schooling.” In all the works analyzed by the author, the meanings that the subjects associated with long schooling were important factors of mobilization or constitution of strategies for school longevity trajectories.

In addition, according to ^{Souza, M. (2009}), the meanings that the works associated with the extension of schooling in working-class milieus were varied. However, according to her literature review of the studies on the subject available at the time of her doctoral research, they could - roughly, as she notes, and in general - be divided between the emphasis on understanding long-lasting schooling in these social strata as conformism and cultural rupture or as providing new possibilities (Souza, M., 2009).

We also indicate some of these same issues when analyzing part of the works cited (^{Piotto, 2008}). We discussed the contributions and some of the existing challenges in relation to research on the access and permanence of students from working classes in higher education. The review of the works of ^{Viana (1998}), ^{Portes (2000}), Souza and Silva (1999) and ^{Barbosa (2004}), combined with the analysis of an atypical school-success trajectory, enabled indicating the need to also address other meanings besides suffering, for the access and permanence of poor students in higher education (Piotto, 2008).

In fact, we note an aspect found in several studies on the subject. Both studies in Brazil and French studies on which they are based tend, roughly speaking, to understand the subject of school success in working-class milieus from a perspective predominantly focused on or emphasizing the cultural shock or rupture arising from differences between school and family worlds and the suffering arising from such differences, disregarding the analysis of other meanings often also present in these trajectories.

Based on this context, the objective of the article is to discuss how the relations between family and school - or between the worlds of origin and destination - have been understood by studies on school success in working-class milieus. To this end, we will analyze contributions from contemporary international studies on the subject, in addition to the results of our research.

Rupture or conformism?

An example of an understanding of school success in working-class milieus predominantly focused on cultural shock or rupture can be found in one of the pioneering studies on the subject in Brazil. The biographies examined by ^{Viana (1998}) in her doctoral research indicate psychological difficulties that would arise from cultural and social distancing from the family world as longer school paths are followed. According to the author, suffering can be experienced both in the contexts of school life and family relationships⁵.

However, in the study of ^{Viana (1998}) we found some different meanings that, although not present in the conclusions presented by the researcher, we believe offer another possibility of understanding on the subject in question. Of the seven biographies analyzed, in at least four the author states that the cultural emancipation provided by university admission is not experienced by students as a rupture with the family group. An example of that is the story of Helena - a medical student at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) -, whose father had worked as a butcher and had only the 3rd grade level of education, and her mother, a housewife, had completed elementary education. According to Viana (1998), this student authorizes herself to distance herself from her parents without feeling transgression for recognizing the legitimacy of their history, always having her origin as an important point of support. A similar case is that of Luís - a philosophy student at the São João Del-Rei Higher Education Foundation -, the son of a semi-literate father, a manual worker, and whose mother had worked as a maid and washerwoman. According to the researcher, this student had as a source of subjective energies for his school trajectory the understanding of the specificity of the school universe and its difference in relation to the family. Viana (1998) states that she had not realized, at any time during her contact with Luís, that learning and culturally emancipating himself from his family could have meant transgression to him. Olga - a master’s degree student in education at UFMG, who had lost her father (mechanic) at the age of seven, and whose mother had worked as a school servant and completed the first grade through a supplementary course - is another example of cultural emancipation not experienced with suffering. The mother, whose dream was to see her daughters graduated as teachers, symbolically “consented” that they go as far as possible in their education. Thus, Olga authorized herself to make the most of the opportunities offered by the university without experiencing this as a transgression, which can be illustrated by her account of the experience at UFMG, where, according to her, she “sailed through” (Viana, 1998). And the story of Catarina - pedagogue, majoring in Psychopedagogy at the State University of Minas Gerais (UEMG), eldest daughter of a family of eleven siblings, illiterate mother, housewife, and rural working father with incomplete elementary education - is another example of emancipation not experienced as a rupture. According to Viana (1998), Catarina’s struggle for schooling (she obtained literacy at Mobral [adult elementary education], completing the 4th grade at the age of 17 years) was facilitated by family intersubjective relationships, and her school process was not experienced as a transgression.

In this sense, we understand that, although in ^{Viana’s own precursor work (1998}) other meanings of the presence of students from working-class milieus in higher education can be found, the fact that this is not considered more central in the research conclusions seems to us to be related to the then prevailing understanding on the subject in a more general way. Thus, the author’s conclusions are fully consistent with the international works on which she was based, which were those existing at that time and which the researcher, together with other colleagues such as ^{Portes (2001}), contributed to disseminate in Brazilian territory.

Among these foreign researches, we can mention, for example, those of ^{Terrail (1990}) and ^{Lahire (1997}; 1998). The first emphasizes the discontinuity and disruption effects that access to higher education, representing another culture, would have for working-class students. School success could only be achieved through enormous loneliness and denial of origins (Terrail, 1990). Lahire (1998) also conducts a discussion in this same direction, using an expression that seems to us quite representative of this way of understanding school success in working-class milieus. Understanding that these cases would be constituted by two irreconcilable forms of relationship with the world, the author considers, however, that the juxtaposed coexistence of these two types of socialization (school and family) would be possible, producing “happy schizophrenics” (Lahire, 1998).

This way of understanding atypical school success cases, as well as the upward social mobility in which they often result, is still predominant not only in Brazil but also in France (^{Lima, 2020})⁶. As for French studies on social mobility, ^{Naudet (2007}; 2011) says that they tend, in large part, to understand it from the perspective of anomie, dissociation or rupture, emphasizing the psychological costs caused by the loss os roots. Represented mainly by qualitative works, this view raises issues such as division of the ego, class neurosis, cleavage of the self, similarly to the studies previously mentioned (Naudet, 2011). As examples of this form of understanding, the author also cites works such as those by ^{Bourdieu (1989}), ^{Lahire (2002}), ^{Aries and Seider (2005}), ^{Reay, Crozier and Clayton (2009}), among several others, and which would be, in his view, representatives of this aspect of anomie or rupture, by emphasizing the cleaved habitus, feelings of intimidation, discomfort, inadequacy, exclusion or the emotional costs of social mobility.

However, according to ^{Naudet (2007}), there is also a second aspect of research that seeks to explain cases of school and social success by understanding them from the perspective of “acculturation”⁷ or conformism. These studiesemphasize the benefits of mobility (such as prestige, intellectual and material development) and are predominantly quantitative⁸.

Accordingly, regarding the understanding of school success and social mobility experience, the greatest theoretical disagreement lies between those who emphasize its “anomic” or dissociative effects, such as suffering, the psychological costs caused by the loss of roots and the inability to adapt entirely to the new environment, and those who understand it as a complete change in attitude and behavior through an identification with the destination group, understood as “superconformism” or “acculturation” (^{Naudet, 2007}). Considering that, Naudet (2012) says that the project of a “sociology of social irregularities” (^{Mercklé, 2005}) remains open and that sociologists continue to actively seek means to deal with “school miracles.”

Aiming to contribute to this discussion, ^{Naudet (2011}) considers that it is possible to reconcile, at least in part, these two aspects of understanding. He states that despite the divergences between them, both converge in relation to one aspect: the existence of a tension between origin and destination milieus in cases of upward social mobility. And he argues that the hypotheses of anomie/rupture and “acculturation”/conformism differ in how, according to them, this tension would manifest in individuals. For the former, the tension would be insurmountable and would lead to a splitting of the ego or a feeling of anomie (due to the cognitive, social and affective dissonance or rupture in which the person in social mobility would find themself). As for the aspect of “acculturation” or conformism, the tension between the two social environments could be overcome, because, according to its advocates, success would be so valued in society that the feeling of guilt would be erased by the gains it affords and the interest in breaking with the origin environment would prevail over the attachment to it.

Agreeing with the existence of this tension, ^{Naudet (2014}) argues that what should be studied is how individuals in social ascension deal with it. Considering that an adaptation to the destination milieu is essential for social mobility to occur, in the sense that it is necessary to master the codes of conduct of the new socioeconomic and cultural environment, the author states that it is not a matter of discussing whether or not there was “acculturation,” but rather of understanding the means by which it occurred. In other words, he proposes that it is necessary to understand the modes of adjustments in cases of social mobility, modes that are still explored in a very limited way by the sociological literature according to Naudet (2012).

The adjustments between two worlds

Although less frequent and more recent, understanding the modes of adjustments in school success cases in working-class milieus is what some other French authors seem to be seeking to achieve. Carrying out a post-Bourdieusian sociology (^{Mezie; Guilherme; Medaets, 2021}), researchers such as ^{Beaud and Pasquali (2014}), Pasquali (2014) and ^{Truong (2015}) criticize studies on social mobility and argue that examining the situation of young people from working classes who had access to higher education also requires examining other spheres of social life. They understand cases of upward social mobility as “class migrants,” who cross class borders in the same way that migrants cross the borders of a country. They prefer this term to the concept of “class defector,” which brings with it the idea of escape, betrayal or rupture with the origin environment, strong enough to cause the “uprooting” in the subject (Mezie; Guilherme; Medaets, 2021)⁹.

Thus, the authors seek, in a way, to carry out an analysis that escapes, at the same time, the aspect of anomie/rupture and “acculturation”/conformism. They avoid reducing the experience of young people to the ills resulting from the power relations in which they are situated and which are unfavorable to them, without, however, avoiding the consideration of this important aspect of their lived experience. They seek to show how young people who have had atypical school success and are in the social mobility process move between their origin and destination milieus, without denying the former nor suffering insurmountable lacerations by being in the latter. Their works show that the crossings between the origin and destination milieus involve major difficulty, but also show the students’ satisfaction, for example, in discovering and appropriating knowledge previously reserved only for “heirs” (^{Mezie; Guilherme; Medaets, 2021}). When studying ongoing social mobility, ^{Beaud and Pasquali (2014}), Pasquali (2014) and Truong (2105) seem to show that the transit between different and unequal social environments is not constituted only and necessarily by ruptures and suffering.

As stated above, we have also indicated the need to consider other meaning, in addition to suffering, for understanding atypical school success cases, seeking to conduct an analysis that centrally considers the dimension of the process (^{Piotto, 2008}).

Accordingly, for example, we discussed how students from working-class milieus who entered highly-selective programs at the University of São Paulo (USP) dealt with the relations between their origin and destination social environments (^{Piotto, 2007}; Piotto; Nogueira, 2013).

The case of Marcos¹⁰ is an illustration of that. A psychology program student, 27 years old at the time of the research, white, he was the son of a retired watchman and a housewife, both with 4th grade elementary education. This student took five years to pass the entrance exam, during which time he combined work - as a waiter in a restaurant and pub - and study to cover the expenses of preparatory courses. According to Marcos, the contrast between the two worlds - his and the university’s - was quite evident at the first party for the freshmen: his feeling of not belonging to that place was so great that he wished he had a tray in his hands to know how to act.

The difference between the origin and destination social environments also marked the beginning of the coexistence of Karina, 27 years old, brown, student in the International Relations program. The daughter of a liner assembler who completed elementary education and a housewife who interrupted her education before the 8th grade, both from the state of Pernambuco, living in the eastern part of the city of São Paulo, she had worked for seven years as a receptionist in an ophthalmic clinic. Meeting and living with people for whom her most pressing needs - such as money for food, transportation, photocopies - did not exist was a “shock” for her. The student also speaks of “cultural shock” in the relationship with her colleagues, referring to “books,” “concerts,” “exhibitions,” and “trips” that were part of her colleagues’ lives and that, for her, were unknown.

In addition, in the account of the journey towards the university, the students interviewed also referred to the distancing from former friends and the decrease in affinities with them.

Pedro, 22 years old, white, Biology student, son of a bricklayer who attended up to the 4th grade and a housewife who completed a technical course late, attended private high school, through a scholarship, in a city neighboring his, with daily commutes and school supplies paid for by his uncle and aunt. In addition to the time limitation imposed by the new study routine, Pedro distanced himself from his old friends because they, after Elementary School, began to work (in the field or in commerce). And, although he said that he had a good relationship with his new colleagues, he had no contact with them outside school due to, among other difficulties, what he calls “awkwardness.” His loneliness was so great during this period that he claims that if he had not passed the entrance exam, he would no longer have any friends.

The strangeness and distance alluded to were understood as the effects of an uprooting process (Piotto, 2014). With ^{Weil (1996}), we understand rooting as a feeling of belonging, that is, of belonging or actively participating in a certain “place” or group, or even as a “feeling at home.” According to the author, rooting is one of the most important needs of human beings and refers to having a root for active and real participation in the existence of a collectivity.

However, we also saw that, gradually, students were appropriating this “other world” - the university - as their own world (^{Piotto, 2007}).

Being in the fourth and penultimate year of the psychology program, Marcos said that entering the university meant a complete transformation in his life - a “180º” turn - and enabled him to, in four years, “make up for” the five years during which he tried to enter a public university. It represented, for example, the possibility of recovering his knowledge, such as on philosophy and theater, devalued in the preparatory course and dismissed in his work as a waiter. All that which made no difference in these spaces was leveraged at the University and enabled Marcos to join a research group on the History of Psychology and participate in the campus theater group. His university experience also meant the “possibility of dreaming a lot of things” that were previously completely unfeasible or unimaginable, such as the possibility of attending graduate programs abroad through his three-year experience and two undergraduate research scholarships. And it also allowed him to make new friends, including those who, at one point, represented the opposition of that other world that shocked him at first, with Marcos becoming a great friend of a colleague who worried about internet access while he did not know what he was going to eat.

At the beginning of the International Relations program, Karina had doubts about whether she would be able to integrate into the class. Being in the fourth year, she claims not only to having become integrated, but that she learns from her colleagues, the reverse being equally true. She says that they respect her for being the oldest in the class, for her “history” and for having good academic performance. She says she is very fond of her class, with a very close relationship due to the small number of students, having two “very special friends.” Karina considers that attending a public university like USP is an “incredible opportunity” and that, based on the learning provided by it, she integrates herself into the world in a different manner. Her good adaptation to the university’s academic-scientific model, in addition to the help of her friends and her great capacity for study and discipline, was also supported by the experience of her boyfriend - an upperclassman in the History program and from the middle classes. For example, he informed Karina about the benefits and scholarships available at the university and provided her with guidelines about the university modus operandi, such as giving instructions on the formats of the papers and suggesting reading material, among other information¹¹.

Marcos and Karina’s stories are examples of academic trajectories of students from working-class milieus who entered highly selective programs at USP that we analyzed in previous works and that show that they made new friends and started to rely on the help of these new friends; who began to participate in university life; who completed the program satisfactorily; who conducted undergraduate research; and who (some of them) passed the graduate program entrance exam (^{Piotto, 2007}; Piotto; Nogueira, 2013).

Thus, if ^{Weil (1996}) says that rooting is a feeling of belonging, she also says that human beings need to have multiple roots, noting the importance of contacts or exchanges of influences between different milieus and the relation between that and rooting: “Rooting and the multiplication of contacts are complementary” (Weil, 1996, p. 419, our translation). One of the conditions for rooting is, therefore, the exchange of influences. Exchanging influences means changing oneself and, at the same time, asserting oneself. It also represents communication with the world and active and real participation in it. Participating, making that “other world” also your world. Our work showed that the interviewed students were able to achieve that. Their accounts enabled us to understand that, if on the one hand, their trajectories were marked by effort, loneliness and situations of uprooting, on the other hand, their entry into the public university provided possibilities that entirely transformed their life perspectives, and suffering was not the keynote of their accounts.

Thus, in our research, the difference between the school and family worlds was not itself a source of suffering for students from working classes who entered a highly prestigious Brazilian public university. On the contrary, a child’s entrance and permanence in a highly-selective university program were an opportunity for learning and development also for their families.

Pedro, for example, reports that his choice to study Biology had never been very well understood by his parents. Although it was a selective program, considering the high cutoff score and the high competition, they did not understand what the profession of biologist was, what they worked with, because they conceived as higher level careers only those more traditional such as Medicine, Law or Engineering. However, this student reports that, throughout his undergraduate program, his parents were able to get to know better what the Biology program was about. The difficulty for Pedro’s parents to understand his professional choice can be considered a consequence of the cultural distance that separates their daily lives from Higher Education. However, the son’s own university experience was able to help change this view, enabling a broadening of horizons, not only to Pedro, but also to his parents. Thus, the cultural distance, which is increased with the university experience, between parents and children did not seem to us to be experienced as suffering, but as an opportunity for growth for both (^{Piotto, 2007}; 2010).

Another example is the story of Antônio, 23 years old, a student of the Pharmacy program, the son of a retired foundryman who attended up to the 3rd grade and a seamstress who completed the 4th grade. For this young man, who worked as a teenager in an upholstery factory, in a broom factory, in a printing shop and attended a Child Guard course, his natural destiny would be work. After obtaining a full scholarship to attend a private school for having been approved first place in the ‘entrance exam,’ Antônio attended high school there. According to Antônio, entering the University also represented following a path different from that already socially determined. Attending the Pharmacy program at USP meant such a sudden transformation in relation to the social position occupied by his family that he recognizes that, even though he has already graduated and has just entered a graduate program, he is still surprised by the possibilities that are constantly presented to him and considers his entering the University as a “major turning point” in his life. However, in his history, entering a public university has meant, as he calls it, a change of mindset - not only for him, but for his entire family. Antônio’s experience has contributed to his family changing their mindset about schooling. As a pioneer in public higher education, both on the paternal and maternal sides, Antônio became a sort of example to be followed. His younger sister’s school trajectory is being facilitated by his experience, as their parents understand better and know more about access to university, and are encouraging her to continue studying, and to attend a preparatory course if necessary. A 16-year-old cousin will also take the entrance exam, which shows that his experience has also been a source of mindset change for the extended family and not only in his family core. The experiences of this and other students we analyzed allowed us to affirm that there are other meanings for the relationship between child/student and family, different from the suffering arising from cultural distancing (^{Piotto, 2007}; 2010).

Thus, consistently with the works of ^{Naudet (2007}; 2011), ^{Pasquali (2014}) and ^{Truong (2015}), our studies have also indicated different possibilities of understanding school success in working-class milieus other than, exclusively or necessarily, a cultural rupture with the social origins and the suffering arising from it.

To deepen this discussion, we have resorted to the contribution of some other authors, among which we note the French researcher Jean-Yves Rochex.

The works of this author (^{Rochex, 1995}; 2019) have helped us to understand why, in the case of research we have conducted, the relationship with the family is often not necessarily a source of suffering for students in situation of atypical school success.

The work of Jean-Yves Rochex

In order to understand the meaning of the school experience in working-class environments, ^{Rochex (1995}) interviewed ten adolescents who were children of immigrants living in France and who had three different types of school experiences: some with brilliant school success (statistically atypical); others with a problematic school situation from the point of view of learning, but without behavior problems; and a third group of adolescents who, although less indifferent to school learning, had behavior problems at school. For the present project, we are mainly interested in the first type of school experience.

Based on theoretical approaches from Sociology and Psychology, the author relates the cases of school success in working-class environments to certain meanings associated with schooling, as well as to certain types of relation between adolescents and their social origins, represented mainly by their families.

The meaning of the school experience can be basically defined by two dimensions: one objective and the other subjective (^{Rochex, 1995}). The first concerns the school. For the adolescent respondents who had a successful school trajectory, school activities and contents had value in themselves, in addition to being significant for their cognitive, intellectual, aesthetic and knowledge expansion values. According to them, the school was not conceived as a competitor or antagonistic to the family; the school universe was understood in its specificity, with a normativity that differentiated it from the family universe and was not reduced to the registration of interpersonal relationships. The subjective dimension, in turn, is related to the notion of triple authorization. According to Rochex (1995), the non-reproduction of family inheritance by children is possible based on three types of authorizations. One of them refers to the authorization that the student-child “gives” themself to “leave” the family, undertaking a movement of emancipation, without reproducing and even “going beyond” the family history. The other authorization concerns parents who authorize their child to emancipate themselves, to be another, to build a different story from theirs. And the third consists in a reciprocal authorization, through which there is a mutual recognition between parents and children that each other’s story is legitimate without being their own.

According to the author, the recognition of the legitimacy of the family history constitutes a strong point of support for the emancipatory movement of the student (^{Rochex, 1995}). The family condition, that is, the economic and cultural difficulties faced by parents, is not seen by children as a sign of incapacity or unworthiness, but contextualized within the socio-historical conditions that produced them. If the adolescents’ relation with their social origins, represented especially by their families, is an important source of school mobilization, the school also contributes to this relation. Symbolic emancipation, authorized within the family space, is structured and reinforced by the confrontation and the appropriation of significant school content.

Thus, ^{Rochex (1995}) understands that it is possible for poor students to have successful school experiences, without experiencing “insurmountable conflicts.” And, in this regard, the author disagrees with the understanding of ^{Lahire (1998}) that there would be a compartmentalized and peaceful coexistence between school (or secondary) socialization and family (or primary) socialization in cases of atypical school success that would produce “happy schizophrenics.” Rochex (2019) also diverges from Lahire’s hypothesis that this separate coexistence between two logics of socialization would explain the academic success of children from working classes, stating the opposite:

My own work has shown me the opposite, that success is linked to the possibility of bringing into one’s own family experience the practices, dispositions, values, patterns of action and characteristics of identification that were appropriate there, in one’s own school experience (...), in the anticipation and elaboration of oneself that it requires and makes possible, and that this success is linked, therefore, to the possibility of recognizing oneself, and seeing one’s own school experience recognized, not as a requirement for radical change or cleavage, but as an experience of “symbolic and social development.”. (^{Rochex, 2019}, p. 51, free translation).

Understanding the possibility that this type of development occurs through a combination of unity and differentiation, permanence and change, ^{Rochex (2019}) raises the need to investigate, in addition to different forms of socialization, also the way in which social groups such as the school and the family operate in the same individual simultaneously. In addition to the knowledge about “each of the universes of socialization,” the author argues that one should also understand the relationships, “discordant or consonant, conflicting or harmonious,” between them. According to Rochex (2019), it is necessary to study the social production of individuals and the sociogenesis of socially differentiated practices and dispositions, seeking to understand the “possibilities or impossibilities, the facilities or difficulties - objective and subjective” related to their circulation in different socializing universes (Rochex, 2019, p. 89). Such circulation is carried out, according to the author, “at the cost of a ‘work of the self’ and of trials that place them more or less in a position to overcome, without annulling them, the differences and disagreements, greater or lesser and more or less tempting, between their different forms of social life” (Rochex, 2019, p. 103, free translation). For this scientific undertaking, the author indicates the need for a greater and more productive dialogue between the areas of Sociology and Psychology.

Final Considerations

The studies that have focused on school-success trajectories in the working classes, and that focus on the suffering arising from the cultural rupture that this learning would generate, ultimately address difficulties related to school education in these social environments. This article discussed this understanding, supported by the works of ^{Beaud and Pasquali (2014}), ^{Naudet (2007}, 2011, 2012, 2014), Pasquali (2014), ^{Truong (2015}) and ^{Rochex (1995}; 2013; 2019), aiming to reflect on other possibilities of understanding as to successful school trajectories in working-class milieus.

As presented here, we have especially resorted to Rochex’s work to discuss why, in the case of some results of research we have conducted, the relationship with the family has not constituted a source of suffering for students in a situation of atypical school success. With the author and other researchers who have also been dedicated to discussing the subject contemporaneously, we understand that this may be due to the fact that there would be other possibilities of relationship between the school and family worlds, or between these forms of socialization, or even between the origin and destination worlds, other than exclusively or necessarily rupture or conformism. Researching the experience lived between different socializing contexts, such as school and family, in addition to their possible exchanges, as raised by Rochex (2019), seems to us fundamental for advancing the academic discussion on school success in working-class milieus.

In addition, the discussion by ^{Rochex (2019}) on school trajectories in working classes combines contributions from Sociology and Psychology and proposes means for a more effective and productive dialogue between these fields of knowledge. With the author, we understand that, based on a certain psychological theory (historical-cultural psychology, whose main exponent is the Russian psychologist Lev. S. Vygotsky), it would be possible to consider the subject in the explanation for this phenomenon whose study is predominantly situated in the field of Sociology of Education, without, however, operating a reductionism in its understanding. This requires research centrally addressing these issues and the dialogue between Sociology and Psychology of Education. We have endeavored toward such end and dedicated ourselves to researching these possibilities.