Le déclassement has become a hot topic in French sociology of late. Eric Maurin, in
La Peur du déclassement, contends that the phenomenon is largely psychological, a fear of what is in fact rather rare. Camille Peugny, the author of another book on the subject,
disagrees.
If I hesitate to translate the word in question, it's partly because I'm not sure there's an equivalent English term and partly because definitional issues are central to the disagreement. One might think of "downward mobility," but part of Peugny's riposte to Maurin is that the latter adopts too strict a definition. What appears to be a position of given status may now require more substantial credentials than it did a generation ago, for example. If a foreman now needs a
licence to hold a position that didn't even require a
bac before, then the educational credential has been devalued,
déclassé. Or has it? Perhaps the job carries with it a greater autonomy and responsibility than the job of the same name in the past. But has its relative remuneration risen or fallen? And so on. Clearly, the issues are numerous and difficult to resolve given the available evidence.
I'd be curious to hear your views on whether
déclassement is more real than imaginary. Readers interested in an American comparison might like to look at Caroline Hoxby's
recent paper on changing selectivity in American universities. Hoxby finds contradictory tendencies at work: the most selective colleges have become more selective than ever, but more than 50 percent of colleges at the lower end of the scale have become markedly less selective. Hence higher education has been both
déclassé and
reclassé depending on where in the spectrum a student lands.