What PE does to the socialization of allophone middle school students: Anatomy of two sociological portraits between dispositionalism and contextualism

This article analyzes how the dispositions (to be, act, and think) of two allophone and migrant students are activated/inhibited, adjusted, or reinforced in relation to intra-school contexts, such as PE, in a middle school in a priority education district. Based on an ethnographic study involving five months of on-site observations and eight biographical and/or semi-structured interviews, this study explores the sociological portraits of Andrei and Eva, who have recently arrived in France. Shaped by heterogeneous life experiences as well as singular family configurations and migratory projects, these two students are endowed with plural dispositions (social, gendered, scholastic, and sporting) that are unequally influenced by the subject and, more broadly, by school. At the PE level, peer groups, the enveloping support provided by teachers, the use of bodily demonstrations to underpin instructions, or the deployment of learning, evaluative, or competitive teaching situations all have multiple effects, both in terms of putting previously incorporated dispositions on standby/awakening them and in terms of adjusting or reinforcing them. The juvenile sociabilities that take shape in the interstices of the school and spread in PE, as well as the socializing experiences in other subjects, also deserve to be investigated in order to grasp the full complexity of their socialization in French schools.