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This paper underlines selection processes in the Belgian educational school system. It analyses the schools’ reactions to the recent modification of the enrolment policy that diminishes the freedom that schools have historically benefitted from to regulate their population. The paper shows that the management variations between schools have to be understood with regard to the local interdependencies between them. These local interdependencies constitute hierarchies that form a frame for individual actions in school which contribute to reproduce the hierarchical structure. Doing so, it insists on the necessity to understand the quasi-market and the competition between schools by taking in account the local social and demographic context. School managing practices are not only due to a mechanical cause-effect link with their position in the educational hierarchies. This paper shows that, when studying the actors’ perception in detail, the hierarchies constitute a frame for their actions at a more local level. In this sense, the weight of hierarchies and interdependencies is not automatically built on the spaces defined by flow of pupils between schools. Theses spaces are not a fixed frame for educational actions even within schools sharing a similar position in the hierarchies.

This paper investigates the links between the existence of a neighbourhood effect and school choice. The case study is Brussels. It offers the opportunity to analyse a segregated urban context with a school system organized as a quasi-market based on the freedom of school choice. Cross-classified multilevel analyses have been used on 36 427 students in 117 neighbourhoods and 131 schools from the Wallonia-Brussels Federation’s Student count. Our results challenge the idea of local embeddedness in deprived areas. This should be understood in the light of the structural characteristics of the school system (the importance of delays and of early orientations in alternative tracks) but also of the spatial patterns of the school offer in Brussels, which varies according to one’s geographical place in the school system.

This article analyses the upward social mobility wishes through higher education of youth with a migrant background in Brussels. Based on the literature about higher aspiration of migrant populations, the article demonstrates that the link between aspirations and migratory projects is non-systematic. This links is mediated by the educational experience – intended here as both the students’ position in the educational hierarchies and the subjective perceptions they have about their position. The article also shows the students’ tinkering strategies when they face contingencies in their transition to higher education.

The new health governance in France asks producers organizations to take part in decision-making regarding animal health. The hog farming sector in Corsica has recently organized itself through organizations aiming at economic integration. Yet the organizations do not represent the whole sector. The article sheds light on other forms of collective action regarding two animal health management features : territorially based discreet collective actions.