1This issue of Formation Emploi encourages us to revisit certain categories and the boundaries between them in order to widen our horizons [1]and help us to think and act.

2Early school leaving has become a major issue for education policymakers in many countries. An article published in a previous issue called on policymakers to go beyond psycho-pedagogical confrontation (poorly performing pupils) and critiques of educational practice (the excluded child) in order to develop a multi-level, inter-sectoral policy [2]. Here, EL-Mahdi Khouaja and Stéphanie Moullet continue the analysis by means of a new typology of pupils that includes schools’ characteristics as factors in early school leaving.

3Educational or even professional success, like early school leaving, is far from being unambiguous. Thus for Sylvain Bourdon, María-Eugenia Longo and Johanne Charbonneau, more or less contradictory norms exist alongside each other. By identifying this plurality of norms, we can separate out several instances of success, in this instance the case of young people aged between 17 and 19 in general and vocational colleges in Quebec [3].

4This is all the more the case since the boundaries of the education system are far from being impervious. Certain factors in success, particularly in terms of labour market integration, might well be attributed to education, whereas increasing numbers of students are working at the same time and thereby acquiring skills they are able to exploit subsequently. This phenomenon seems to be growing, as in the example of the Catalan graduates analysed by José Navarro-Cendejas and Jordi Planas Coll.

5Another way of investigating the boundaries of the education system is to look into the activities of trainers and educators themselves. In this respect, as Iona Deic shows, the work of employment counsellors working with people in difficult circumstances goes beyond strictly educational or teaching concerns. It is becoming important to identify trainees’ ability to adapt to an environment and to maintain relations with trainers, a network of partners and potential employers.

6The boundary between work and free time (leisure, family) can be also be examined, as Christelle Marsault, Lilian Pichot and Julien Pierre do. For sports teachers, the intertwining of work time and free time can be as much of a constraint as a resource, depending on their professional identity, the construction of which depends on their personal motivations as well as on context.

7For their part, Hervé Charmettant, Jean-Yves Juban Nathalie Magne and Yvan Renou examine the organisational context in cooperative and participative companies under French law. Here, the priority is job security. This in turn gives rise to the particular forms of flexibility and employee participation that characterise so-called ‘secuflexibility’, which claims to be a sustainable alternative to flexicurity, which is very frequently presented as inescapable.

8Happy reading.