Purpose: Although it has claimed to be “indifferent to differences” (Bourdieu 1966) in order to protect the equality of opportunities for all pupils, the French education system is academically (and socially) unequal and faintly cohesive (Dubet, Duru-Bellat, et Vérétout 2010). It seeks as a priority the transmission of knowledge rather than the expression of pupils’ subjectivities and the construction of relationships of proximity between adults and youngsters. However, in the context of a decline of the values of universalism and rationality that used to structure the upper secondary school system, and of a growing requirement to personalise public services and counter early school leaving, upper secondary schools are increasingly asked to take into account pupils as “whole persons”. Treating pupils as individuals implies to consider their personal history, identity and subjectivity, beyond the social role of pupil which is strictly academic. But how do upper secondary school professionals manage to treat pupils as individuals? Who are the pupils looked at as such and why? To what extent does it contribute to reshape the institution? In this presentation, I propose a reflection on a particular category of pupils called “pupils with background” by some upper secondary school professionals. “Background” is a euphemised way to refer to difficult lived experiences (social, familial, biographical and academic) that professionals interpret as impediments for academic success and/or as explanations for anti-academic behaviours. This presentation aims to analyse both the construction of the category and the treatment of the labelled pupils in a French upper secondary school. I will discuss the ways in which the treatment of those labelled pupils involves an emotional labour that seeks to shift pupils’ relationship to the education system. Design/methodology/approach; This presentation is grounded on part of the data collected in my PhD research in political science. The presentation draws on a five months discontinue observation in a French upper secondary school (mainly shadowing the school life staff, (Wolcott 2003)) and narrative interviews with the staff (teachers, administration staff, school life staff, cleaning staff. N=35). Findings; Generally engaged in academic failure trajectories (within dominated academic streams), those pupils challenge a system that kept excluding and humiliating them. In reaction to that, professionals either keep excluding them, or intend to understand them better (investing their personal “background”) and to build a positive relationship with them. By doing so, they tend to temporarily reduce the symbolic violence of the school system (Bourdieu et Passeron 1970) upon those particular pupils. Nevertheless, I will show how this specific labour on pupils’ emotions seeks to contribute to conforming them to a more conventional pupil role (lowering anti-academic behaviours for instance), that is, to more “reasonable” (socially acceptable) behaviours. Besides, this labour must be scrutinised through the prism of organisational behaviours: caring for “pupils with background” can be seen as a way for professionals to prevent a negative impact on the “school climate”. Generating a positive school climate can form a useful advantage in the context of local competition between schools to recruit pupils.