The central question of my research project revolves around the question of what social class means to the actual experience of career building and the course of the lives of academically educated men and women from a working-class origin. This fundamental question leads to the deduction of three sub-questions. I fi rst questioned the typical experiences of these individuals, especially focusing on their handling of the diversity of social contexts and their implications encountered in the course of their lives. The answers are given in section one of this chapter. Secondly, I considered the signifi cance of this diversity of contexts and implications for the construction of professional and personal identity. This will be handled in section two. Finally, I wanted to know how these men and women experienced themselves as agents of their own life course, in relation to the infl uence of social and cultural antecedents. This is the object of section three.