The Cité des Métiers is a pedagogical project which offers the students in an under- privileged middle school of Italian Switzerland a series of learning situations through which to discover their town with its different professional activities. By questioning both the adequate school format and the structure power relationships within the school, it sets up a focal point for a number of different social relationships. This focal point has been analysed using an ethnographic methodology over the course of ten years by one of the facilitators of the project, who has focused on thirty autobiographical narratives of related to other data and analysed using plural approaches. This initiative enables the emergence of empirically anchored concepts based on the responsible and individuated participation of students in the appropriation of knowledge and ion a triangular relationship between the social agents in the institution. By putting school and work environments in relation, these vectors open up a pathway, however fragile, towards an effectively universal, that is fair and equitable, Middle School, which could transform school into a central factor in the democratisation of society.