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Taking as a reference a study of doctors, nurses and teachers working in French prisons, this article suggests lines of convergence between symbolic interactionism and methodological individualism paradigms. The study draws attention on the importance of the actors’autonomy, the diversity of actors’normative models and ways of thinking their position in prison, the importance of the billspoting effects and presentations of self in using of professional denominations. These results shed new light on the analysis of occupational groups, and moreover on traditional frontiers and oppositions between symbolic interactionism and methodological individualism.