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Introduced in 2015 and tested until the end of 2018, France’s voluntary military service scheme (SMV) was made permanent in January 2019. This intensive support and training program, administered by the army, targets young people who who have not succeeded in education or employment. In 2019, more than 1,000 young volunteers were accepted at one of the six SMV centers. A comparison of three successive cohorts of volunteers recruited between 2017 and 2019 shows remarkable consistency in the characteristics of the young people, reflecting self-selection by candidates who are looking for training and a solution to their mobility problem and who are not put off by the military character of the program.