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The article, based on participatory observations in a small rural firm, attempts to describe the transformations undergone by a group of local workers by taking a look at the “young workers ” in the factory. Recruited through a system of connections within a specific territory, they are incorporated into a workshop culture made up of personalised relationships, both among the workers themselves and with their superiors. In this way, a professional identity is transmitted, which reveals the group’s strength. At present, however, this transmission has lost its reflex of collective protest. The description of a face-to-face confrontation between two young people whose sense of identity stems from very different systems of reference shows that a worker order is perpetuated when the workers view themselves as belonging to a local group.