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The emergence of social desegregation in schools is concomitant with other changes in the educational sphere : The emergence of free school choice, increased competitive logic and devolution of responsibility to local actors. The article shows that under the guise of promoting the attendance of working class students in the most sought-after institutions, the credo of social desegregration (“la mixité sociale”) in schools contributes to reproducing the pattern of academic meritocracy. The return of the responsibility for social diversity to local actors, if it results in modest institutional achievements, reinforces normalizing frameworks imposed on lower socioeconomic status classes. Therefore, the credo of desegregation and diversity (la mixié sociale) in school does not question the structural inequalities outside the school and the educational strategies that separate and consolidate the middle and upper classes.