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While the professionalization of council flats caretakers chiefly aims at erasing the demeaning image of the Parisian concierge of yesterday, these are still confronted with this past that is so closely linked to their profession. Starting from Goffmann’s work on stigmatization (that points out the strategies developed by caretakers to react against the discredit that threatens them) the article describes the answers, both discursive and practical, they have found to escape the clichés that liken them to concierges. Working from interviews and participant observations the author tries to account for the multiple concrete forms of this distanciation from a past heavy to bear.