Lights and shadows in the relationships between schooling and work. Configurations and limits

The article recovers the history of the construction of a theoretical corpus that has tried to integrate a large number of explanatory elements about the relationship between schooling and work. The proposal is to analyze the value of three intermediate categories: a matrix of the heterogeneous nature of labor sectors in Mexico, the socio-educational projects for the creation of schools educating the labor force, and the curriculum institutional structures that mark the boundaries for an effective education. The text is developed through the description of four long standing research projects -and some other punctual research projects-, that have focused on populations with different levels of schooling in different labor sectors, temporalities and geographical zones in Mexico.