Students and the graduates of the University of Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) have seen their status upset last twenty years. Although the link between studies, jobs in the administration, and, consumption remains present in their representations and those of their families, their aspirations are increasingly challenged by the situations of unemployment of graduates. This context provokes some reconfigurations of meaning, which involves the construction of the diploma as a "visa". This article will highlight the breaking point in the family transmission linked to the schooling and the progressive development by the students of the diploma as a key to social and geographical mobility. So, the schooling stemming from the colonization will be considered as a preparation time for exile, whether in terms of identity or in terms of acquiring capital necessary to travel. In addition, it will also highlight the role of certain speech, such as those around selective immigration, in this construction of the myth of the "diploma as a visa".
