This case is a socio-historical analysis of the activism of French student leaders during 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. The case helps to understand how a social scientist can work on a historically based research field. More precisely, it explains how to handle two sociological questions with archival sources: political socialization and relations between political parties and peripheral organizations. To illustrate this approach, a case study is developed: the student leaders of the MNEF, a French student association, close to the French Socialist Party
