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Social declassification is usually studied quantitatively in sociology by measuring intergenerational downward social mobility as a reality or feeling experienced. The present article intends to consider intragenerational declassification, understood as unfavorable discrepancy between degree and job skills, using narratives of voluntary professional choices with decreasing income. The survey shows that this statically non-standard choice relies on a critique of the ideal of upward social mobility, a critique of implicit professional hierarchies that underpin this ideal, and a distance from dominant consumer standards, while maintaining practices to limit downgrading. The political impact of these declassifications is ambiguous: Claimed as individual choices, they question, through practices and values, the dominant ethos of the upper classes and could thus constitute a form of practical and non- discursive contestation of the economic order.