12 This article is based on the results of a survey on the use of the new French fiscal regime 13 for small scale business: the Auto-entrepreneur plan. The survey focuses on young 14 graduates entering the job market by enrolling in this plan. It investigates how they adapt 15 to their new situation, and finds that auto-entrepreneurs have ambivalent feelings that 16 expose the plan's ambiguities: does it support business creation (and entrepreneurship) or 17 just provide training in entrepreneurial labour? The analysis of the respondents' discourse 18 and the accommodations they make reveals the multiple uses and meanings of the Auto-19 entrepreneur plan as graduates create identities for themselves and for others in the process 20 of navigating a path through employment, activity, independence and professionalism. 21 Three ideal-typical patterns of the young graduates' social uses of the Auto-entrepreneur 22 plan are identified and discussed: the 'independent salaried worker', the 'entrepreneurial 23 unemployed worker' and the 'convert entrepreneur'. This categorisation sheds light on the 24 processes of what appears to be a conversion to entrepreneurial labour, prior to 25 entrepreneurship. Entering the workforce through the Auto-entrepreneur plan promotes a 26 learning and internalisation of new standards of working behaviour, those of 27 entrepreneurial labour (self-promotion, availability, self-learning, adaptation to market 28 constraints, autonomy and accountability) that result in accepting a high degree of 1 insecurity and loss of rights. Faced with this entrepreneurial mandate, each young 2 graduate reacts differently: rejection, adoption or conversion. 3