After completing his high school education, he worked as a welder at the Norton abrasive paper manufacturing factory, in La Courneuve.

During his time out of employment, Nikonoff studied educational sciences in the University of Vincennes in Saint-Denis, after passing the special exam for non-bachelor's degree holders.

At the same time, he undertook formateur studies at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers[n 1] and started working in the Aulnay-sous-Bois mayoral program for young people's social integration in the banlieues.

"[7] As Marxist economist Costas Lapavitsas, supporting Grexit during his country's government-debt crisis, argued that without an exit from the Eurozone Greece cannot aspire to an economic recovery or the elimination of its debt burden,[8] Nikonoff proclaimed that France too should exit the Eurozone since the common currency has "demonstrably" failed as a "shield" against speculation and as the proclaimed "almost miraculous means" of overcoming inflation, unemployment, recession, and so on.

[9] Marxist economist Michel Husson, professor of Economics at the University of Greenwich, denounced both the notion of Grexit as a cure-all for the Greek crisis, and, more importantly, the view that, in general, "leaving the Euro could in itself improve the relationship of forces in favor of the workers,"[10] characterizing it as "a fundamental error of analysis.