The chapter scrutinises the practice and rhetoric of mathematical modelling in primary and secondary mathematics classrooms from a sociological perspective. In classrooms, mathematical modelling tasks involve a variation of knowledge domains that can be analysed by employing the Bernsteinian notion of knowledge recontextualisation. By drawing on structurally different examples of modelling activities in mathematics classrooms, the chapter reconsiders the ways in which the recontextualisation principle connects to issues of access, control and success. The chapter also raises some issues that are related to the social emptiness of a curriculum with a focus on developing generic competencies through mathematical modelling. It is argued that descriptions of mathematical modelling without reference to the social community in which the modelling takes place, leave a vacant space that can be filled with different ideologies. This contributes to the mythologising of the educational effects of mathematical modelling.