Identidades juvenis e pobreza: o que os jovens matriculados em uma escola situada em território periférico elaboram sobre si?

Abstract

This research is developed within the Postgraduate Professional Master's Program in Education at the Federal University of Espírito Santo and is linked to the Teaching and Management of Educational Processes research line. As a main objective, it proposes to understand how students enrolled in the 9th grade of a private, non-profit Catholic school in Region V, a peripheral and marginalized territory, located in the greater Terra Vermelha/Vila Velha/ES, understand their own social condition, experienced in impoverished contexts, and how they produce their identities. The investigation involves young people between 12 and 14 years old, enrolled in this stage of schooling and marked by poverty, for the most part. The research is based on theoretical references from the fields of youth, poverty and social inequality that make it possible to critically problematize young people's perception of their own situation of vulnerability and poverty. Arroyo's studies (2014) argue that students who live in impoverished contexts carry with them their experiences marked by inequalities, violations of rights and the realities experienced in peripheral territories. All these marks of inequality and deprivation of rights influence the construction of youth, distancing young people from a social identity that can represent them as subjects of rights. Yazbek (2017) points out that the phenomenon of poverty is a direct expression of the relations in force in a capitalist society, extremely unequal, in which accumulation and misery coexist. These relationships that reproduce inequality in social, political, cultural and economic aspects tend to establish a defined place for the poor in society and blame them for their own social condition, making it appear that the situation of poverty cannot be overcome. The research, of a qualitative nature, seeks to understand the way in which young people relate to each other in their everyday world (Bauer; Gaskell, 2008) and its methodology is action research, understanding that it is conceived and carried out in close association with an action or with the resolution of a collective problem and in which researchers and participants representing the situation or problem are involved in a cooperative or participatory way. Thus, it seeks a dialogue with the participants, intervening in reality and building knowledge that can help them recognize their own youth identity. The meetings result in the production of a e-book that contains records of moments of dialogue and interaction with the subjects involved in this process. Data is recorded through questionnaires, videos, audios and conversation circles. It is expected, by carrying out this research, that the students involved occupy the social condition of subjects of rights, as a possibility of recognizing their own identity and in search of the totality of being human.