Entre Sísifo e Fênix: trajetórias (im)possíveis a partir do (não)diálogo entre a assistência e a educação superior

Abstract

The educational trajectories of young people from lower classes are permeated by a dynamic and complex web of social vulnerabilities. Even though enrollment rates in recent years appear favorable, we still have a situation where only a small proportion of the country’s population has access to higher education. Affirmative policies allowed some segments of the population access, in which one of the objectives of student policies is to prevent social vulnerabilities from hindering the enjoyment of the right to education. Given this, the research took as its problem the following question: What are the implications of the experience of disasters, calamities and emergencies on the educational trajectories of young university students receiving Social Assistance in Manaus? As a General Objective, the research intended to: know how those Amazonian students supported by social assistance for experiencing of disasters, calamities and emergencies make sense of their educational trajectory, especially in higher education, and how much the assistance system acts in the mediation of demands of this audience. The specific objectives were to: collect data on the education of those users assisted by the Social Protection Service in Situations of Public Disasters, Calamities and Emergencies of the Municipal Secretariat for Social Assistance and Citizenship (SEMASC) in 2018 and 2019, with emphasis on young people who completed higher education; and to know the adversities and coping strategies of young people’s educational trajectories whose life stories were impacted by Disasters, Calamities and Emergencies, and identify spaces for their participation, as well as the elements that enabled, or prevented, them from staying at university. Methodologically, we chose an investigation with a multi-method qualitative approach. Documentary Research and Life Story Narrative Interviews were used as data collection techniques. The research participants are two young women in higher education in Manaus, both registered with the SEMASC Social Protection Service in Situations of Public Disasters, Calamities and Emergencies. The results show that there is little dialogue between assistance policies and educational policies, despite the conditionality between benefits in terms of assistance and basic education. In the context of High Complexity Services, dialogue is practically non-existent, and the practice of services is a factor that contributes to the invisibility of young people whose trajectories reveal the difficult struggles to achieve higher education. Some indicators point to the urgency of rethinking higher education policies, especially regarding young recipients’ completion of higher education courses. Psychology has great potential to contribute, from aspects related to the constitution of the subject; the inclusion/exclusion dialectic; non-recognition; invisibility and the sufferings imposed on young people who face difficulties to study at a higher level, even when supposedly supported by policies of democratization to access and completion. Student assistance is necessary in private educational institutions, especially because they receive students from the University Scholarship Program. It is concluded that it is necessary to broadly discuss the inequality in access to higher education, an issue that has not been overcome, and, with great urgency, to discuss the inequality in completion of higher education, imposing demeaning conditions on those who, in theory, would be supported by successful policies.