Infância e trabalho na Amazônia: o paradoxo do cotidiano

Abstract

The issues discussed about child labor are very recent among us, especially in the rural areas of Brazil, where the legislation on this subject is little accessed. The work of children on the one hand reveals itself from the point of view of learning, of transmission of knowledge, where in most cases parents have masters and children as apprentices. On the other hand, child labor is evidenced under outdated explanations of the aid context and is revealed in the most perverse forms of exploitation in capitalist society. It is quite expressive the segment of children inserted in the world of work, but there is a need for a greater effort to distinguish the forms of work in which they are inserted. In this sense, the present work makes a brief history of childhood and child labor, and analyze in situ the process of insertion and interaction of children in the relationships established between the work they perform within family farming and their way of life from of the aspects that permeate their daily lives. For this, a case study was carried out in the rural community of São Paulo da Valéria, located in the Municipality of Parintins in the State of Amazonas, in 2016, based on the theoretical approach of historical-dialectical Materialism. Data collection followed a general scheme based on: Bibliographic Research and Field Research. The techniques used for data collection in field research were: 1) Interview, 2) Conversation wheels, 3) Field diary and 4) Direct observation. The study revealed the different work situations in which children are inserted, and that both positive forms of child labor and the poorly recommended forms are part of the reality of children. Thus, there is the paradox of daily life, because while they are involved in works whose purpose of parents is to teach their children, they are also inserted in works where their innocence, delicacy and the very image of their body are transformed into goods through tourism in this community. We identify different work situations that are part of the daily life of children, as well as, we find in one of them their vulnerability and exposure to issues and environments that are far from being part of the childhood universe.