Juventude, política e educação: a emergência do estudante precarizado no contexto da reforma do Ensino Superior, sua inserção no movimento estudantil e os conflitos no campo político universitário

Abstract

This work falls within the field of sociological studies that approaches the youth and political interface. The long history of youth participation through the student movement (ME) in the main Brazilian political events – which engendered changes and accreditation – placed the student movement as an important political actor. Throughout the decades the movement’s goal was linked to its condition of (middle) class which, generally, rotated around the struggle to ampliation of the quality and access to higher education in Brazil. However, since 2007, the implementation of governmental actions aiming to increase and democratization of the access to university enabled the access of the lower layers in higher education. Several student mobilizations and political movements have demonstrated a precariousness of student assistance that aims to guarantee the permanence of socioeconomic vulnerable students in higher education. Thus, we analyzed whether the change in university social base reflects a new moment of student mobilization – the ones that aim the survival / permanence of the student – and how the student becomes a political agent in the current scenario of expansion and retraction of Brazilian higher education. Our research uses the qualitative methodology from bibliographic survey; it also uses the observation and notes taken with the groups and collectives during our insertion in the research field (which were based on the ethnographic research); and also interview with the students. In addition, we analyzed quantitative data from MEC and INEP which express an expansion of higher education, as well as documents from UFPB about its student assistance. Our analysis is based on Thompson’s theoretical contributions – his concept of experience, Bourdieu’s concepts of political field, habitus, among other; Eder Sader’s notion of collective individual that develops practices of collective actions from the recognition of common interests. The indicators point to an expansion of the federal public university, such as the REUNI, the Law of Quotas, the PNAES, etc., as well as for the arrival of large amounts of the lower classes to higher education. Problems with the maintenance of student assistance public policy evidence situations of precariousness conditions of the student permanence in the university. We observed that the reciprocal acknowledgments have created groups that started to grow a common identity that permitted the construction of sociability bonds and their own political action practices. Thus, it is through the student movement that the movements of change in the university political field take place, with the incorporation of new actors, new demands and the affirmation of peculiar forms of collective action.