Ações afirmativas e serviço social : a política de cotas nas Universidades Federais do RS na percepção de assistentes sociais

Abstract

This thesis sought to answer the research problem: How has the conception of the quota policy been understood by social workers who operationalize student assistance at federal universities in RS? It was a research guided by the critical dialectical method based on historical materialism, based on the mixed approach of research. The field research covered the state of Rio Grande do Sul as its geographical delimitation, having as empirical locus the federal universities of RS. The production of empirical data took place from interviews with 34 social workers who work in student assistance at the respective HEIs. Documentary research prioritized legislation, especially laws, decrees and ordinances, over public policies of affirmative action in the area of education. The data analysis was based on the content analysis of the interviews, while the documental analysis of the legislation was carried out highlighting the main thematic nuclei in each legislation. In the end, it comes to the perception that social workers understand the quota policy as a modality of affirmative action, as a form of reparation for the historical debt, as a right, and as a form of access to public policies and also to universities for the purpose of students who belong to collectivities historically discriminated against. In this way, they contribute to social processes that aim at the democratization of Brazilian public higher education, while at the same time enhancing the professional perspectives of their graduates. Furthermore, the quota policy also means work processes in which social workers can be inserted. As conclusions, it is understood that although the constitutive contradictions of the quota policy — expressed in the maintenance of meritocracy, bureaucratization and in the limits as access to the university — it is configured, in the current conjuncture, as one of the public policies with the greatest impact on the historical elitization of public higher education in Brazil, due to its capillarity and temporal continuity. In this way, for the process of democratization of higher education to continue, expand and deepen, the quota policy needs to be defended and expanded, in addition to being articulated to the conformation of affirmative student assistance, affirmative university extension, as well as other elements of academic life, in order to be transversal. It is understood that affirmative action policies are part of and contribute to a societal project that, on its horizon, aims at human emancipation, as it contains the suppression of all forms of exploitation and oppression. Although contradictory and within the scope of political emancipation, affirmative actions carry possibilities for mediation and overcoming. Therefore, the struggle for human emancipation and social equality cannot, in any way, do without social struggles for social, ethnic, racial, gender, and disability equity. Therefore, to defend affirmative actions is to defend the values and principles of the ethical-political project that Social Work. Furthermore, insofar as they aim at equal opportunities through equity — taking into account the inexistence of equality of conditions and the insufficiency of formal equality — affirmative actions are policies that in the work processes in which social workers are inserted , can enhance professional actions in confronting the manifestations of the social issue, as they have emancipatory aspects, constitute spaces for the identification and recognition of resistance, contribute to the uncovering and reduction of inequalities, but mainly to the construction of new levels of sociability human being, especially in the Brazilian historical process.