"Meu conto é de faltas": juventudes, (des)proteção social e acolhimento institucional

Abstract

This dissertation seeks to understand how the materialization of social protection for youths (between 18 and 29 years old) in the city of Porto Alegre/RS has been manifested in the years 2018 and 2019, regarding violations of rights and experienced resistances, in order to contribute to the qualification of specific social policies aimed at this social segment. This essay aims to highlight the different violations of social rights experienced by youths seeking institutional care; the social processes of resistance experienced in their life trajectories; as well as to understand how social protection has been developed in the municipality. This is a qualitative research, based on the dialectical-critical method, through documentary analysis of laws and norms that incorporate youths in relation to social protection articulated to institutional care. The choice of documents occurred in accordance with the empirical research sample. This stage included semi-structured open interviews with two young people in institutional care and four professionals from the FASC, the Republic and a shelter home. These elements constitute the research corpus, organized through the discursive textual analysis technique in Moraes (2003), respecting its categorization process. The research presents as some of its results the absence of a specific and public institutional care policy for the youth segment, as well as a weakening of the social protection for this segment due to the lack of policies that account for their singularities, as this social segment is incorporated into broader policies for people aged 18 to 59 years. The young respondents entered the shelter homes due to the breakdown of family ties. Their main demands are: food, housing, transportation and insertion in work relationships to make their livelihoods viable. With regards to the interviewed professionals, it is observed that they experience the intensity of precarious work, also as a result of the lack of typification of the functioning of the institutional care models involved in the research. Besides that, it is also noted that both the Republic and the shelter home each have a single professional in their technical teams. We identify the lack of continued education, which has repercussions on specialized care for the youth segment. In this sense, the research presents itself as a reflective space, influencing the perception of some professionals about the fact that youths present specific demands that are not being met and incorporated by the network. The resultspoint the need for specific youth-oriented policies from the perspective of intersectoriality. We also conclude that there is an urgent need for technical standards on the operation of home shelters and republics. The establishment of continued education processes for the teams that already serve the youth by using policies aimed at the adult population is advised. Furthermore, we indicate the need of the work of universities in order to contribute to the formation of professionals who know and act in the planning and materialization of the rights of this social segment.