Juventude pobre e trabalho: as experiências dos jovens que participam de programas de aprendizagem profissional na Região Metropolitana de Belo Horizonte

Abstract

The present research aims at acknowledging the way young people from popular backgrounds who take part of professional learning programs in the Metropolitan Area (MA) of Belo Horizonte (BH) and see themselves regarding these programs, as they think about their experiences and assess the present and the future contributions of these programs to their lives. To accomplish that, we have carried out theoretical discussions which took into account the building of poor youth as a field of social intervention, the dilemmas experienced by the present society towards work, and the history of public politics for work and employment directed to poor youth in Brazil. We point out here how the generational and the social class hierarchies have made the young people a target of several actions which aim at integrating them and adapting them to a particular model of society. We demonstrate how, historically, the youth public politics for work and employment are involved in the ambiguity social right vs. salvation of poor young people, and we question how young people see these politics nowadays. The research was carried out through participative observation and discussion groups, one group with the representatives of institutions which develop learning programs in the MA of BH, and another group with the young people who take part of these programs. The analyses point out how the generational and the social class hierarchies build places of subordination of these young people, how the right to work is regard as work of privation of the young person inside the programs, and which contributions the programs have to the lives of the young people under a present/future perspective, according to our context of social inequality (CNPq)