Para além da linha da pobreza: infância, educação e desigualdade social no Morro do Carapina – Governador Valadares - MG

Abstract

This research has the general objective of identify and analyze children's circulation and play in the public spaces of Morro do Carapina, in Governador Valadares - MG. The specific objectives are: (a) to characterize children's circulation in public spaces; (b) to identify and analyze games, play and interactions mobilized by children in the presence and circulation of public spaces; (c) to analyze children's experiences in the public spaces of Morro, considering the intersection of social markers of difference, such as gender, race, class and generation. The research dialogues with the fields of Childhood Studies, which recognize children as subjects of rights and cultural agents, and Anticolonial Studies, which, by questioning the power structures inherited from colonialism, offer tools to problematize the spatial and symbolic inequalities experienced by children. The methodology used consists of a qualitative approach, based on ethnography in movement, and the use of listening workshops, with combined techniques and instruments, such as drawings, photographs, storytelling and photo-elicitation. The study involved the indirect participation of 39 children and the systematic monitoring of 15 children, ten girls and five boys, aged between two and eleven years. The data generated and analyzed reveal that the children’s movement through the Morro is marked by challenges imposed by poverty and structural violence, but also by dynamics of belonging and the creation of playful spaces. Playing emerges as an act of resistance and reinvention of the city, in which children subvert exclusionary logics and build collective forms of existence. Inequalities permeate their experiences, but do not define them exclusively; on the contrary, their trajectories reveal strategies of survival, creativity, and negotiation with the world around them. The conclusions indicate that the children of Morro do Carapina, in their daily experiences, recreate possibilities for the future. By playing, circulating, and occupying public spaces, they challenge narratives of scarcity and marginalization, reaffirming their existence as an act of power and hope.