Argonautas da liderança : práticas de intercâmbio em uma organização internacional de estudantes

Abstract

This research intends to identify new forms of cosmopolitanism through exchange practices performed by members of an international organization of students called AIESEC. This organization aims to development leadership of its members and thus establishes steps in the training process leaders to become an “agent of positive impact on society”. The ethnography of the steps imposed by the organization for the training of youth leaders and the analysis of a set of interviews with the aiesecer exchange students made possible to relations between the global discourse of cultural diversity of the organization and situations of “encounter with different cultures”, reported by exchange students in their travel experiences. I also propose to discuss the category youth in transit, examining the spatial and symbolic displacements through which middle-class youth, members of the organization, experience while passing through youthful to the adult life.