Transitando entre percepções acerca das “juventudes”: construções que perpassam representações políticas e vivências

Abstract

In Brazil, youth gained visibility on the political agenda as a specific target group for explicit action only after the enactment of the Statute of the Child and Adolescent (ECA) in 1990. Until then, the design of public policies that promoted actions aimed at their demands and sought to understand their characteristics did not specify this audience, in a general assumption in the term “child and youth policies,” which were in fact aimed at children. After the ECA, and especially in the first decades of the 21st century, youth gained prominence on the political scene in their specificity. It is currently considered a priority group, having been incorporated nominally into the Brazilian Federal Constitution, in constant dialogue with the various demands presented by different social spheres. In this process, it is necessary to understand how this group is expressed in the political sphere, starting from the official approach of public policies aimed at youth, articulating this analysis with the perceptions that young people themselves have of themselves and the possibilities they recognize in their realities. OBJECTIVE: To understand how young people are represented in current Brazilian public policies and what perceptions young people themselves have of themselves and their realities. METHODOLOGY: The research was conducted in two phases: documentary analysis of official records of public policies that specify their actions for young people, seeking to reveal the different definitions of this group; and application of a semi-open questionnaire directed at young people, disseminated via a virtual network, seeking a diversity of responses about their perceptions of their reality. RESULTS: There is a discursive effort to recognize plural rights, but actions remain fragmented, focused, and poorly connected to the reality of young people. Many young people are unaware of or do not access existing programs, highlighting the gap between institutional proposals and lived experience. CONCLUSION: It is urgent to think of young people as subjects of rights in a universal and comprehensive manner. In this sense, strengthening collective spaces for social participation is crucial to guiding practices and policies that are more integrated, responsive, and consistent with the multiple experiences of young people.