Institucionalização de crianças e adolescentes em Caxias do Sul : narrativas sobre as trajetórias de vida de egressos de medida de proteção (1990-2011)

Abstract

This research is inscribed into the area of education, more specifically into non-formal educative processes. It deals with life stories of children and teenagers who were sheltered by institutions, as a means of protection, and who are the object of research in this study. The empirical corpus of this text is constituted by administrative proceedings belonging to the State Public Prosecution Office-4th Department of Justice Specialized in Children and Young People of Caxias do Sul- in the period of 1990 to 2011, together with narratives produced in semi-structured interviews, involving four former institution sheltered young people of the municipality of Caxias do Sul. This corpus was built following the approach of discursive textual analysis, a methodology of data treatment coined by Roque Moraes (2011). Methodological routes passed through cultural history commandments, including oral history and documental analysis. The research had the aim of understanding causes and meanings that led children and young people to keep distance from their families, many of them without the support of a provisional measure, as the Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente (ECA) (Children’s Rights Statute) suggests. The analysis of the constructed material indicated that two of the sheltered boys, had a good experience when admitted in the institutions, as they apprehended experiences they consider to contribute, nowadays, in their family and social relationships; but two of the girls reported a great resentment because they did not have their feelings recognized and respected by people who worked in institutions. They also emphasized the bad effect of transfer from one institution to another one when they were twelve years old. The State Public Prosecution Office’s proceedings corroborated the data presented by National Justice Council, noting that there are more boys than girls who are sheltered in institutions. This organ also pointed at the Conselho Tutelar’s (Guardianship Council) lack of knowledge and preparation at the time of taking a child/teenager out of his/her family. As a complementation, it was made an analysis of permanence and nonpermanence of laws in the history of childhood in Brazil, using Norbert Elias (1993, 1994, 2011) theoretical contribution. To make this study effective, a dialogue involving authors who treat the analyzed topics, such as Claudia Fonseca (2000, 2006, 2009, 2012), Irene Rizzini (2000, 2007, 2008), Vicente Faleiros (1995, 2008), Renato Caminha (1999), Maria Luiza Marcílio (2006), among others, was proposed. After the finished analysis, the text concludes that the laws and norms contribute to strengthen work being done with this people, but there are still articulated public policies lacking, to avoid the break-up of family and community ties of Brazilian children and teenagers. It is estimated that the contribution of this research is the articulation between aspects of a long-term history- the process of institutionalization of children and teenagers in Brazil- and a present-time history- bringing a part of the intimate territories of sheltered and/or hosted, in contexts of widening of education comprehension, further from the school’s walls, linking school to a process of socialization.