Youth paths and journeys after completing a socio-educational measure: how are policies for adolescents and young people in Brazil progressing?
youth, social reintegration, social policies, socio-educational measure
The main aim of this research was to identify and characterise the tertiary prevention public policies in Brazil designed to assist adolescents and youth after having undergone a socio-educational measure, and how these policies are structured to promote the guarantee of rights, social protection and crime prevention for young people. The main focus was on the trajectories of youths assisted by these services, seeking to understand the meanings attributed to the experience of social reintegration, their needs and life projects, in dialogue with these policies. This is a study with a qualitative approach and comparative analysis, using different methodological tools: documentary research, bibliographical analysis, field research and semi-structured interviews. Six professionals and fourteen young people aged between 18 and 24 from the Se Liga and Novas Oportunidades programmes in the states of Minas Gerais and Pernambuco, respectively, were interviewed. The survey pointed to an increase in the implementation of public policies on this issue in recent years in Brazil, but experiences vary between states in terms of structure and form of implementation, objectives and methodologies adopted, there are no national guidelines, and the services offered are still scarce and insufficient. The youth interviewed indicated that they receive significant support through participation in these programmes, but their return to life in society is marked by ambiguities between expectations and real opportunities to realise their life projects, and they remain in situations of vulnerability, stigma and social risk, in an unequal and discriminatory socio-economic context. Within the context of the development of policies, we analysed, based on the life experiences of young people and in dialogue with the existing literature, the possibilities for the social promotion of young people after a socio-educational measure, how socio-community support networks are built, access to and permanence in public services, and what are the empowering experiences for the realisation of their life projects.