Instituições sociais e operacionalização de políticas públicas: análise crítica das ações voltadas para jovens no município de Santo André

Abstract

The focus of this study is institutions that have projects aimed towards young people, and specifically those that put public policies into operation. Such policies are implemented as responses to the conflict between the needs of social groups and between different civilizing projects. Youth was taken to be a social category that was not closed at individual level, and this was constructed from the contradictions inherent to the organization and functioning of the means of production. To delineate the study, young people were taken to be between 15 and 24 years of age. The initial presupposition, backed by a review of the literature, was that institutional experiences would be focused on young people who were considered problematic (because of the conditions of social reproduction or because of their deviant behavior) and that the disseminated actions at different care-providing entities, for responding to situations and groups at risk, would be far from the purpose of responding to the needs of such young people. The objectives were to describe the institutions that had projects and actions aimed towards young people in the municipality of Santo André; to analyze the characteristics of the projects and the actions developed by these institutions; and to analyze how the projects and actions thus developed interlinked with each other and with the municipal public project. The study was conducted in the municipality of Santo André, state of São Paulo, where it is highlighted that the cumulative actions are the result from three consecutive administrations in the hands of the Workers' Party. Eleven institutions agreed to participate in interviews, which were the data gathering instrument. The projects were aimed towards young people with precarious conditions of social reproduction, who were selected through risk grouping, with actions that responded to preestablished eligibility criteria for direct or indirect fund allocation. "Youth as a problematic stage" was the approach governing the projects and actions of ten institutions, while only one institution took the concept of "young people as strategic players for development". The projects provided spaces for socialization and access to income that enabled the young people to achieve a certain degree of self-fulfillment. However, the basic institutional objective was to lead young people away from idleness and unemployment, which were understood to be the causes of behavioral deviation, violence and poverty. The actions most often reported were classes and talks, in order to pass over basic operational and behavioral techniques for competing for placements within the job market. The results also showed that the institutions have private nature. The institutional projects did not interlink and were not monitored by the local public authorities. Precariousness and the constant threat of budgetary cuts deeply marked these projects, which reflected the directions of public policies.