THE DIMENSION OF PUBLIC POLICIES FOR THE YOUNG IN BRAZIL

WORK MARKET, EDUCATION AND EMPOWERMENT1

Rosana Katia Nazzari2

Rute Vivian Angelo Baquero3

ABSTRACT: In Brazil, one can observe youth policy fragmentation and seclusion from
proposals in specific areas and sectors, without global action connection. These factors do not
allow glimpsing an effective public policy for the brazilian youth. Thus, this paper proposes
verifying the challenges for the youth empowerment facing vulnerability, violence, and social
exclusion. To make it a reality, we look to cast public policy, with the Latin America youth and
in Brazil, related to education and to the working market to ascertain the reach of youth public
policies to extend social capital indexes and promote affronting programs to social vulnerability,
violence, and drug addiction among youngsters. This research proposes to contribute to practical
applications for in youth policies.

KEYWORDS: Empowerment. Public Policies. Youth. Education. Work Market. Brazil.

I. INTRODUCTION

This study aims to exam political socialization mechanisms that could orient and contribute in
the reduction of urban violence and on the augment of youth empowerment through public
policies in the education areas to amplify positive networks of social capital, the good
institutional acquittal, and government.
Nowadays, it is observed that, before discussion, the youth increasingly uses violence as
a form of pressure to solve its crises and conflicts, as well as in handling its demands.
Hackneyed, violence is seen as normal by the socializing agencies; such behavior specially
viewed and learned through mass media. In a psychological point of view, Endo (2006)
highlights that the youth usually perceive violence of others, but does not identify unconscious
violence that guides its own behavior.
1
Study results attached to the line of research on the Youth, democracy and social capital and to the Survey groups: Social
Capital and Sustainable Development in Latin America: Cultural Politics, Citizenship and Democratic of UFRGS and Political
Behavior from UNIOESTE.
2
The author has a Doctored Degree in Political Science at UFRGS, researcher and educator at College of Economic Sciences at
UNIOESTE, GPCP leader. E-mail: knazzari@hotmail.com
3
The author has a Doctored Degree in Education at Florida State University (EEUU), Pos-Doctored in Education at UBA
(Argentine), also an Education Pos-graduation Program Professor at UNISINOS. E-mail: rbaquero@unisinos.br
 Insecurity and the uncomfortable sensation caused by social fear drive people to
withdraw to their private space distant from policy’s public space. That concurs to diminish
solidarity ties and social capital stock in the networks as well as public interaction associations.
The extreme of this action is to make justice with your own hands; speech present in the center
of Brazilian elite that take pride displaying their armored cars, security with sophisticated
paraphernalia and monitored alarm systems with imported technology. It is of the essence to
change public administration perception on the importance of social policy cooperatively with
the youth, as it is necessary the perception of administrators in the private sector on social
responsibility (Abramovay, 2002).
It is known that displacement of the public circle to the private circle has substantially
faded institutional-social confidence and solidarity networks. This wear in the political sphere of
democracy is added to maladjustments in the capitalist work market that is summed with the
neo-liberal ideology of coded or consume citizenship. As Misse (2006) contrasts, the youth is
unmotivated by the parents historical exclusion, and for this reason do not search for space nor
opportunities in the working market and education.
In this conflicting context, imposed by poverty and exclusion together with the
magnification and sophistication of new technology, one can observe an increase in social
vulnerability caused by violence, drugs, and the absence of effective institutional and social
networks to promote appropriate social and public policies connected among the many govern-
acting areas that affect the youth parcel of the population (Nazzari, 2006ª).
Exclusion and misery, currently responsible for the third cause of deaths in the country,
generate violence that reaches mainly youngsters between the ages of 18 and 29. At the same
time those youngsters are the victims and the authors of the violence. To invert this scenario, it is
necessary to offer them some future perspective that initiates in the process of socialization in the
the family especially in the component of pertaining to a community. Influenced by this logic,
schooling - as an important socialization agency - can lever an education that goes beyond mere
technical training to one with a dignify salary. Ultimately, it is up to the school institution to
create opportunities for the youth growth in a healthy environment protected against murder and
traffic accidents, as well as an environment alert against diseases related to the dependence of
psychoactive substances and risky marginal behavior.
 Public actions are imperious, for, according to Queiroz, Chaves, and Mariano (2001), the
world youth population has considerably increased - more than 85% of them live in developing
countries, and 50% of the adolescents in Latin America are located in Brazil. Thus it is of
essence to draft effective programs for that section of the population. In this scenario, this study
offers to verify the challenges of youth public policies to promote alternatives that put forward
the empowerment of the Brazilian youth facing current violence and social exclusion
vulnerability. To assemble study configurations as specific objectives we present to a) identify
confronting public policies for the problems affecting the Brazilian youth; b) cast programs
related to the Brazilian youth education to endeavor public policies of empowerment.

2. METHODOLOGY

Development of this study paid attention to two dimensions: a section of qualitative and
theoretical nature scrutinizing the concepts of public policies, education, violence, drugs, youth,
empowerment, and social capital; and a second one of quantitative and explicative nature,
through statistical data analyses, aimed to exam the dimension of public policies for the youth in
Brazil. There, social-economic data related to the subject matter were examined pursuing the
establishment of relations among the concepts and the central supposition of the study. The
central supposition is that, without social policies for the youth, it will not be possible to create
conditions for empowerment and reduction of violence, drugs use and traffic among the brazilian
youth.

3. YOUTH POLICIES IN LATIN AMERICA

Policy planning for the youth in Europe and United States was outstanding during the 20th
century and it was associated to the creation of governmental institutions to specifically attend
the targeted public. In Latin America, worries toward the youth and with policies oriented to
them attained attention in the 1970s stimulated by some world and Latin American organs (such
as Cepal and UN) and European governments (such as Spain, that promoted regional Iberian-
American and regional cooperation initiatives). Research show that this concern started back in
the 50s, considered as a moment of youth inclusion in the modernization processes, through
educational policies.
Statistic data show that it is from this period on that massive admission of children,
adolescents, and juveniles from elementary and high school is processed with the state playing
an important role formulating and executing these policies. Investment in education was the
foremost policy for the youth in the search for social incorporation of new the new generation. In
spite of the made up image of the 80s` youth, the State did not succumb in its controller role,
especially in dealing with youngsters that belong or are connected to groups emerged from
popular stratums (juvenile gangs, “the punks”, general mobs) and youngsters of urban living and
expression – main victims of the deterioration of quality of life – specially reaching popular
social layers and impoverishment of the Latin-American population. Generalized preoccupation
with aspects and isolated facts that associate youth to violence, or drugs, causes the
multiplication of normative propositions aimed to discipline these relations. Drugs, violence, and
unemployment became the problem and the utmost social vulnerability in our time.
Facing this scenario, and trying to confine the youth in a socially comfortable frame,
many social compensation policies were created. Though none of them were cataloged as
“exclusively for the youth”, their main focus and priority were specially youngsters arising from
“excluded” sectors who had shown reputable demeanor behavior. As a result, the adopted
approach strongly contributed to preserve the troublesome stigma of the youth condition up to
now.
In the 90s and early 2000, although fragmented, youth participation found strength in
countryside and city youth organizations as well as in social movements. Facing these
recoverable and challenging movements, the State begins to write public policies for the youth.
The generalized effort to place the youth query in the governor`s agenda in the 90s, takes to the
creation of many organizations in Latin America in general (except Brazil and Honduras),
exclusively aimed at strengthening youth policy. From the actions of the Iberian-American
Youth Organization (IYO), that reached organization status of international rights, discussions
on the youth issues were included in meeting`s topics of Iberian-American chiefs of state. Also,
there was an action on building new youth national organizations, and consolidate the existing
ones through human resource qualification, the creation of conceptual boundaries and
organizations to implement these policies, and, with a less significant success, the search for
direct financing for the youth policies (Bango, 2003).
On one hand, this has hindered the homogenization of the purposes on these
governmental organizations (State and Municipal ones included), their decisive capacity on
youth policies, and even their participation in inter-sector instances on planning social policy. On
the other hand, there is a lack of policies to stimulate youth participation in building their
citizenship.
According to Bango (2003, p. 47), conspiring against it traditional youth organization
crisis and its coordination mechanism, and in some cases, an inadequate approach strategy to the
non-organized youth world and the existing new ones due to a excessive institutionalist approach
of youth participation on the government part.

4. YOUTH POLICIES IN BRAZIL

In Brazil the youth theme, introduced in the Constituent National Council of 1988, when brought
in to the “Children – National Priority” Popular Amendment, resulted in the creation in that same
year of the Permanent Forum of Non-governmental Entities for the Defense of Children`s Right
that culminated with the promulgation of the Children and Adolescent Statute (CAS) in 1990.
CAS, that largely contributed to guarantee children and adolescent`s rights and duties,
incorporating the citizenship concept, is considered best finished government proposal for the
country`s adolescents and children because it entrusts the family, society, and the State the
compliment, or not, of the rights and duties delegated to them. “The 5th Amendment determines
that no children or adolescent will be the object of any form of negligence, discrimination,
violence, cruelty, and oppression, punishing by the full extent of the law any attempt, through
action or omission, to their fundamental rights.” However, it is observed that, “[...] although it
has significantly pushed the debate on youth policies forward, CAS has throne into the darkness
debates on adolescents that reach legal adulthood” (Kerbauy, 2009, p. 201).
In spite of it all, the youth theme was finally added to the public agenda in Brazil in the
beginning of the 21th century, especially concerning problems that directly affect the youth, such
as health, violence, and unemployment, also considering the youth as active player on
implementing these programs.
According to Rua (1998), public policies in general, and specifically juvenile policies in
Brazil, are fragmented, in the mercy of the inter-bureaucratic competition; they fail from
administrative discontinuity; act answering to certain offers not to specific demands, also reveal
ruptures between their planning and implantation. Adding to it all is the fact that the government
has no clear proposal on the youth role in the development model adopted in Brazil. Beyond
expending the possibilities of access in the school system and to projects toward specific
segments (excluded or “in-social-risk” juveniles), it is evident the absence of dialogue channels
with the youth, addressee of some of the motions, but never taken as relevant partners in its plan,
implementation, and evaluation (Sposito, 2003, p. 66).
However, common sense continues to represent the youth in a negative way through
stigmas and stereotypes. Relying on social-political and economical context from which they
originate, adolescents are considered dangerous, delinquents, alienated, irresponsible,
unmotivated or uninterested, also more and more connected to violence and conduct diversions
(street kids, the sweeps, gangs, street groups, and vandalism acts).
According to Abramo and Branco (2005), youth behavior characterization, being inclined
to a detour in the social integration process, recapture elements that were common in evaluations
made in the 50s, that is, the formation of youth culture divergent to the adult society. From this
point of view, “The challenge is to reorient youth policies towards a young-citizen model and
straight subject that gradually leave behind matters as the problematic youngster that threatens
public security” (Bango, 2003, p. 48).
Brazil still has a long way to go in order to transform government policies into public
policies for the youth: public policies established and implemented from a community space that
contemplates the State and civil society abandoning the logic of state policies. Therefore, it
becomes necessary to disrupt the utilitarian or stigmatized vision of the youth condition, to
stimulate a better relationship between society and the youth by promoting their participation in
building their citizenship. It cannot be denied that the youth, although in their minority, mobilize
themselves due to changes. According to Novaes (2000), youth participation is positive because
“[...] through cultural activities and social experiments one can bring to the public agenda the
issue of feelings and contribute for the mentality change [...]” (Novaes, 2000, p. 54). The
participation characterizes itself by a percipient acting force through which the youth “[...]
member of a social unit recognize and assume their power on exercising influence determining
the dynamic of their society, culture, and results” (Miranda, 2003, p. 23).
In the 60s and 70s youth participation was notable by protest movements, in the counter-
culture movements, and in the 80s we can mention as an example the social movement that
became known as “Diretas Já” (Direct Vote, Now), which was a significant sign of the youth
participation. That movement demonstrated to the Brazilian State the power, determination, and
will of change of this parcel of the Brazilian society. Thus, from 2004 on, the Brazilian
government created the Public Policy Executive Office for the youth connected to the President
Cabinet.
It was also created a Special Commission in the National Congress meant to follow up
political proposals for the youth. From February 1, 2005 on, Brazil took significant steps in
effectively building public policies for the youth. On that date, the President created the Youth
National Council, the Youth National Bureau, and the “Pro-youth” which main objective is to
elaborate and install policies for the 34 million people aged 15 to 24.
This initiative unchained others in state and national levels. The Federal Government
instituted still more social programs with actions aimed at the youth in an inter-sectorial
perspective such as Youth and Adolescent Heath Program (Health Department), Special Training
Program (STP – Education Department), Young Scientist Award (Science and Technology
Department), Infant Social Protection – ProUni, Childhood, Adolescence, and Youth Social
Protection, among others. On September 5, 2007, the Federal Government launched programs
unifying the ones that already existed: the Youth Agent, Pro-youth, Earth Knowledge, Youth
Consortium, Citizen Youth, and Factory School in a single program denominated Pro-Youth and
intend to triple the number of adolescents served. Thus, the program will be divided as Urban
Pro-Youth, Country Pro-Youth, Worker Pro-Youth, and Adolescent Pro-Youth (Presidência,
2009).
Yet, these policies must give the youth options that, on one hand, need to work for the
survival of his/her family and his/her own, and, on the other hand, need to get ready for the
future through professionalization.
5. WORK MARKET OR EDUCATION?

It is highlighted that the decline of working opportunities, together with an increase in violence
and poverty on the expressive contingent of the youth in Latin America, is inducing them to a
lack or perspective toward the future. Most adolescents are victims of precarious social
situations. They do not have basic material conditions to supply their necessities to guaranty the
making of their own citizenship.
Therefore, interdisciplinary debates and researches place the theme youth as subject of
the sciences in the beginning of the 21st century, and instigate immediate intervention on the
youth reality in the Latin American continent.
Public policies are improvised, seasonal, and disarticulated among themselves. As a
result, “There is a necessity of a multidimensional approach due to the multiple factors that
interact ‘forming complex casual networks’” (Wirsig; Werthein, 2002, p. 7).
Violence endured by the youth is unchained by the social vulnerability and the lack of
access to opportunity structures available in the health, education, work, leisure, and culture
field. Thus, unfavorable social-economic conditions foment the increase of criminality.
Therefore, it is noticed the necessity for public policies to be continuous and permanent, not as
they are, fragmented and partial. The Latin-American Technological Information Network –
Ritla (2008, p. 1), in the third Narrative of the Youth Development, 2007 version,

[...] that performed an extensive data crossing of IBGE and the Departments of Heath and
Education came to alarming conclusions. For example, according to the report, no less
than 53% of the 35 million juveniles between the ages of 15 and 24 in Brazil do not
attend school. Moreover, 19% of them do not work or study. That is a large percentage
that gets even larger when the poorer classes are analyzed: 34%!

In this setting, it is essential to invest on youth socialization and combat social

vulnerability enlarging social capital stocks. These factors require changes on the perception of
public administrators to formulate social policies in building a more righteous society (Wirsig;
Werthein, 2002).
On one hand, many researchers and administrators consider fundamental postpone the
admission of the youth in the working force to allow their permanence in school thus formation
the acquisition of higher-level school diploma that allow the access to more interesting working
positions – in terms of better salary and potential for personal accomplishment. On the other
hand, taken in consideration the intense processes of productive transformation and social
change through which the contemporaneous societies have endured, higher scholarship has given
a promise of admission in higher working positions that are not always certain (Tommasi, 2005,
p. 2).
In the research “Brazilian Youth Profile”, quoted by Tommasi (2005, p. 3), work in seen
by the interviewed youth as a secondary preoccupation; followed by security, the last as the first
problem that grieves Brazil today. In this thought, “Work is also placed first among the most
important rights for the citizen, as among the rights the youth should have, according to the
interviewees”. Despite the youth indicate the right to work as central preoccupation in their lives,
there is no consensus among administrators and researchers on the recognition of this right and
the necessity of create a specific legislation that regulates this matter. On one hand, since the
notion of the youth and adolescent are still imbricated, it is difficult to assert a right that seams to
contradict what is pronounced on the Youth and Adolescent Constitution (YAC) that prohibits
the employment of children under 14, and severely regulates employment of youngsters under
18, according Freitas apud (Tommasi, 2005, p. 3).
Research results on the Brazilian youth and democracy reveal some dimensions of youth
relation with the world. It was observed that 60.7% of those interviewed informed not having a
job. It is noted that, “[...] sex, age, and social class are all variables that influence on the
possibility of admission in the working market; girls, the younger ones, and the poorer are in a
evident disadvantageous situation”. Another contrast is the influence of school level; while only
33.1% of the elementary-school youth stated having a job, that percentage escalated to 52.4%
among graduated youngsters with high-school or higher diplomas. Skin color is also a
discerning; while 41.5% of white adolescents declare having a job, this percentage declines to
37.9% among blacks. Of those who declared not having a job, 62.9% stated that where looking
for one. Social class dissimilarities are evident when one observe that 69.5% of class D/E
adolescents where looking for a job, while 49.6% of the A/B class where in the same condition.
The number of class-C youngsters that declared looking for a job is significant as well, a total of
65.6%. Dissimilarities are confirmed as far as type of school attended by the youth is concerned;
66.7% of public school students where looking for a job, while only 42% of private school
students were in the same situation (Tommasi, 2005, p. 4).
 On this perspective, frustrated search for work and the obstacles to be overcome by the
youth is highlighted. To whatever extent these obstacles are concentrated in determined
segments of the population as the poorest, blacks, ghetto and periphery dwellers, and young
women. Adolescents that obtain work-market positions are exposed to unstable conditions,
30.5% are registered employees, and 44.6% are not registered, that is, they are independent
without any tie with Social Security. In its turn, apprentices total 6.4%, but only 4.4% are
independent with ties with the INSS, a health, social national institution. Class-A/B employed
youngsters totaled 16.1%, but this number rises to 33.8% among class-D/E. Thus, this research
spotted vulnerability on working relation to which the poorer classes are submitted to (Tommasi,
2005, p.3).
As far as the working and education is concerned the situation is as follows: 25.9% just
work; 33.6% simply study; 13.4% work and study, and a significant number, 27.1%, neither
work nor study. According to Tommasi (2005, p.4), “[...] among youngsters that participated in
the Dialogue Group (913), the 21-to-24 age-group presented the largest number of working
individuals in all regions.” It was also noted that “[...] in this age-group they have more
opportunities obtaining a job than younger age-groups. Considering the relation between
participants in the Dialogue Group in the seven metropolitan regions and the Federal Capital the
occupational rate was 34%.”
Regional inequalities are significant. While the State of Minas Gerais registered the
largest rate of employed youth (54.9%) the Recife State region registered the lowest (27.4%). In
the Dialogue Groups, work emerged amongst their main worry. In the Federal Capital, the city of
Sao Paulo and Porto Alegre, work was first among themes that worried them the most. In Belo
Horizonte, Rio de Janeiro, and Salvador it emerged in second place, whereas in Recife and
Belém it came in third followed by violence and education. “All we want is employment!”, says
a youngster from the metropolitan region of Recife (Tommasi, 2005, p. 4).
According to Tommasi (2005, p. 4), restrict work market, find the first job, lack of
adequate professional qualification, and overcome prejudice are what worry the youth, as far as
work is concerned. “A reoccurring complaint is against market incoherence that demands the so
commented ‘professional practice’ from those that are searching for their first job opportunity.
That indicates youth-integration policy insufficiency in the working market.”
 It can be observed in Tommasi`s study (2005) that the youngsters are confident on the
possibilities of companies to enlarge working opportunities for them. They suggest the
establishment of partnerships and agreements between government and businesses and fiscal
incentives to employers in order to open up working positions for youngsters without experience.
An important aspect is the trust they feel in the State in solving these issues and overcoming
obstacles that have emerged from the lack of experience, qualification, as well as discrimination,
which can organize their lives and work departing from knowledge.
The youth yearn for professional qualification, and do not take into account economic
restructuring or changes in the production ways that strongly influence the reduction of job
openings and on precarious working conditions. The demand for more and better professional
capacity was pivot in the discussions during the dialogue. Increase of professional qualification
opportunities and the adequacy between qualification offer and the demand for existent qualified
workers in the market were the main vindications in the youth speech that believe that it is
possible to better regulate the offer and demand for jobs. The importance of more
professionalization training courses, which complement school formation, was evident in the
Opinion Survey – 66.5% of the interviewed youngsters stated participation in some type of
extracurricular activity.
“The highest incidence among social classes is found in computer science classes
(44.1%), professional classes (19.3%), sport related classes (15.4%) and foreign language classes
(11.6%)”. Even those related with cultural activities (music, theater, plastic arts, dance, and
others) that according to some youngsters also can be used as professionalization course in the
arts and cultural areas. However, it is smaller the participation of the poorer, blacks, and the ones
with low education in this areas of complementary formation. This situation attests that
education inequality is also manifested accessing the opportunities of complementary formation,
which are available in a more ample and qualified form for whites and the ones with a higher
social status (Tommasi, 2005, p. 4).
As for work demand, internship in pointed as immediate survival strategy in trying to
overcome the working-market demands. However, this opportunity is not equally shared among
social classes because it is accessible for youngster from a higher social class. In all regions the
youth felt discriminatory feelings when searching for the first job; feelings relative to appearance
and racist practice against the youth in their way of dressing and behaving. In the “Brazilian
Youth Profile” query, when they were questioned on the main concepts associated with work,
necessity (64%), independence (55%), growth (47%), and self accomplishment (29%) were
pointed out (Abramo, Branco, 2005). Hence, in the next item we look to explore public action
related to the youth – actions that usually have neither integration nor continuity.
According to Pereira (2007), remunerated work is no longer an exclusive characteristic of
the market society and has also become one of the main forms of social acting for the creation or
reproduction of new familiar units that are independent and self-contained.
That applies, above all, to the young fraction of the population desiring to conquer family
independence or perform a safe transition to adulthood with ample access to remunerated work,
education, health service, leisure, and at least minimally, a life protected from the uproar of drug
dealers. It is also added the necessity of “safe transition to adulthood” with the formation of new
families by marrying or living together. Recent studies have shown, however, the existence of a
structural unemployment and education difference that reach the youth especially the ones from
the working class – among them the ones from the country site. Out of 33.85 million youngsters
between the ages of 15 and 24 in Brazil, 19% of them did not work or study in 2003.When
profiling young blacks and women, this figure climbs to 21% and 26% respectively (IBGE,
2003; PNAD, 2009; IPEA, 2005; MTE, 2008). Still another study – Profile of the Brazilian
Youth, commissioned by the Institute of Citizenship, Institute of Hospitality, and Sebrae –
reveals that between November and December of 2003, 32% of the 15-to-24-year-old youngsters
had already worked, but at that time were unemployed, and others 24% had never worked but
were looking for a job. Three years later, in 2006, unemployment indexes among the youth not
only remained high but also increased compared to 2003.
As per Dieese, in September of 2006, unemployment among the youth was 31.8%, what
correspond to almost three times more (12.7%) for people 25 years of age or older. Moreover,
the great majority of the youth cannot conciliate work with studies. Close to 70.1% of the
working youngsters in São Paulo do not study (Pereira, 2007, p. 4). Pochmann (2007) observes
that the number of unemployed youngsters in 2005 was 107% higher compared to 1995. Thus, a
large social problem is set, one that demand immediate action form public policy makers,
government, and why not, all civil society (governors, class organizations, social movements,
political parties, the church, among others). It is necessary to strongly fight unemployment, and
create conditions so the employed youth would be able to work and play.
 Work and independence: “These two factors are positioned in the base of the transition to
adulthood among the youth”. However, if one consider the high unemployment indexes, and
auspicious situations created for the involvement with drugs, as well as the delay in creating new
independent families, one can affirm that one of the greatest social problem for today`s youth is
the hindrance of a safe transition to adulthood life (Pereira, 2007, p. 10).
Looking to escape from this problematic situation, millions of youngsters all over the
world, especially in rural areas, including in Brazil, have migrate in search of work and better
life conditions. The migration is so intense that the United Nations foresees that, in 2008, the
number of inhabitants in cities will be higher than the one in the rural areas. Where are these
migrating youths going to live? The UN predicts that they are going to live in slums on
precarious houses with no treated drinking water or basic sewage, tormented by high
unemployment indexes and/or precarious jobs, unable to guarantee themselves safe transition to
adulthood.
This scenario arranges itself as a growing social problem with the constant capitalist
restructuration based on the predatory use of technologies and social policy budget cuts, as well
as a federal, state, and municipal association’s problem among other pressure collective groups.
A starting point is to politicize debates on the youth and its secure transition to adulthood in
juvenile groups, schools, associations, neighborhood and friendly meetings, and in municipal
assemblies turning them priority on municipal, state, and federal political agendas to create better
life conditions in the country as well as in the cities.
All that said, this study intend to observe its operation facing the challenges built for
educational public policies where it is possible to line up imperative actions related to the
vulnerability, violence, and exclusion of the youth in Brazil foreseeing a political socialization
directed towards incrementing empowerment and social capital indexes.

6. EDUCATION AND EMPOWERMENT

Brazilian society dominant sectors have always engaged denying the rights to education to the
majority of the population, not only obstructing access to education, but also alleging a restrict
education to the interests of the elite.
 General objectives and functions of national education are expressed in specific laws.
Federal Law nº 4.024/1961, identified as Guideline Law and Education Basis (GLB), was later
altered by the Federal Laws nº 5.540/1968 (that specifically approaches college studies), nº
5.692/1971 and nº 7.044/1982 (that alter teaching guidelines and norms of elementary and high
school). The 1998 Federal Constitution opened new perspectives for the school system and its
operation, being later in 1996 promulgated the new GLB published as Federal Law nº
9.394/1996. Later, in 2001, the National Education Plan that deals with school management was
published.
According to Costa (2005), school should function as social interaction mediator, since it
disseminates interaction values among students, thus being the main teaching site, although it
can be performed in multiple sites and different means. Despite the existence of legislation and
norms of attention to the youth, on can observe that public policies stated to the youth are not
theirs, but policies to solve possible difficulties, videlicet, to treat problems that some members
of this portion of society present – political in their majority – to conform this population to the
current norms where the school has functioned as efficient instrument of this conformation.
In this case, these policies are almost nil because they exclude the youth from the political
educational/resolution process. What it is offered as adequate policy is that the youth must not
just be part of a public policy, but participate by proposing, deliberating, and helping to program
the policies as well.
Thus, youth public policies must possess inter-related and ample components that cannot
be outlined in an isolated way under penalty of not being productive at all, for public policies for
the youth are only characterized as so if they reflect specific youth conditions, and accrue from
rulings that contrast their political capacity and participation.
The teaching/learning process, in this context, possesses important representation, for it
must be understood in the perspective of no-transition of a specialized knowledge of which
education professionals are the detainers for a layman population whose daily life is ignored or
depreciated. One can not impose knowledge of a few, believing that the population would come
to unlearn what is lived in daily practices, to incorporate new knowledge.
Lack of education is not a problem that can possibly be solved individually, but it is
added to it collective, technical-scientific elements, culture respect plus the necessity to absorb
knowledge now exposed and incorporate it to the everyday life.
 Thereby, work under the impression that education involves the set of processes by which
individuals become the subject of a culture, recognizing that there are different and many
instances and social institutions involved in the teaching process, some of them explicit for that
purpose, while in others this education process is not so explicit or institutional (Costa, 2005). It
is found that programs focused on assorted themes, such as drugs (including alcohol and
tobacco), unprotected sexual practices, teen pregnancy, nutrition, and traffic, among others, are
very efficient in increasing knowledge, they have some efficiency in changing attitudes and
occasionally are inefficient in changing practices related to heath (Meyer et al., 2006, p.4).
According to Meyer et al. (2006), change in behavior is a very rare product in an already
implanted educational process, more than that, it is found that the multiple dimensions that
interact in the environment where there is life turns difficult to directly bind educational
activities to the components that emerge in time. In this case, one can observe that an education
aimed for the magnification of social cooperation could collaborate in promoting favorable
indexes of youth social capital end empowerment. The essential presupposition is that social
capital is created by trusted networks that provide relation predictability in the relations and
promote empowerment indicators on the youth.

7. FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

Most adolescents search in their professional formation, work, and income for conditions to
achieve minimum improvement in life quality, as well as, paradoxically, the very search for
work demands the minimal means for transportation and nourishment that are not always at
reach for the youth. Another obstacle for the working adolescent is the non-observance of the
working legislation, like underpaid jobs without valid working registration, no payment on extra
working hours, among others. As for voluntary work, some youngsters recognize that it can
magnify contact and access to the working world, but others clearly explain that the existence of
voluntary work is an impediment for the magnification of working positions, in other words, the
volunteers would take the place of paid workers.
As for the majority of the youngsters employment represents a better life, it is perceived
as excessive search for working opportunities plus preoccupation on juvenile unemployment,
that is three times higher when compared to the rest of the active population. Unemployment
oppresses the youth because it interrupts the autonomy’s progressive achievement course to
adulthood transition and economic emancipation.
When the youth face the excluding working-market reality they initiate a painstaking
process of unmasking some inclusion promises because they perceive that the achievement of a
long scholarship (advanced in relation to their parents generation, plus the programs that
objectify delaying the admission of the youth in the working market) do not supply the expected
effects of actual job availability for them.
As per Nazzari (2006b), lack of youth engagement in student, community, and social
movements make them feel unqualified for the public-policy demands that benefit them. That
lack of engagement also does not help them to assume their identity or to transform themselves
into subjects of the social built in their reality. On this matter, schooling can be failing as youth-
empowerment proposal by compromising the possibility to built norms and believes of
citizenship valorization, as well as not contributing for the creation of solid, collective identities
between students and institutions (Baquero and Baquero, 2005).
Research results are not encouraging as far as the youth and the Brazilian working market
are concerned. However, they continue to wait for an answer to their demands from State. The
pictorial representation that the youth has of public institutions and their representatives,
preponderantly negative, nevertheless do not constitute in elements that provide us with
assurance that they will have a better future.

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