Between utopias and dystopias: youth and meanings of the future in Portugal and Brazil

• Grant number: 23/05988-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: August 01, 2024
• End date: January 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Urban Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Alexandre Barbosa Pereira
• Grantee: Alexandre Barbosa Pereira
• Host Investigator: Ligia Sofia Alves Passos Ferro
• Host Institution: Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (EFLCH). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Guarulhos. Guarulhos , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Universidade do Porto (UP), Portugal

Abstract

The project proposes an investigation into the meanings of the future for young people in Portugal and Brazil. The aim is to try to understand comparatively the impacts of the current global crisis on how young people conceive of their future, but also to discuss how policies aimed at young people articulate a certain notion of the future for them, even if it is completely at odds with their issues. The research will be carried out in the cities of Porto and Lisbon, in Portugal, and aims to establish comparisons with research already carried out in the city of São Paulo, in Brazil. The research will start with a survey of public policies and discursive production devices in Portugal, which will allow a comparison with Brazil. These procedures will then be carried out: mapping of public spaces occupied by young people in Porto and Lisbon; identification of forms of political action and the production of youth cultures that have gained some visibility in Portugal in recent years; interviews with young people selected from the research in public spaces, asking them about their perspectives on life in a world experiencing a deep crisis. Finally, a comparative analysis will be made with the data already collected in São Paulo. The research will adopt an ethnographic approach and its main objective will be to understand how young people attribute a series of meanings to their future, also paying attention to how youth issues are brought into the public arena, by youth cultures themselves, and by youth policies.This project is justified by the fact that it deals with a fundamental issue for the discussion on youth today, the prospects for the future, as pointed out by authors who address the context of different countries, such as Pais (2012), Ferreira (2019), Leccardi (2005), Reguillo (2003), Pappámikail (2022), Woodman (2011), among others. According to the academic literature on youth and the future, the contemporary global crisis, marked by neoliberal policies, while requiring young people to plan in a linear fashion, also brings a series of uncertainties and instabilities that make the idea of a stable and secure future difficult. This research will therefore contribute to the discussion on the relationship between youth and the future, from an approach that focuses both on the representations that are constructed about young people and on how young people themselves think about and constitute their life projects. Through participant observation, it is possible to grasp the futures that young people imagine for themselves, despite the crises and uncertainties, often in total disagreement with what public policies imagine for them, thus escaping, on the one hand, reductionist approaches to how young people manage their futures, as highlighted by Woodman (2011), and, on the other hand, offering subsidies for public policies that are more in line with young people's real expectations. The results of the research will point to three major debates: the notion of the future as a cultural category of analysis, the public arena, and the global crisis of capitalism in today's world and its consequences for young people's lives.