As práticas cotidianas dos profissionais que atuam em programas e projetos sociais: efeitos micropolíticos

Abstract

This research aims to analyze the practices of social workers and their micropolitical effects in two situations experienced by people facing homelessness and young slum dwellers, especially in the Cidade de Deus slum. In accordance with authors such as Foucault, Guattari, Lourau, Deleuze, Baremblitt, Castell, and also with Brazilian authors in dialogue with the themes and situations analyzed, we discuss the following questions: the stories and the paths followed by the professionals; the shocks between the subjective productions that limit and those that create new possibilities; the existing tensions in the social field; the hierarchical power structure established in popular spaces; and the production and capture of desire. At the same time, most programs and projects end up reasserting the place occupied by slum dwellers and people facing homelessness as one at risk, vulnerable, dangerous and in need of appeasement. Such fact is made evident by policies developed by the state, and also by programs which only focus on discipline, control, and, consequently, on the labor market and the production of human capital. Instead, social practices should focus on: favoring channels and spaces of discussion about social initiatives (as well as improving the existing ones); encouraging unusual and deviating paths; enabling the invention of new practices with the poor populations of the city; creating ways and possibilities of resistance in the attempt to make more powerful works, acting in the immanent, micropolitical level, that of the fluidity of everyday events, counting on local knowledge for the construction of social practices