Document(s) 4 de 11

‘The individual who opens up to the world and to others, and with that gesture inaugurates the dialogic relationship finds confirmation in restlessness and curiosity, as well as inconclusiveness in the permanent movement of history.’
(Paulo Freire 1997)

The Instituto Brasileiro de Análises Sociais e Econômicas (Ibase) and the Instituto de Estudos, Formação e Assessoria em Políticas Sociais (Pólis) are pleased to present this collection of thinking on youth and research methodology procedures. Its goal is to have a qualitative influence on policy-making in order to help extend rights and opportunities for young Brazilians.

The thinking provided in this book corroborates the view that the life experiences of new generations in different parts of the world, although they may be interpreted in extremely singular manners (by social class, colour/ethnicity, gender, religion, culture and so on), contain some essentially universal elements. That is to say, they necessarily reflect the new global panoramas and their consequences and repercussions in the interconnected world we live in.

^* About the authors:

Itamar Silva is coordinator of the study Brazilian Youth and Democracy: participation, spheres and public policies. He is a journalist and Coordinator at Ibase – Instituto Brasileiro de Análises Sociais e Econômicas.

Our goal is to share our data and analysis from this exercise with other countries and continents. Through this sharing, we hope to prompt ideas about new, more sensitive, rapid, and effective research methods which can address what is diverse, what is singular and what is universal. Above all, this research yields findings and discoveries that can denaturalize social injustices, not just for young Brazilians, but for the vast population of poor youth seeking better conditions of life in a profoundly unequal world.

For this purpose, the extensive network of Brazilian and Canadian partners involved in this undertaking agreed that the first task was to learn to listen to young people, to understand the conditions they live in, their similarities and differences, and their outlooks on the enormous challenges posed by present-day societies. The body of thinking presented here is the result of the study Juventude Brasileira e Democracia: participação, esferas públicas e políticas (Brazilian Youth and Democracy: Participation, Spheres and Public Policies), which listened to and debated with a wide variety of young Brazilians between the ages of 15 and 24. They talked not just about their realities, dreams, expectations, demands, needs and wishes, but also about the limits on, and scope for, participation in political, social and community activities.

The study was carried out between 2004 and 2006 in seven of Brazil’s metropolitan regions (Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Recife, Salvador, Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte and Belem) and in the Federal District (Brasilia) under the coordination of the non-governmental organizations Ibase and Pólis, with financial cooperation from Canada’s International Development Research Center (IDRC) and technical collaboration from Canadian Policy Research Networks (CPRN).

In order to carry out the study, an experienced network of research partners was organized. Contributions from researchers associated with research centres at various universities were brought into dialogue with researchers with civil-society organizations and groups. The network included Instituto de Estudos, Formação e Assessoria em Políticas Sociais (Iser Assessoria), Rio de Janeiro; Observatório Jovem do Rio de Janeiro/Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro; Observatório da Juventude da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais; Ação Educativa – Assessoria, Pesquisa e Informação, São Paulo; Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul; Instituto de Estudos Socioeconômicos (Inesc), Brasilia, Distrito Federal; Centro de Referência Integral de Adolescentes (Cria), Salvador, Bahia; Instituto Universidade Popular (Unipop), Belém, Pará; and Escola de Formação Quilombo dos Palmares (Equip), Recife, Pernambuco.

The study was conducted using two methodological approaches.1 The first, a statistical survey, was carried out through the use of a questionnaire which was applied to a wide-ranging population sample (8,000 young people)2 in an effort to create a profile of the young people, their various forms of participation and their perceptions of education, work, culture and participation. The second approach was a qualitative study based on the Choice Work Dialogue Methodology (‘Dialogue Groups’) in which a total of 913 young people, divided into 39 groups, discussed the topics of education, work, culture/leisure and participation in depth.

Dialogue Groups

The qualitative phase of the study centred on dialogue. The key purpose of the methodology is to go beyond the logic that predominates in policy-related opinion polls, which merely record attitudes without creating opportunities for people to join together to pursue their thinking on the issues.

The Dialogue Group approach assumes that we do not form opinions individually, but through interaction. During Dialogue Day, participants receive official information on the topic to be addressed and are invited to take part in an intensive discussion process among individuals of both sexes, from different social classes, age groups, places of residence and so on.

Using dialogue as a method presupposes that participants are able to listen and to interact without any particular opinion being aggressively advocated to the point of disregarding the opinion of others. The Dialogue Groups thus function simultaneously as a research method and an extended educational process. The dialogic relationship follows from openness, from baring oneself to others, from accepting oneself as permanently in the making, and permanently learning. In this study, the Dialogue Group methodology stimulated the young people to speak from their life contexts and to interact with the topics proposed (education, work, culture/leisure and participation). On that basis, consensuses were built up when possible and significant differences were explicitly brought out. All of the material collected during the meetings was analyzed in depth.

One of the most important and innovative aspects of the study was the fruitful North-South interchange among institutions in Canada and Brazil, which proved a valuable field for joint learning. North-South cooperation was taken beyond the economic dimension, which limits cooperation to the endeavour of integrating markets. This cooperation was guided from the outset by the educational, scientific and cultural meaning of bringing countries and cultures closer together in a process of permanent dialogue, which opened up new possibilities for consolidating cooperation that embodies the principles of sovereignty, solidarity and respect for diversity.

The exchange between CPRN and the institutions involved in the study (the coordinating body and the organizations that carried out the study in the various regions of Brazil) deserves special attention. It proved to be a mutual learning process that should go on record.

Organizing the research in network form among nine local institutions (non-governmental organizations and public universities) not only proved appropriate for undertaking the work, it also constituted a valuable field for building methodologies and analyses together.

Another aspect of the study is the diffusion of study results in the local and national press. The strategy used made it possible to sensitize the media and to draw attention to data which shows that young people are the subjects of rights, and capable of critical thinking and of making constructive proposals about their lives.

Key thoughts

This book presents the research process and outcomes in eight chapters written by leading specialists on youth. They are researchers and journalists associated with a range of universities and non-governmental organizations in Brazil and Canada.

The variety of outlooks and issues conveyed in this book, as well as the insight with which they have been produced, illustrates well how important it is to conduct additional research in this field. Understanding the social space currently reserved for young people is fundamental to constructing arguments that can strongly contribute to the social inclusion of youth by instituting measures to integrate this portion of the population into social-promotion networks (education, work, culture, communication and so on). Such inclusion is crucial to bringing sustainability to democracy and to reducing inequalities, particularly in Latin America.

The first three chapters offer re-readings of the research data. The first, Youth and Social Participation in Brazil: Results of a National Dialogue with Young People in Metropolitan Regions, is written by Paulo Cesar Carrano, a member of the project’s technical team. It examines key issues that emerged from the data collected in the two stages – the opinion poll and the Dialogue Groups – particularly work, education and young people’s group activities.

The starting assumption is that the nature of social participation – its intensity, quality, quantity, scope and social, cultural and political meanings – correlates largely with life conditions and the structure of opportunities that society provides to young people of various ages. The chapter considers the efforts that young people with differing identity profiles (in terms of class, gender, colour/race, place of residence) make to surmount obstacles to participation.

Next, Juarez Tarcísio Dayrell, Geraldo Leão and Nilma Lino Gomes, the team responsible for the study in the Belo Horizonte metropolitan region in Minas Gerais in south-eastern Brazil, present the chapter School and Youth Participation: (Re)thinking the Links. Building on the quantitative and qualitative data, they explore the problems – from the point of view of young people – of how schools act to create the necessary conditions to permit and encourage youth participation. It questions how far the model of school organization and its dynamics produce an environment conducive to developing experience in participation, given the diversity of the youth in Brazil.

Rounding off the set of data analyses generated by the study, the third chapter Youth, Information and Education: Meanings on Television, is written by Eliane Ribeiro Andrade and Patrícia Lânes, both members of the core team. The authors build on a set of figures that highlight tensions in relationships among information, education and the media.

The focus is on television since of the 85.8 per cent of young people who said they try to stay informed about what is happening in the world, 84.5 per cent said television was their source of information. The authors try to understand the relationship between the means that young people report using to stay informed about ‘things happening in the world’ and what they answer when asked the meaning of a group of acronyms and expressions reflecting various political demands. In order to understand to what point television has played a preponderant role in these young people’s worldview, they draw a first approximation between information and education.

The following chapters examine the study methodologies, process and its implementation. In Chapter Four, Debating the Dialogue Methodology, Livia De Tommasi and Nilton Fischer, who supervised the study in the Recife and Porto Alegre metropolitan regions respectively, debate with Brazilian sociologist, Gustavo Venturi, and the study’s methodological advisor, Suzanne Tascherau. The authors discuss the challenges raised by the Choice Work Dialogue (‘Dialogue Group’) Methodology. They explore the potential, challenges and difficulties of this methodological resource in the light of the project’s experience while considering the contributions of research methodology specialist Gustavo Venturi.

Next, the study supervisor for the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan region, Solange Rodrigues, examines how young people viewed the educational endeavour of the Dialogue Group methodology. In the chapter Dialogue Day: Young People’s Opinions Formed in a Context of Research and Popular Education, she takes one of the methodology’s key components as her starting point: the assumption that access to information and dialogue can be essential to forming well-grounded, considered opinions.

By examining young people’s answers to the question ‘What was most important in what happened here today?’ at the end of the Dialogue Group, the author presents a set of youth perceptions from different regions of Brazil. What stands out among these perceptions is that the young people saw the Dialogue Groups as moments when they were able to express their opinions, and they appreciated having their ideas heard and taken into consideration. They also saw the groups as an opportunity to meet new people, which enabled them to recognize a shared identity. Another aspect they valued was the learning process.

The chapter Brazil and Canada: Learning through Collaboration, written by Mary Pat MacKinnon, director of CPRN, and Suzanne Taschereau, addresses the process and results of the rich collaboration among several Brazilian NGOs, CPRN and IDRC. Motivated by a shared commitment to strengthen democracies through the meaningful engagement of young people, the partners contributed their knowledge, experience and passion to produce a credible process and product.

Recounting the key milestones and elements of this collaboration, the authors explore the challenges which were addressed, identify factors that contributed to the project’s success, share their learning and reflect on what is needed to advance the theory and practice of public dialogue (with particular reference to young people) in Canada and Brazil. The chapter concludes by asking questions and reflecting on how to best advance collaboration on international research and practice. More specifically it also addresses how to sharpen methodologies and results and the impacts of deliberative processes.

The two final chapters examine how this networked study was constructed and conducted and how the dynamics of communication (press strategies, publicity mechanisms and so on) operate in a research process. The chapter called Networked Research: A Decentralized, Participatory Study, was written by Sebastião Soares, the study’s technical coordinator. It addresses three dimensions of this networked endeavour: the reason for setting up a network of organizations to conduct the study, including a balance of the risks and gains of this option; the logic on how the network functioned, including a description of the stages in setting up this organizational arrangement and the resources used during the research to bring it to a successful conclusion; and lastly, the network itself, its participants and some of the results it yielded.

In the final chapter, Brazilian Youth and Democracy: The Press Campaign, journalist Rogério Jordão analyzes the role of communication in publicizing the study. He describes the media response to the results, highlighting the importance of an integrated approach to thinking about communications (involving partners, NGOs, press and so on), and how best to use the media in building democracy in information.

Finally, the thinking and analyses presented in this publication join existing knowledge about Brazilian and international – particularly Latin American – youth, thereby broadening the debate, influencing youth policies, and fostering stronger support and opportunity networks to enable youth in all of its diversity to envisage another possible world.

The dialogue is open!

Document(s) 4 de 11