Education, work and youth: Research and public policies in Brazil

In Brazil, the contemporary youth’s condition is produced by the recent expansion of the opportunities of scolarization and by the diversity of experiences that young people produce in social instances that are different from the tradicional institutions of social reproduction. The school that they were able to access didn’t produce an effective quality. Its work is based on representations that have little to do with the concrete adolescents and young people. It is therefore necessary to incorporate the discussion of research results that point to new possibilities for design of public policies considering the prospects of young people themselves. This is what we want to make the search type from State of the Art on the production Brazilian post-graduate students developed between 1999 and 2006 (Sposito, 2009) and raised from the portal CAPES / MEC sites and Program Post Graduation in the areas of Education, Social Sciences and Human Services. Focus will be theses and dissertations that have researched young people, life experiences and meanings that they attribute to work. Will be considered 91 studies on young people and work, specifically 16 productions that bring new possibilities and thematic reflections to focus the analysis on actual working conditions of these subjects, the work takes place in their lives and relationships between work and the constitution of their identities. Highligth will be the dominant brand in the studies, the ways of approaching the issue of youth, the theoretical and conceptual predominant and the methodological strategies. The perspective is note the advances in knowledge produced about young people and work, challenges faced by new studies and those dealing with the design and implementation of public policies directed to young people.