"Majority age and exclusion of poor youth in Brazil"

This paper aims to debate how civil and criminal majority age in Brazil becomes a practice of criminalizing and punishing poor brazilian´s youth. The objective is to understand how the experience of reaching majority age, 18 years old in Brazil, becomes a punishment and how it impacts the trajectory, the socialization and citizenship of youth. The aim is to debate how, in this context, happens the transition from youth to adulthood and the political and social world.

The question arises because children and teenagers have some special protection in Brazil, with benefits of legislation or public policies. But youth in vulnerable situations is out of "complacency" only because of majority age, which states that a person over 18 is considered “capable”. 

If a young person turns 18 and lives in a shelter must go away. If a crime is committed one day before reaching the majority, a young person is judged according to some special law, but if the crime is committed one day after,  the young person  will be judged by the Criminal Code and receive the punishment of an adult. In the same way, if a young person is over 18 years and lives on the streets, he will not have access to many policies, although there is criticism about them.

The data for this paper were coded from a documentary research on the Brazilian legislation and studies to map the poor brazilian´s youth, as well official statistics and surveys about youth. Three situations of personal and social vulnerability will be considered: youth crime, street youth/homeless and youth shelters. In addition, it will be analyzed the strategies of these young people to build their own citizenship.