Young College Students: Within Physical and Numerical Territories, Different Processes for Individuation

The intention of this research is to present the results of the comparative study made between young college students connected to two Brazilian universities: a public-state university located in an urban environment marked by agribusiness; the other being a public-communitarian institution located in an urban-metropolitan environment, marked by a strong and vigorous industry base. The two groups that were studied circulate in physical territories, as well as in numerical/digital territories. In the socialization and sociability processes that they experience, they reveal circulative practices marked by similarities and differences. The majority of the youngsters connected to the public-state university exercise a student-life in a style that is termed “social moratorium”, circulating through the territories of family-home, university and cyber space. Many of them undergo transient or permanent migratory processes. On the other hand, a significant percentage of youths connected to the public-communitarian university combine their university-student condition to a job, where they work, and this is why they add working time/space to the circulative processes experienced by the public-university youth. Thus, if there are intersecting points that mark the condition of these young college students, there is also a diversity of juvenile experiences that differentiates the two groups much beyond the social differences/inequalities caused by gender, race/ethnical and place of abode. Therefore, throughout their student life cycle, they demand distinct “supports” and experience dissimilar individuation processes.