Ações afirmativas no Ensino Superior Público e as (im)possibilidades de enfrentamento da reprodução das desigualdades raciais e de classe

Abstract

Considering the change in the profile of university students, after the advent of the quota system, which contributed in an elementary way to the access of the so-called rabble in universities, the necessary incorporation of strategies that enable their permanence is justified. Thus, the primary objective of this research is to understand the retention phenomenon among quota students at an IFES in Minas Gerais, with the theoretical scope of reflections on the reproduction of inequalities in the structures of racial and class relations within the scope of the education system. It is justified that affirmative actions in public higher education, especially the policy of quotas and student assistance, assume relevance as they can be configured as ways of confronting racial and class inequalities, so rooted in Brazilian society. Furthermore, the phenomenon of retention in Brazilian public higher education has been shown to be important in determining, for example, the success rate of a university and also because it is one of the indicators to verify the effectiveness of student assistance. Specific objectives are the identification of conditioning factors that influence the retention rates of quota students and the interpretation of the conditions of retention and whether these are linked to aspects related to the research subject's personal (individual trajectory) and university experience. It is a qualitative research, with a biographical approach, whose method for data collection was the conduct of interviews with voice recording, conducted from the methodological directions of the oral life history. The research subjects are students from the quota system, residents of IFES student accommodation and who have retention, named and identified as quota students. For data analysis, narrative analysis was chosen. The notes, analyzed through the results, show that the cultural arbitrary inculcated, through symbolic violence, contributes a lot for the quota holders to continue experiencing difficulties in their academic trajectories, impacting on retention. The data point to the fact that basic and expanded student assistance, linked to teaching, may be an important strategy to expand the stock of cultural capital of the rabble and, consequently, provide the opportunity for its conclusion.