“Não somos todos/as iguais”: os discursos de (re)existências de pessoas em situações de rua em Caxias do Sul/RS

Abstract

This dissertation had as general objective to understand the daily life of homeless people in Caxias do Sul - RS and their ways of (re) existing. To this purpose, the theoretical framework of affectivity was used in the exclusion-inclusion dialectic, which proposes reflections that help to understand the ethical-political suffering resulting from the affections caused by social conditions. The aim was to get to know the subjects' unique experiences about exclusion and inclusion policies, that is, the emotions and feelings that affect the body and subjectivity. The procedures used in the construction of the corpus were: dialogues with homeless people, through the register made in field diary; an interview made in a ‘conversation circle’ with five homeless people and some technicians present at the meeting. To comprehensively understand how relations with public policies and civil society organizations experienced, individual interviews were also conducted with professionals from NGOs and Public Policies. The data collected was analyzed from the perspective of thematic analysis, based on content analysis (BARDIN, 2008). As a result, the research showed a diversity of ways of life and resistance of the homeless population in the city of Caxias do Sul / RS. The interlocutors expressed their own meanings and senses for urbanity, demonstrating the importance of looking at homeless population in its uniqueness and integrity, listening to their desires, emotions, and their own life strategies. It is noteworthy that this population experiences ethical-political suffering, through bad encounters experienced on the street, in the form of humiliations, discrimination, demotion, violations of human rights, negative perceptions of public policies, and, mainly, the self blame for being on the street. On the other hand, the street proved to be a space that reflects the multiplicity of the world and the forms of re-existence, even if subjected to the conditions of vulnerability. The social ties built and some artistic workshops, allowed us to identify how much the relationships can become potentializing networks, promoting joy and freedom of expression. The importance of the affection as a category is emphasized, as a path capable of generating ways of coping and resistance in adverse situations, and as an ethical-political phenomenon that must be stimulated within the social assistance services.