Overview

Based on research carried out in the outskirts of Brasília, between 2013 and 2016, it was possible to reflect on the worldviews of the police officers regarding their practices and the representations of their actions directed towards youth. The proposal consisted in mapping who these actors are and what they think, shedding light on the social and cultural elements that guide this daily relationship. As in a game of mirrors, the analysis of the narratives of the different intervenients aimed to explore how young people see the police and how the latter sees and classifies those who are controlled and/or protected by them. Among the various dimensions explored, one stands out as the focus of this seminar: the fact that police and youth were (almost always) at the same age.

In addition, they had very similar ethnic and geographical backgrounds and sometimes shared the same identity values as per visual aesthetics, musical tastes, and lifestyles in general; in actuality, these possible similarities were not (and still are not) enough to build relations of mutual recognition capable of facilitating the exercise of alterity and guarantee of rights in most daily encounters between youth and police. Among the different qualitative research techniques adopted during the field work, such as: interviews, focus groups, participant observation in public schools and police units, one of them proved to be fruitful, translating into discussion workshops where (young) police officers and young people from different parts of the city were invited to talk. One of the experiences resulted in an audio-visual record that was translated into the short documentary entitled Young People and Police: a possible dialogue?

This experience - which will be shared during the seminar - gathers fragments of the narratives of the actors involved who, in a frank and direct way, exposed their visions about life in the peripheral cities that surround the capital of Brazil. It is from what has been said and not said by the actors that I seek to sociologically problematize the notions of law, citizenship, conflict, racism, diversity and difference that emerged in the researched context.

Bio note

Haydé Caruso - Professor and Researcher/Department of Sociology, University of Brasília; visiting researcher CES/University of Coimbra;  associate researcher at the Institute of Comparative Studies in Institutional Conflict Management - IneAC-UFF)