Juventude e políticas públicas: bônus ou oportunidades, perdidas?

Abstract

This paper aims at developing reflections about the relationship between the composition of youth in the last few decades in Brazil and the configuration of public policies for this segment. It assumes that the youth is a complex social phenomenon, and it is inserted into a concrete social-historical reality that reflects the tension, conflicts and contradictions that constitute capitalistic society. This analysis is developed from three fields of knowledge: sociology, demography and politics. With demography, we debate numbers, the configu-ration of the “youth wave” phenomenon through coortes juvenis and its im-pacts, confronting this process with the concepts of demographic bonus and window of opportunities. From a sociological point of view, we analyze both the impact of the volume of these coortes juvenis and what the youth repre-sents in creating of public policies. As a parameter, data from two documents that diagnose Brazilian youth are used, each one produced by federal institu-tions on distinct moments: CNPD 1998 and SAE/PR/IPEA 2013. They helped understand the composition of the demographic transition scenario and the transformation of the age structure in the last few decades. We asked if the public policies and government actions developed in the time between the two studies mentioned above effectively considered the impact and impor-tance of this phenomenon, which, according to demographics, only happens once in the history of a country. As a conclusion, going beyond demographics, youth is a complex social phenomenon in the sense that it is appropriated by capitalism, as a fetish for consumer goods and as an exploration of workforce, while public policies try to reach the reality of this phenomenon