Overcoming prejudices in emancipatory education: the remaining group

Abstract

The Remnant Group was one of working parties of the project "Phoenix: Challenge in the rebirth of subjective citizenship". The group consisted of young people who integrated a government educational institution, current called assistant philanthropic institution, in which they could not be members after their 18th birthday. Consequently, they had to return to the streets. Participating research was the methodology employed and interventions with these young people aimed at re-signifying their experiences which had been shaken by self-aggressive identifications. Debates tried to de-mystify biases linked to their social condition of poverty. The young people repeated in their activities the danger labels that society imposed upon them. The mediation of the dangerous social class concepts, accusation category and the internalization of social violence was undertaken. They became aware of the necessity of protecting themselves from society and the State apparatus. In our dialogues it was agreed that the manifestation of detailed intimate feelings was not allowed. Different procedures were used and the repeated themes consisted of social violence in its most diverse nuances. The most important difficulty comprised the management of the intensity of the consolidation of social stigmas internalized by the young people to whom were attributed the connotations of dangerousness and evilness.