Juventude rural e assentamentos de reforma agrária: trajetórias e experiências coletivas.

Abstract

In this Master Dissertation, we analyze the youth in the land reform settlements. The methodology used was the analysis of individual trajectories of youth settlers as a heuristic approach to understand the youth present alternatives as well as their future perspectives. The research pursued three main objectives. First, to analyze in what extent the work done in the plots of land allow then to provide their needs and to fulfill their potentialities. Second, to understand the different strategies to earn an income. In this context, we seek to understand how the youth understand the experience of migration to the urban centers of the country or to the Zona da Mata in the Northeast, where the young workers are recruited to the hard work of cutting sugar cane. We evaluate both the effects (social and cultural) of the young workers when they returned to their place. Third, we analyze the effects of innovation actions (craft workshops and training programs) offered to the youth groups by NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and Universities in the dynamics of land reform settlements, specially related to the youth. The field research was developed in three land reform settlements in municipality of Pilões, Brejo Paraibano Micro-region, in the State of Paraíba. The first chapter is a broad contextualization of the settlements with a social and economic description of the municipality, its history and main characteristics of the region where the field work was done. In the second chapter, we revise the theories on family peasant farming as well as we examine the debate in this field. In the third and fourth chapters, we examine the specific object of this dissertation. The third one analyses the position of the young people in the settlements and the fourth analyzes the trajectories of four cases taken as representatives of the young settlers. In the final part, we present some results of the research and of the theoretical debate in the field.