Brazil's new cycle is its youth!

For the United Nations, August 12th is International Youth Day; in Brazil, for the purposes of public policy, young people are those between 15 and 29 years old. This represents approximately 51 million Brazilians. Within this segment, we see a worsening of some of the most important indicators of social inequality, which, in itself, justifies special attention from the State to this age group. Only recently, however, has Brazil begun to recognize youth – and the overcoming of challenges related to it – as an object of public policy. This recognition occurred in the first half of the last decade, with the establishment, in 2003, of the first Special Commission within the Chamber of Deputies to discuss the issue and, subsequently, in 2005, with the creation of the National Secretariat and the National Youth Council. Before that, the topic existed only in isolated and sporadic experiences in municipalities. However, after almost a decade since the establishment of the National Youth Policy, it can be argued that formal recognition has not been able to generate a set of policies conceived from the "place" of youth. Perhaps in no other area is it so common to confuse conservative orientation with progressive vision, often taking one in place of the other. Regrettably.

To better assimilate a perspective that I consider more advanced on the subject – and respecting everyone's right to partially or totally disagree with the content I present – ​​I kindly suggest two preliminary points to the reader: one, to detach themselves from the cliché that has become a paradigm of false Brazilian liberalism, that "one should not give a man a fish, but teach him how to fish," and the other, to try to remember what they wanted to be but could not be due to lack of opportunities or other vicissitudes. Above all, for the dialogue I propose, it is necessary to recognize the considerable distance in meaning between the verbs "to be" and "to have," and that, when the objective is to constitute and institute public policies aimed at human development in a society, it is imperative not to confuse the meaning of both and to make it clear that, in a gradation of values, "being" is superior to "having."

What I want to talk about is: why the Brazilian state should directly finance, through various means, the life trajectories of its young people with the goal of emancipating an entire generation; how it could do so; what we would gain from it and what we would lose by not doing so. I believe there is still time to better take advantage of a historical window of opportunity called the "demographic bonus" by instituting creative policies to support young Brazilians and their life trajectories. The bonus is the result of a radical change in the country's demographic structure; historically, we have always had an unfavorable ratio between the number of people who need to draw from the national income, without necessarily being able to contribute to its increase, and what economists call the "working-age population," that is, people of an age to contribute to increasing the national income. This situation is undergoing a process of reversal. We have never had so many young people in the country's demographic composition – and theoretically, we never will again – which projects an unprecedented proportion for the Working Age Population (71% of the total in 2022). From now on, our population begins to age, on average, due to increased life expectancy coupled with low fertility rates. It is time, therefore, to make massive investments in young people that represent a bet on a new generation of Brazilians.

It is true that the advances of the last decade have mostly benefited young people; they are, after all, the greatest beneficiaries of the expansion of technical and higher education, as well as the situation of full employment. The model of the federal institutes has brought job market qualifications, through Pronatec, to environments and corners previously unthinkable. And it is clear that PROUNI, ENEM, and the expansion of places and creation of new federal universities have completely altered the bleak perspective that young people projected for their own lives in the 90s. Nevertheless, the condition of youth in Brazil is still related to social risks, and it is expected that around 50 life trajectories will be interrupted by external causes over the course of a year. Recognizing the enormous advances and their impact on the lives of all Brazilians and, therefore, of young people, it is necessary, however, to acknowledge that we have dedicated little imagination, inventiveness, and political priority to this group so far.

The demands related to youth are multiple, and governments have sought to address them with classic, mostly necessary policies associated with formal education and vocational training or qualification for the job market; in the area of ​​public security, very little progress has been made in isolated experiences, but the hallmark is still the repressive containment of a supposed "potential for violence" in young people; in the area of ​​social participation and institutional dialogue, we have almost nothing to offer beyond the creation of formal structures such as youth councils, at the national or local level.

Beyond conferences (two national ones) and other formal spaces, the Brazilian State has never mobilized its youth in a democratic or positive way; this social actor has never been recognized in its entirety. This is because public policies choose one of the possible dimensions of the youth condition, and little or nothing of these policies is implemented in an integrated manner and under the coordination of the theme itself; in this context, the young person is a student, or an individual seeking insertion into the job market, or a citizen in conflict with the law, or a socially and economically excluded citizen lacking social policies. They end up being a kind of "non-adult," but never simply a young person – or a more complex one, as you prefer. The fact is, without understanding this actor in its entirety, we will continue to develop public policy offerings that do not concern them, but rather the expectations placed upon them.

More often than not, the diversity of youth is conceptually acknowledged, only to be denied in the real-life actions of governments, relegating the issue to policies that seek to standardize and galvanize a paradigm of the "good" young person – hardworking and aware of their responsibilities. And this is conservative. Not that young people shouldn't have responsibilities, not that they can't work – many even want to – but the role of the State in integrating new generations should be more than just reminding them of this. Basically, it should be to guarantee everyone the right to fully live their youth, with experimentation and choices, without the full experience of youth meaning social risks of any kind. Extending the right to be young to all young people should be the mission of youth issues within the scope of public powers.

However, the persistent difficulty in dealing with youth policies within governments has been the hegemony of a conservative view on them, with an aggravating factor: conservatism on this issue, as already mentioned, does not necessarily correspond to ideological positions on the right or the left. It is common – and hegemonic in the left – to find a salvationist discourse in the fight against drug use, for example, or to conceive of policies that expand the tutelage of the State and the family over young people, contrary to the commitment to fostering the construction of autonomy and critical awareness. On the other hand, the burden of expectations and responsibilities placed on schools is immense and growing, to the same extent that we offer a school that is increasingly restrictive and distant from the reality of young people. Furthermore, the common sense of the "new" discourse for education in Brazil is the universalization of so-called full-time schools; More often than not, this discourse, being easy to understand and accept, presents a frightening perspective of society in which all citizens – especially the poor, I presume – will have, from around the age of four, a ten-hour daily schedule to fulfill in some educational establishment that will prepare them to effectively fulfill the daily schedule in the labor market until the day of their retirement. What could be more conservative?

Putting young people in school all day to "get them off the streets" is a solution that prioritizes form over content, the opposite of the concept of, for example, an "educating city" where the street is nothing more than the link between public spaces that integrate in the mission of guaranteeing the social, cultural, economic, and political inclusion of all. Similarly, conservative discourse appropriates youth manifestations – Hip Hop culture, sports, and some forms of social engagement – ​​and reduces them to mere "lifelines."

So, what can we do to offer young people advanced public policies? First, choose a worldview to determine their goals and challenges; then, calibrate the government's vision of this social actor. If the definition of what it means to be young encompasses many and multiple possibilities, the interest of government action should be defined by the most important and comprehensive among them; in my opinion, in the current context and given the challenges indicated by social indicators, the pursuit of autonomy should be the choice, among the characteristics of the youth condition in Brazil, to determine the scope of public policy actions for young people. From this, the aegis under which these policies are constituted would then be that of emancipation, thus distinguishing them from state policy for children and adolescents, for example, which should be guided much more by protective guardianship.

What can be offered to young people from this perspective of public policy? Good literature on the subject in Brazil proposes a model that combines actions to coordinate between areas and spheres of government with new, targeted actions; and among these targeted actions, "youth reference centers" have sought to establish themselves, without much success so far, as basic service units for young people in their territories. Recognition of these facilities will be essential for the advancement of youth policies in Brazil. Health policy cannot be implemented without emergency care units and hospitals, just as education policy cannot be implemented without educational establishments; why do we think it's possible to structure a broad public policy offering for a segment of 51 million Brazilians without a territorial reference point, without a basic service unit? Impossible, I venture to say, making it clear, I hope, that the role of the school is not to be the basic unit of youth public policies, but rather of education – one of the dimensions of interest to young people.

Through the Reference Centers, therefore, as a basic unit, a diverse range of actions can be offered that are of interest to young people, but, above all, it is possible to guarantee what is fundamental to this issue: the active participation of the beneficiaries of the policy. The Federal Government could promote a financing program for the implementation of these units throughout the country, including offering models with distinct characteristics; part of this network could constitute public youth hostels, for example, providing the possibility of establishing cultural exchange programs within a country of such extensive spatial and cultural dimensions; a stable financing system for youth policy would then guarantee, through the network of Reference Centers, income programs associated with increased school performance and school attendance, youth associativism and entrepreneurship, and coexistence to strengthen social ties among young people and between them and their communities.

I once dreamed of a youth policy that would create "youth villages" throughout the country; the Youth Reference Centers would be the "ocaras" – the public spaces for social interaction – of these "villages"; a public policy concept aimed at improving the quality of social cohesion among young Brazilians. And here I finally arrive at what I call "direct financing" of youth trajectories. Programs that would guarantee that income blockages would not lead to other blockages in life trajectories, such as mobility or access to education and public spaces, for example. Above all, that they would not allow the blockage represented by structural violence, which annihilates about 50 of these trajectories in a year, to lead to the descent. It is rightly said that the origin of the phenomenon of violence against young people in Brazil is not only related to the issue of income, but that it is a factor of inequality that denotes the absence of opportunities for emancipation for a significant portion of these young people.

In the fight against misery and extreme poverty, we have already worked with the concept of directly financing life trajectories towards emancipation; this is the essence of income transfer programs conditioned on maintaining formal education and health, for example. In the Federal District, we proposed and approved by law (Law 5.142/2013) a model of state attention to young people that includes Youth Centers as a reference unit and the Youth Citizenship Income Program, which, if implemented, will consist of the articulation between a cash benefit – paid directly to low-income youth – conditioned on remaining in school and improving academic performance, combined with actions for qualification, social interaction, and strengthening of social ties.

Much more can be developed and done from this conception of youth policy; and here, I refer to the second preliminary point I asked the reader to consider: what did you want to be but couldn't, what dreams were you unable to realize due to lack of opportunities or other vicissitudes? In the lives of millions of young Brazilians today, income barriers, mobility limitations, and all those related to inequality are the vicissitudes that will frustrate their life trajectories; removing these barriers today will undoubtedly make us a much more advanced society in the future. The new cycle of development for Brazil is its youth!