Banca de DEFESA: GEOVANA RODRIGUES DE OLIVEIRA

SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS ABOUT THE FUTURE AND YOUTH BY YOUNG BRAZILIAN

Youth; Social Representations; Future

Contemporary youth are constantly exposed to profound transformations arising in the economic, political and social fields, which influence their transitions into adulthood. Youth is conceptually seen as a social construction, related to identification and sharing of customs; a social category with its own characteristics, experienced in a unique way by each subject and inserted in the social field, given its structures and organizations, which contribute to and affect young people in their training processes. The present research aimed to identify, together with young university students in the municipality of Vassouras, the structure of social representations of the future.  The Theory of Social Representations proposed by Serge Moscovici is the main theoretical contribution that will make it possible to identify the socially shared thinking of young people about the future. We will approach the Central Core Theory in a more specific way in search of the possible structure of social representations about the future.  For data collection, structured questionnaires were used using closed questions and free recall tasks with the inducing term future and youth. The questionnaire was used via Google Forms with 124 participants. The results demonstrate that the future is seen as uncertain, revealing fear and uncertainty, but family and hope remain present. As for youth, social representations add elements such as learning and independence with strength in the element of resistance. It is concluded that even though youth brings achievements of independence and strength, the future still brings fear and uncertainty.