Youth in contemporary times are constantly exposed to profound transformations resulting from the economic, political and social field,
Youth; Social Representations; Future
Youth in contemporary times are constantly exposed to profound transformations resulting from the economic, political and social field, which influence their transitions to adult life. The consumer society and ostentation mark inequalities that generate anguish, anxiety and frustration. The ideal to be achieved always seems distant and unattainable for young people. There are several youth groups with particular and specific characteristics that suffer multicultural influences. Therefore, there is no unitary youth culture, but youth cultures, with converging and diverging points, involving thoughts and actions that are sometimes common and at other times diverse. Studies on youth, for the most part, demonstrate that the theme “youth issues” is always present as a phenomenon that is the target of concerns and debates, especially in relation to social issues related to this phase of life and the possible coping of young people in accessing to public policies and guarantee of rights in the Brazilian context. Youth is conceptually taken as a social construction, related to the identification and sharing of customs; a social category with its own characteristics, experienced in a unique way for each subject and inserted in the social field, in view of its structures and organizations, which contribute and affect young people in their training processes. This research aims to identify, together with young university students from 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. The social representations are informative and explanatory regarding the nature of intra and intergroup social ties and the relationships between individuals and their social environment. Therefore, using it confers a high interpretative potential to the object of study, allowing the exposition of the meaning systems that are produced and shared by a group, promoting access to a fertile ground that presents perceptions about their realities. We will address the Central Core Theory more specifically in search of the possible structure of social representations about the future. For data collection, structured questionnaires using closed questions and free evocation tasks with the inducing term future will be used. We will use the questionnaire via Google Forms The research field will be related to the university space, with students from public and private institutions participating. Within this universe, for a convenience choice, 200 young people between 18 and 29 years old who are studying undergraduate or graduate courses in the year 2023 will be listed.