Tocando em frente: trajetórias de negros/as cotistas egressos/as do ensino técnico do IFMA (2016 - 2022)

Abstract

This research is part of the Education and Diversity line of the Graduate Program in Education (PPGEdu) at the Federal University of Grande Dourados (UFGD) and is linked to the Research Group on Education and Information and Communication Technology (GEPETIC). Law No. 12.711/2012 reserves 50% of the seats in Brazilian federal universities and institutes for public school students, allocating a portion to Black, Brown (pardo), Indigenous students, persons with disabilities, and quilombola communities. This dissertation examines the trajectories of Black graduates who entered integrated technical upper-secondary programs through the racial quota policy at the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Maranhão (IFMA) between 2016 – the first year of quota-based admissions – and 2022, the reference year for policy evaluation. The central objective is to assess the social mobility achieved by these students, arguing that the outcomes of affirmative action present limited progress due to the absence of a quota ecology, that is, a coordinated set of actions linking early schooling to labor market insertion. The study is exploratory, adopts quantitative and qualitative approaches, and is grounded in the cycle of prescription, description, analysis, and proposition (PDPA), drawing on theoretical contributions from Bobbio (2004), Bourdieu (1989), Munanga (2000), Rawls (1971), and Dworkin (2002), as well as Ciavatta (2011), Feres Júnior (2013), Frigotto (2005), and Gomes, L. (2005), who address quotas and technical education. Data were produced through bibliographic and documentary research and questionnaires applied between 2016 and 2022 across a sample of three of IFMA’s twenty-nine campuses—São Luís (Historic Center), Caxias, and São Raimundo das Mangabeiras—and analyzed using the Panel Study method. The findings demonstrate that providing access to technical education for socially vulnerable students is an effective strategy for confronting socioeconomic segregation, helping to break historical cycles of exclusion, and that Black quota-based graduates show significant advances in social and economic mobility, including improved employment conditions, increased income, and expanded social and political participation, evidencing the concrete impacts of affirmative action policies.