Limits and advances of permanence policy: implications for affections and experiences in higher education

Abstract

Assistance should be an instrument for promoting social justice and coping with historical inequalities in the context of Brazilian higher education. Through the practices of its implementation, in this text the affections and experiences reproduced in this context are observed. The present proposal aims to critically reflect on the insertion of the National Assistance Policy, in the Brazilian federal public universities, moreover on its affections and political experiences. For this, it uses the professional experience of Psychology in this new field of action, from a Vygotskian perspective. The results show that government programs and actions improved the level of access, with the breadth and diversity of students in the university from 2001 to 2012. However, there are challenges that remain in their permanence, as well as in obtaining success, experiencing potential affections, overcoming the fragmentation of fields of knowledge, as well as of emphasis on compensatory and welfare actions. The results also show that to single out the economic fragilities can reaffirm stigmas that dim the subject as an active individual in the establishment of affective encounters and empowering (co-)existences. Psychology must, therefore, reflect on the emancipatory practices developed in the context of permanence politics, based on the conception of ethical-political subject, produced through the appropriation and transformation of cultural practices, mediated in the social relations (co-)allocated in the process historical experience.