(I)migração e cidadania: interfaces entre educação superior, trabalho e gênero na perspectiva de estudantes haitianos na Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul

Abstract

Public universities, as spaces for education in the broadest sense, based on the pillars of teaching, extension, and research, play an important role in Brazilian migration/ immigration dynamics, as in the case of the Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul (UFFS), which, since 2013, has promoted actions aimed at the immigrant public, culminating in the creation of the Access and Permanence Program for Immigrant Students (Pró-Imigrante). This study sought to understand the impact of this program's policies, paying special attention to gender issues. Its main objective was to analyze how UFFS's access and retention policies contribute to Haitian immigrants' access to citizenship, considering the interaction between higher education, the world of work, and gender constraints. To address this issue in depth, essential concepts such as citizenship were mobilized, with the central concept being the point of convergence that unites the issues of migration/immigration, work, education, and gender within a context of universal rights and global equality. The concepts of work, education, and gender were addressed as structural dimensions of the migratory experience, which, when interrelated, directly influence the concrete possibilities for immigrants' social and economic integration. Work was understood not only as a means of subsistence, but also as a space for the affirmation of rights and the construction of social belonging. Education, in turn, was analyzed as an instrument of social mobility, with the university being one of the main vectors for promoting citizenship. Gender, as an analytical category, made it possible to highlight the specific inequalities experienced by men and women in the migratory process, showing how different social roles and expectations impact access to public policies and fundamental rights. Thus, using a qualitative approach, the development of this research was divided into three main stages: the first consisted of a literature review; the second involved data collection through interviews with Haitian students at UFFS campi in Chapecó (SC) and Erechim (RS), using a semi-structured script; and, in the third stage, the data collected was analyzed using the Content Analysis method (Bardin, 2016). The research found that migration/immigration in the contemporary world is a complex, multifaceted, and current phenomenon, requiring its study to be approached in an intersectional and interdisciplinary manner. The interviews revealed that the main causes of Haitian migration to Brazil, for the group interviewed, were access to higher education and the search for better living conditions. In addition, the research highlighted barriers faced by Haitian students, such as language, low socioeconomic assistance, long working hours incompatible with study schedules, communication failures between UFFS and the target audience (immigrants), prejudice, the type of work offered to immigrants in the region, low wages, difficulty in obtaining internships, and the tendency of companies to reject students when hiring. When looking at the issue of gender, the research revealed that pregnancy and young children are an even greater impediment for migrant/immigrant women in terms of job opportunities and access to and retention in higher education at UFFS. Finally, the research pointed to UFFS as a promoter of access to partial citizenship, still under construction, for the group surveyed and confirmed the need to develop effective public policies that involve the entire university community and society as a whole, recognizing the importance of giving a voice to those who have historically been excluded from positions of prestige and power, both in academia and in the world of work, and the indispensability of critically and constantly analyzing the mechanisms and programs for access to higher education.