Generational rights and political action: secondary school students occupy the schools

Abstract

Democratic construction relies on the political participation of children and youth, and is not limited to the legal norms that have established the position of subjects of rights for children. In this paper we discuss how the political action of secondary school students, through their occupation of state schools in 2015 and 2016 in Brazil, has politicized intergenerational relationships regarding education and has brought about struggles that aim to secure interests and prerogatives of the younger generation. Even though education has always been deemed a right for the younger generation, our analysis here shows that this right must be qualified as a generational right that places adults and children in opposite and often antagonistic sides. The methodological approach consisted in accompanying different occupations in the state of Rio de Janeiro, in 12 state schools, from April to July 2016. This ethnographic project included visits to the schools, sometimes twice to the same school, visits that had previously been arranged with the communication committees of the occupied schools. The obtained data is discussed here with regard to how the struggle for generational rights can be considered a tool which gives visibility to the generational contradictions implied in people’s rights to education.