For the de-familization of the social assistance policy in Brazil

Abstract

This article aims to problematize the place and role of the family in the Brazilian social assistance policy. Based on a critical analysis of the content of federal laws, regulations, and guidelines enacted since the 1988 Constitution, we highlight the persistent contradictions in the field of social assistance that, on the one hand, seeks to engender individual autonomy and dignity, but on the other hand, implements actions with a strong focus on the family and its maintenance as the central institution of human sociability. We argue that, throughout the implementation of the policy, one can observe a process of familization, through which the family has become the primary object of social assistance and the vehicle through which the other objectives are implemented. Drawing on feminist theories that propose the abolition of the family, we develop an exercise of imagining an inverse process of de-familization of social assistance policy in Brazil.