Vigiar e assistir: reflexões sobre o direito à assistência da "adolescência pobre"

Abstract

In this article we analyze the category "poor adolescent" as a whole population to be attended by Brazilian government from the standpoint of Michel Foucault's genealogical perspective. Thus, we consider adolescence as an invention and effect of certain exercises of knowledge and power placing it as the object of Social Assistance. We try to make analysis about the political consequences and the subjection resulting on Minors Code and the Statute of Children and Adolescents - ECA. The analysis of such documents indicate how their production focus on a specific population, producing an identity that will say poor, managing and producing behaviors, ways of living, with appropriate forms of happiness conditional upon the legality. In this article, we aim to link analyzes concerning the history of paternalistic thinking on "poor adolescent" in the Brazilian context and how this group became the target of a set of State practices and public policies.