Resiliência como resistência: a trajetória dos estudantes negros cotistas da UTFPR na região sudoeste do Paraná

Abstract

Quota policy by the Brazilian Federal Decree Nº 12711/2012 has granted access to public higher education for a parcel of the population that has historically been kept from their rights, which is the case of the black population. In southwestern Paraná State - Brazil, one of the institutions that has been providing such type of access is the Federal University of Technology – Parana (UTFPR) present in the municipalities of Dois Vizinhos, Francisco Beltrão, and Pato Branco. This thesis is the result of a research process that sought to identify the profile of students engaged in the quota policy for black people in three campuses of UTFPR and to unveil students’ strategies of endurance to complete their degree. Data collected from the Institutional Academic System (SAI - UTFPR), from the UTFPR campuses located in southwestern Paraná, from 2013 to 2018, were used to set up student profiles. Interviews were also carried out with self-declared “dark-skinned” students in quota policy based on information they provided in institutional forms, thus providing additional information to the analysis to unveil their strategies to continue in the institution. Content analysis of the interviews showed a profile of racial quota students who join the University in a socially and economically vulnerable situation when compared to other social quota students. Reports also pointed out that they encounter regional and institutional difficulties in adapting. Excerpts from students’ speech indicate that racial quota holders perceive racism in their daily lives, but try not to make such situations explicit, thus indicating a resilience regarding the racism faced. Therefore, silence, self-invisibility, and stubbornness become marks of resilience that express a form of endurance until the completion of graduation. The present thesis, thus, defends that black people invisibility by official historiography in the southwestern region of Paraná can be subverted by the willful visibility present in the trajectories of dark-skinned students who join the University as racial quota holders, many of which inspired by their own families, insofar as they adjust their blackness as a resilient strategy of endurance.