Política de assistência social a partir das percepções de seus usuários: experiências vivenciadas no Cras do município do Rio Grande / RS

Abstract

This analysis has as its starting point a question, referring to the process of understanding and meaning that users have when relating to public equipment, through government services and programs. The aim is to understand elements related to the particularities and singularities of the agents' daily lives, through the analysis of their interactions with state intervention, via Social Policies. Access to these policies can mean an improvement in material living conditions, but also the construction of symbolic references in relation to both themselves and in relation to what they understand as “public policy”, “philanthropy”, “poverty”, “autonomy ” among other categories that concern interactions between the individual agent and the state apparatus. To develop this study, qualitative research was used, with the primary source being the speeches of the twenty women interviewed who were beneficiaries of the Bolsa Família Program. The empirical universe of the research is the Social Assistance Reference Center, a public unit responsible for promoting Basic Social Protection to users in a given territory. The results obtained in this research therefore encompass the understanding that users have about the Social Assistance Policy, which still demonstrate an permeated welfare culture, to the detriment of the right to citizenship.