Habilitações escolares e percursos de pobreza nos bairros ...

ABSTRACT
With this work, we aim at analysing the impoverishment processes in degraded
neighbourhoods in Lisbon, and the joint influence that schooling and the "life
experience" exercise on these processes. Previous studies demonstrated that poverty
has dimensions other than income. It leaves the question of poverty in its connection
with schooling and with "life experience" has a whole. The scope of this study is limited
to the descendants of migrants from the countryside, and excludes immigrants and
descendants.
Thus, in Chapter One, we analyse the concepts of poverty and social exclusion
as offered by economics, sociology and anthropology. We analyse how poverty is
beyond the insufficiency of income; how it is characterized by the lack of access to
social systems and the exclusion of social customs. Furthermore, we analyse how the
concept of "social exclusion" emerged in the political milieu, and was developed by
severa1 areas of knowledge into concept. This concept is defined by a process of
rupture of social bonds due to social-economical mechanisms. This concept is
analysed through the contribution of different authors, the notion of Stigma advanced
by Erving Goffman (1 963) being the most current. We analyse whether poverty creates
with each generation certain habits as we maintain the doubt of whether that is a
culture per se. We conclude that poverty is a form of social exclusion and that certain
types of social exclusion may cause poverty.
In Chapter Two we outline studies about inequalities in education. We note the
backwardness of Portugal in the European literacy and schooling movements. We
introduce the psychological approach and conclude for the negative influence of
poverty on the child's intellectual development. We introduce the sociological and
educational anthropology approaches and we conclude that the theory of the negative
role of the school in the reproduction of social strata (Bourdieu et a/, 1970) still grounds
today's research, while giving grater focus to the role of the person within the process.
We distinguish between formal and informal education, institutional education and "life
experience".
In Chapter Three we define the scope and methodology of this work. We justify
the first definition of the problem as a relation between the schooling leve1 and the
paths of poverty. We alert for the fact that is impossible to use the bibliographical
methodology to extrapolate or confirm statistical data, and we defend that method as a
form to deepen an understanding of the causes and concepts of poverty. Thus, we
justify the second definition of the problem as an interpretation in two biographies.