Implicações psicossociais do preconceito e do racismo em estudantes africanos da Universidade da Integração Internacional da Lusofonia Afro-Brasileira

Abstract

The immigration process of Africans to Brazil and Ceará for the purpose of studying has been straightening in the last decades, especially since 2012, after the first selection processes for the Universidade da Integração Internacional da Lusofonia Afro-brasileira (UNILAB). These young people have suffered the daily experience of prejudice and racism, related to their condition of belonging to a social minority, being the psychosocial implication the research problem of this dissertation. The general objective, then, was to analyze the psychosocial implications of the prejudice and racism in the UNILAB Africans students; and the specific objectives are to identify the demonstrations of prejudice and racism from the reports about the experience of immigration for the purpose of studying, to analyze the psychosocial implications - such as thoughts, actions and feelings from these demonstrations and to describe strategies developed by African students at UNILAB in order to face prejudice and racism. This investigation has a qualitative approach, being fourteen the interviewed students, belonging to different African nationalities of Portuguese as official language (Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe). All of them are students at UNILAB, living in Ceará as beneficiaries of social programs for student assistance. The data were run through Content Analysis with software Atlas Ti. Our main results describe different exclusion practices, as much as individual, institutional and cultural manifestations of racism, predominantly understood as cordial racism. These practices are related to processes of social categorization and stigmatization, which, by its turn, result in the assignment of social stereotypes, as well as processes of social discrimination and social suffering (shame, humiliation, fear, rejection). As a way to face this reality, we observe the importance of assertion policies for black and african identity by these young people, as much as support offered by established social networks and collective organization in search of acknowledgment and respect. We conclude that racism suffered by these young people in Brazil is enhanced by processes of distinction between Brazilian and African groups, which have a strong impact upon the psychosocial experience of migration for educational purposes.