The offer of social projects and children’s actions Childhood experience and the construction of a “target population”

Abstract

This article seeks to reflect on the relations involved in the offer of social projects and the participation of subjects to whom they are destined. Our text begins with the analysis of the way the public of these projects is “constructed”, an issue that emerged during our doctoral research, focused on the understanding of ways in which the “target population” relates to these programs. The study was developed through ethnographic research in a working-class neighborhood in Porto Alegre. We suppose that the meanings that emerge from these social projects result from situational relations involving the experiences of the population attended by the programs. This article defends that, rather than a simple equation involving offer and demand, the construction of the target-group for these programs is the consequence of a relation. In pursuing this argument, we examine the institutional procedures to “recruit” the public, as well as the behavior of the “target public” facing these programs.