Do quilombo à universidade pública: acesso e estratégia de resistências no território da UFT - Miracema

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the trajectories of quilombola students from the Social Work program at the Federal University of Tocantins (UFT), Miracema campus, with the aim of understanding the challenges faced in the process of admission, the resistance strategies for permanence, and the socio-territorial dimensions that shape their experiences within the academic space. The university is understood here as a symbolic and material territory, historically marked by exclusions, where quilombola students construct re-existences through the affirmation of their identities, cultures, and memories. The research engages with the concepts of territory, territoriality, and quilombo, based on the critical perspective of Beatriz Nascimento, who conceives quilombo as a collective project of Black society, structured around ancestry and political struggle. The methodology adopted is qualitative in nature, grounded in oral history, and involved the mapping and listening to quilombola students at UFT. The narratives revealed trajectories marked by historical inequalities, institutional racism, and the absence of specific permanence policies, but also by community ties, spirituality, support networks, and affirmative actions. The accounts demonstrate that the permanence of these subjects in higher education does not occur without daily struggles, and that “aquilombar-se” within the university means constructing territories of struggle and belonging. By valuing traditional knowledge, cultural expressions such as the súcia, and connections with their territories of origin, the students affirm that the university can be a space of transformation when it recognizes the plurality of the subjects who comprise it. This research, therefore, reaffirms the importance of listening to quilombola voices within academia as a strategy to break with the colonial logic that still structures higher education in Brazil.