“THE MOVEMENT WAS NOT IN VAIN”

Narratives of Student Participants in the 2016 University Occupation Movement

Abstract

The Brazilian student movement, both in the secondary and university spheres, can be seen as a relevant agent of dissent and a vanguard in the pursuit of educational and social changes. Notably, one of the significant aspects that garnered national attention was the student occupation movements in educational institutions, secondary schools, and universities, which took place in the years 2015 and 2016. Thus, this manuscript aims to analyze the contributions of the student occupation movement that occurred in 2016 at the Federal University of Ceará (UFC) from the perspective of its participants. As a method, the narrative of lived experiences was used, through the analysis of interviews conducted with former student participants in the 2016 occupations. The interviews obtained were transcribed and subjected to data analysis based on Objective Hermeneutics, an analytical method used for the investigation of social interactions. The reflections from this study indicate that, despite being constructed in the same context, there is a unique vision and individual experience of each student, which contributes to a collective struggle proposal. The accounts presented here affirm the impact that the movement had on the academic community, the occupied institutions, the governing authorities, and, especially, on the interrelation between the individual students and the collective movement of these youth.