INTERRUPTED FUTURES: YOUTH, TEACHING, AND THE CONTESTED RIGHT TO EDUCATION. A CRITICAL COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE BETWEEN LATIN AMERICA AND EUROPE

Abstract

This article delves deeply into the converging crises that systematically interrupt the educational futures of youth in Brazil and Latin America, placing them in critical dialogue with the contemporary metamorphoses and debates in Europe. Starting from an analysis of the Brazilian "educational blackout" – a concretely documented phenomenon signaling the collapse of the teaching vocation, characterized by the abandonment of teaching as a profession, the extreme precarization of educational labor, and the consequent deterioration of learning conditions – the article outlines a structural picture rooted in decades of neoliberal transformations. Through verified, real, and publicly accessible cases, the article investigates the material and symbolic mechanisms through which austerity policies, managerial reforms, and a market paradigm have undermined the right to education, devalued teaching work, and created insurmountable barriers for youth, especially Black, Indigenous, peripheral, and low-income youth. The narrative then shifts to Europe, analyzing specific and concrete cases such as the United Kingdom (chronic teacher recruitment and retention crisis), France (structural territorial inequalities and challenges following the attacks on secularism), and Sweden (consequences of the marked commodification of the school system through the voucher model). The critical comparison reveals both profound historical and socio-economic contextual divergences and disturbing convergences in the logics of commodification, performative standardized assessment, and the systematic erosion of teachers' professional status. However, the article is not limited to denunciation. It also documents, in both contexts, forms of collective resistance, grassroots-reinvented pedagogical practices, and youth mobilizations that reaffirm education as a common good and a space for democratic construction. The concluding argument contends that the contestation over the right to education is an epistemological and political battle for the very idea of the future, and that its defense requires a radical repositioning of the teaching profession and youth voices at the center of the educational project, moving beyond a utilitarian school model to embrace one of collective emancipation.