“Vivências em rede: avanços e desafios das catadoras de mangaba em Sergipe”

Abstract

The dissertation analyzes the advances and challenges of mangaba extractivist women participating in the Project "Solidarity Network of Sergipe’s Women". Methodologically, it was a qualitative research, using documentary and empirical sources, through focus groups. The analysis, supported by historical-dialectical materialism, had as a reference the holding of the I and II Meetings of Mangaba Pickers of Sergipe, held in 2007 and 2009, and the participation of women in the focus groups, in 2024. The meetings allowed the women to self-identify themselves as mangaba pickers, which enabled the construction of an identity and a process of collective struggle for the realization of rights as workers. The advances and challenges in the collective trajectory of the mangaba pickers are observed from the contradictions inherent to reality and the correlations of forces that drove the constitution of their identity as social subjects in struggle for rights. In a focus group with women representatives of five mangaba pickers associations, the strategies of collective struggle for the right to remain in mangaba harvesting as a work process were examined. The results bring the perception of these women about transformative aspects of the work in mangaba harvesting in Sergipe, against the backdrop of the reality described in the annals of the state meetings. It also reflects on the contribution of the Solidarity Network of Sergipe’s Women in this trajectory. It is concluded that, in the trajectory of the collective organization for the work of mangaba harvesting in Sergipe, the participation of women in the associations of mangaba pickers allowed the breaking of barriers against the invisibility of work in mangaba harvesting in the face of the logic of capital, at the same time that it was faced with the government's neglect in relation to the conquest of social rights.