Rogério Medeiros

Biography

Rogério Medeiros is an associate professor in the Department of Social Sciences and the graduate programme in sociology at the Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB) in Brazil. During his USIAS Fellowship, he will be hosted by Professor Vincent Dubois within the unit Society, Stakeholders and Governments in Europe (SAGE). His primary area of expertise lies in political sociology, with a focus on social policy research.

He earned his bachelor’s degree in social sciences in 2000 and his master's degree in sociology in 2002 from the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), in Brazil. In 2008, he completed his PhD in sociology at Boston University in the United States. As a Fulbright Visiting Scholar from 2018 to 2019, he conducted research at the Hutchins Center's Afro-Latin American Research Institute (ALARI) at Harvard University. Currently, Dr. Medeiros serves as the editor of Política & Trabalho, a peer-reviewed academic journal in the social sciences. He previously held roles as coordinator of the undergraduate course in social sciences at UFPB from 2012 to 2015 and as vice-coordinator of the graduate programme in sociology from 2019 to 2021. He has supervised 11 PhD dissertations and 10 master's theses, and has participated in over 70 PhD and master's defense committees.

Since 2020, Rogério Medeiros has been actively involved in an international collaborative research network dedicated to examining public policy implementation processes and their implications for social hierarchies and inequalities. This network led him to collaborate with the research programme on Lower Classes and Public Institutions (LOCI), led by Professor Vincent Dubois at the University of Strasbourg. These collaborations resulted in the establishment of the LOCI-Brazil research group, composed by three research institutions – the UFPB, the Institute of Applied Economic Research - IPEA/Brasília, and the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV), São Paulo. Since 2021, the group has organized two workshops and one research seminar in Brasília with the participation of Professor Dubois. In 2023, the group published a special issue on LOCI in a prestigious Brazilian academic journal.

Fellowship 2024

Dates - 01/08/2024-30/09/2025

Project summary

FAMILY TRAJECTORIES AND PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS: PERCEPTIONS AND EXPERIENCES OF PUBLIC POLICIES BENEFICIARIES IN A LOW-INCOME NEIGHBORHOOD IN BRAZIL

How do members of the lower classes perceive and make sense of their experiences interacting with public institutions? How do these institutions fit into the trajectories of public policy beneficiaries? What role do public policies play in these interactions? In attempting to find answers to these questions, we encounter the limitations of commonly-used models in public policy analysis and identify the need to overcome the partial and incomplete nature of interpretations overly focused on the categories and conceptions of state bureaucracy (definitions, modes of classification, profile construction, etc.). By adopting a people-centered approach, we intend to incorporate the perspectives of people who are directly, or indirectly, affected by these policies.

Accordingly, research has been conducted among residents of the São Rafael Community, situated in the central region of João Pessoa - Brazil. The primary method of data collection revolves around documenting the life trajectories of these residents, with the aim of elucidating the integration of public institutions within their personal narratives. The research makes extensive use of in-depth interviews, observation, and ethnographic data, together with the use of official statistics on social protection and vulnerability in the region studied. In a broader sense, this study aligns with the concerns of contemporary researchers who are engaged in the study of public policy implementation processes (Brodkin, 1990; Spink & Burgos, 2019). This includes scholars who are delving into the comprehension of "bureaucratic encounters" that occur between citizens and implementing agents (Goodsell, 1981; Lipsky, 2010), those who are analyzing public policy reception (Revillard, 2018), those examining the interplay between implementation processes and the reproduction of inequalities (Pires, 2019), and those particularly focused on understanding the interactions between lower classes and public institutions (Siblot, 2006; Dubois, 2016; 2020).

The analytical approach will unfold in two interrelated directions. First, we will try to comprehend whether and to what extent the institutional framework of the state exerts an influence on the processes of constructing meaning that shape interviewees’ life stories. Secondly, we will seek to identify the emergence of strategies and processes of reinterpretation carried out by the interviewees. Finally, based on this knowledge, and in the light of users' experiences, we hope to be able to make suggestions to public policy producers (policy makers, managers, implementing agents) about how public services can be reformed (and how implementation can be better organized) to better serve the user population.