Self-narratives in (auto) biographical research with youth

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present the contributions and specificities of self-narratives for studies among young people in the field of education, based on the theoretical and methodological assumptions of (auto)biographical research. We are aware that we did not cover all the dimensions of the multiple areas of studies with narratives. However, this text focuses on how the narrative of the self is conceived and used in studies among young people by two authors who are a reference for the Sociology of Youth in Brazil. They are Pais (2001), a Portuguese social scientist, and Feixa (2018), a Spanish social anthropologist; as well as those developed from the perspective of (auto)biographical research, according to French researcher Delory-Momberger (2012, 2014, 2021, 2022), Brazilian researcher Souza (2006, 2014) and Brazilian researcher Passeggi (2020, 2021). In the analysis, we focused on questions raised in the analysis of a biographical research interview with a young Pedagogy student about the challenges of the first year. In addition to the approximations in the use of narratives for the field of youth studies and (auto)biographical research, the specificities of the ways of conceiving self-narratives in studies with young people are highlighted. For (auto)biographical research, the aim was not the production of narratives by young people as data; instead, we see those narratives as an enabler of spaces of reflexivity, which can produce both processes of self-formation and knowledge for research.