Singularizando o indivíduo: um estudo sobre práticas e significados do uso dos documentos de identificação e os efeitos que trazem na vida das pessoas em alguns pontos da Cidade Maputo

Abstract

In the present study, I try to understand the practices and meanings of the use of identification documents and the effects they bring on the lives of individuals. The literature review showed the existence of two lines of force on the study of identification documents. The first line studies the identification documents taking into account the relationship they establish with the State as a whole. For this line, the documents serve to assist the population management process. The second line analyzes the production and use of documents by individuals, emphasizing the question of symbol. The first line is limited in that it considers documents in a mechanical and functional way, obscuring the perception of the different ways in which individuals consider documents. However, in this study, I follow the line that analyzes the production and use of documents in everyday life, but emphasizing that identity documents exclude individuals in the normal exercise of their citizenship. The ethnographic fieldwork was carried out at various points in the city of Maputo, but starting from the provincial Civil Identification Directorate, it cites at Avenida Eduardo Mondlane in the fire brigade and at the Center for the production of identity documents at Avenida Fernão Magalhães , downtown of the city of Maputo. For data collection I used direct observations, semi-structured interviews and informal conversations with different social actors. The data I collected allowed me to verify that the documents have a great power in people and that it links the individual to the point of considering his identification document as himself, and that it also individualizes and includes the individual in the general system of the State for the exercise of their citizenship. However, the study also led me to conclude, as the main argument, that the identity document is the fundamental piece of exclusion (TRADUÇÃO NOSSA)