Psicologia e população em situação de rua na interface das políticas sociais: limites, contradições e possibilidades

Abstract

The Homeless Population (HPP) is a radical expression of the "social question" intimately linked to capitalist society. Transformations in the contemporary global societal structure: capital crisis, structural unemployment, the absence and/or fragility of public policies, precarious living conditions, and neoliberalism, have led to the expansion of the HPP. Along with this expansion, formal initiatives to address the issue have emerged, and research on this population has grown. This research sought to study the limits, contradictions, and possibilities of Psychology in Social Policies (SP) with homeless people, considering the Brazilian social formation. The theoreticalmethodological framework adopted to investigate and analyze the production of knowledge in Psychology about the HPP is Marxist-inspired. From the analysis of the works, we identified three analytical categories that express the conceptions of HPP adopted in the production of knowledge in Psychology: 1) superficial definition; 2) political, social, and economic influences; 3) “Social question”, multiple determinants and link to capitalist society. The analysis of the production of knowledge in Psychology about homelessness suggests that, for the most part, the works in Psychology do not always understand the structural dimension of the phenomenon, contributing to the naturalization of the existence of people living on the streets. The importance of encompassing capitalist society and the concrete economic, historical, social, and political dimensions that determine homelessness in the production of knowledge in Psychology is highlighted, as a way to affirm homelessness as a historically situated fact and to distance oneself from naturalizing, individualizing, and depoliticizing conceptions.