IN/EXCLUSION OF STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES IN PROFESSIONAL AND UNIVERSITY EDUCATION: THE MERITOCRATIC ETHOS

Abstract

The study has the in/exclusion of students with disabilities in Professional Education (PE) and University Education (ES) as an investigative theme and problematizes the effects of human capital theory and meritocracy on the in/exclusion practices experienced by students with disabilities. (EcD) in EP and ES. The research is based on a post-critical perspective and is affiliated with the field of Foucauldian Studies, assuming practice as a tool concept for the production and analysis of research materiality. The starting point of the text is the practices mapped in the students' statements. From them, it promotes dialogues between practices and the dimension of knowledge and subjects of the matrix of inclusive experience. The analytical exercise brought to the surface the concept of inclusion and disability of EcD and a set of (co)living practices guided by the theory of human capital and the meritocratic ethos. It showed that the subjectivities produced by neoliberal rationality form, in EP and ES, a zone of (dis)comfort, with situations that alternate between a relative state of comfort, mainly the effect of practices of invisibilization, normalization and naturalization of barriers, and the state of discomfort caused by the presence of EcD and the need to (com)live and promote inclusive practices. Competition is a guide for (co)living practices among students and the theory of human capital supports the disbelief, also on the part of teachers, in the potential of EcD. These two combined orders result in practices of negative discrimination.