Entre a cruz e a espada: implicações de raça, gênero e classe na permanência de estudantes negras nos cursos de tecnologia na Universidade Federal do Amazonas.

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the processes of access, permanence, and resistance of Black women in technology-related undergraduate programs at the Federal University of Amazonas (UFAM), from an intersectional perspective that articulates race, gender, and class. Situated within the field of Social Anthropology, the study engages with feminist anthropology, Black feminist thought, and the anthropology of institutions, understanding the university as a socially produced space shaped by historical hierarchies and symbolic disputes. Methodologically, the research combines quantitative analysis of data on the admission of Black women students to the Faculty of Technology (FT/UFAM) with participant ethnography conducted in the institutional daily life. The fieldwork involved close engagement with five Black women—students and one faculty member—whose trajectories were followed through participant observation, open-ended interviews, and field diary records. The study also draws on the analysis of institutional images, particularly graduation photographs, as an ethnographic resource to examine processes of visibility and invisibilization that structure the official memory of the academic unit. The findings demonstrate that although affirmative action policies have expanded access for Black women to higher education, their presence in technology programs remains marked by underrepresentation, institutional non-belonging, and the absence of effective permanence policies. The trajectories analyzed reveal that academic permanence is constructed amid experiences of institutional racism, material and emotional overload, exhaustion, and constant surveillance, requiring students to develop individual and collective strategies of resistance. Black faculty presence emerges as a crucial symbolic reference, yet also as a site of isolation and strain, highlighting the limits of institutional diversity when not accompanied by structural transformation. The dissertation concludes that the permanence of Black women in technology programs at UFAM cannot be understood as the result of individual effort, but rather as a phenomenon deeply shaped by structural and symbolic inequalities. The study underscores the need for institutional permanence policies, explicit anti-racist measures, and a critical reexamination of academic standards of excellence, while affirming ethnographic writing as a political and epistemological act of resistance.