O trabalho de crianças e menorismo no século XIX: análise de processos judiciais do Amazonas

Abstract

This master's research aims, in general, to analyze the legal and procedural aspects related to the juvenile justice policy present in decisions concerning child labor within the jurisdiction of the Juvenile and Orphans Court of Amazonas. The research has the following specific objectives: a) to present the relationship between the consolidation of a juvenile justice system, the implementation of menorismo, the exploitation of child labor, and the consolidation of the prohibition of child labor; b) to examine the history of children that led to the establishment of the Court of Justice of Amazonas (TJAM) and the institution of the Orphans and Juvenile Court; c) to interpret documents addressing issues related to child labor in the TJAM collection. This is a study that questions whether the decisions of the Orphans and Minors Court, with regard to child labor, were traversed by minorist rationality before 1926. In this respect, categories such as child labor, minorism, and institutionalization will be analyzed. The epistemological orientation is grounded in Historical-Dialectical Materialism as the method, in which contradiction and ideology appear as analytical categories that enable the synthesis of multiple determinations. Methodologically, it comprises documentary, descriptive, and bibliographic research, whose theoretical framework draws on classics such as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to understand the concept of labor. It is observed that the term “child labor” first appears in International Labour Organization (ILO) documents, in Convention No. 182 of 1999, which addressed the worst forms of child labor. This discursive consolidation not only named a practice but transformed it into a global legal and political problem. In Brazil, under the influence of international debate and internal transformations in the world of work, Decree No. 5,083 (1926) and Decree No. 17,943-A (1927) were promulgated, establishing formal restrictions on the work of children under 12 years old. Finally, regarding the cases analyzed, it is concluded that the TJAM’s judicial processes, from the late 19th century to the early decades of the 20th century, were historically and judicially linked to actions that indicate features of minorism in the judges’ decisions, wherein guardianship, institutionalization, discipline, and labor operated as mechanisms for regulating the impoverished childhood, which, in a sense, functioned simultaneously as a strategy of assistance and social control.