The meanings of work in the trajectories of young graduates of rural education

Abstract

This article examines how work is inscribed in the trajectories of eight young graduates of Rural Education, who studied at the Centro Estadual Integrado de Educação Rural (CEIER) in Águia Branca, Espírito Santo, Brazil. Grounded in the understanding of work as a constitutive dimension of human formation, the study adopts a qualitative approach and draws on thematic oral history interviews. The analyses reveal youth trajectories marked by permanence, mobility, and returns to rural territories, in which work assumes a central role as an organizing axis of experiences and life projects. The narratives indicate that Rural Education operates as an emancipatory mediation that expands critical readings of territory and the world of work, without imposing territorial fixity. At the same time, they make visible inequalities related to land access, gender relations, and material conditions of existence that shape youth trajectories. Assuming a deliberately (in)conclusive character, the text contributes to broadening the debate on rural youth, work, and the concrete living conditions in the Brazilian countryside.