“BEFORE I WAS A PAWN, AFTER I BECOME A BOSS”: CONSTRUCTIONS AND EXPERIENCES IN THE SUBJECT'S RELATIONSHIP WITH WORK

Abstract

Work constitutes a psychosocial phenomenon fundamental to human existence, and experiences related to the work environment, marked by strengths and resistance, cross the lives of subjects, producing different impacts throughout their trajectory. The present study aims to analyze how the subject's relationship with work configures ways of being/existence by observing his life trajectory, having as a field of analysis the figure of a subject-entrepreneur who manages two student hostels in the northwest of the state of Rio Grande do Sul. This is a qualitative, exploratory study, developed using the ethnographic method, based on a semi-structured interview and participant observation in the investigated context. The emergence of the categories of “pawn”, “boss” and “father Toni” was evidenced as identity references throughout his trajectory by the performance of different roles in the different social groups in which the subject participated, among these the role of worker, where the centrality of work in the constitution of the subject's self was manifested.