Producción CyT
Actas de la Conferencia 2018 de la Human Development & Capability Association - Diminished educational opportunities in informal settlements of Bahía Blanca, Argentina
Congreso
Fecha:
2018Editorial y Lugar de Edición:
UCAResumen *
There is currently a broad consensus that reaching higher levels of development represents a desirable goal in society, and Amartya Sen´s approach is one of the most comprehensive perspectives to assess social welfare. It simultaneously considers personal and social factors, and manages to entwine economics with philosophy and ethics (London & Formichella, 2006). Also, by capturing the multidimensionality of the problem, it constitutes an especially rich analytical framework to guide the diagnosis, the design of policies and even the definition of objectives, going beyond strictly economic aspects.The approach defines development as a process of expanding the real or fundamental freedoms (capabilities) that people enjoy (Sen, 1999). Capabilities are the possibilities that people have to achieve functionings, those valuable things they can do or be when they live (Sen, 2001). Thus, Sen emphasizes that personal development is at the core of social development (Sen, 1999).In the case children and youth, capability analysis will likely differ from that of adults, being some dimensions more relevant than others (Trani, Biggeri & Mauro, 2013). However, some adult-specific dimensions may become relevant if they indirectly affect children´s wellbeing (Wüst & Volkert, 2012). Furthermore, it should be noted that some limitations faced by children and youth reduce their freedoms, while others increase them. Sen´s approach considers freedom throughout a person´s entire life. Thus, to wholly expand the capability set, it may be necessary to limit certain present freedoms in order to increase others in the future. A clear example of this situation is compulsory schooling or vaccination (Saito, 2003).Today, in expanding cities characterized by residential segregation and multiple forms of marginalization, many citizens face diminishing opportunities for wellbeing achievement. As it occurs in large metropolitan areas of Argentina, in intermediate cities socioeconomic inequality is also driving the rapid growth of informal settlements, where poverty and exclusion show their many forms and consequences. The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) represent relevant and challenging policy objectives in this context.In particular, this paper seeks to evaluate the limitations to develop their capabilities faced by children and youth from five informal settlements of the city of Bahía Blanca, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina , and compare them with those faced by the global child and youth population in the city.To this end, we calculate different indicators that allow us to assess children`s achievement of certain functionings that, as Trani, Biggeri & Mauro (2013) argue, may be reflecting the scope of their capability sets, with an emphasis on the domain of education. For instance, access, permanence and completion rates are analysed alongside household socio-economic characteristics. We mainly employ primary sources of information, collected through field studies performed within two institutional projects: a CIN-CONICET PDTS at the Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas y Sociales del Sur (IIESS) and a Universidad Nacional del Sur (UNS) project at the Department of Economics . This is complemented by data from the National Census and the Permanent Household Surveys published by the National Institute of Statistics (INDEC). We find that, relative to the global population, children and youth from these vulnerable neighbourhoods face great limitations to develop their capabilities, which are largely driven by their caretakers` own restrictions associated with their levels of education, job opportunities and different forms of exclusion. Particularly concerning are the relevant barriers detected in the domain of education, considered by Sen an essential capability, so that its deprivation is one of the gravest a person may suffer. This is even more serious when it occurs during childhood, since it affects both current and future agency (Sen, 2003; Sen, 2004).The estimates indicate that restrictions to access are strongest at the preschool and secondary school age. Also, we find important difficulties to complete the compulsory school attendance period in the expected time, being both dropout and grade repetition quite significant. In general, results confirm the existence of deficient educational conditions ?or educability conditions, according to López & Tedesco (2002)? among the population in these periphery areas, which greatly hinders SDG 4. Interpreted in light of the capability approach, these results may assist in the design of local policy interventions to enhance child wellbeing and could provide valuable insights for the analysis of other intermediate cities in the country and the region. Información suministrada por el agente en SIGEVAPalabras Clave
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