A mobilidade social na enfermagem: a questão das lutas simbólicas

Abstract

Quanti-qualitative study which deals with the symbolic struggle of a group of nurses seeking professional and social mobility on their career. The nursing carrier hierarchy and the preparation at different educational levels lead the nursing workers to aspire getting professional mobility at the different categories which make up the team - auxiliary, technical and graduated nurse. The theoretical picture was structured around a group of fundamental explanatory concepts to the professional struggle analysis: whether concepts of field, habitus and cultural capital by Bourdieu, or the concepts of power by Foucault, or the concepts of ritual by Me Laren and the concept of work culture by Apple. The conclusive data reveal: hierarchy rigidity, still present as heritage on the carrier level difference per social class, brought in by the nightingale system; implications on power relationships, on rituais and on the symbolism of attributions, micropower spaces, through which rigid positions of historical roots perpetuate and reproduce themselves; stress on the hierarchic model, once the career levels distinguished from one another in the past are still kept different by the educational level; symbolic struggles of professional promotion which specially mean fights for power, under the view that being a graduated nurse means automatic and naturally, the team head; globalization repercussions affect the function placement system according to the level of education once the present demands in the working world choose less rigid and more flexible hierarchies, as well as a new concept of professional quality - the old knowledge generated by the making up/usage of tasks nowadays gives place to the knowledge generated by the continuous learning and productivity on the nursing career.