From candy to delict

An ethnographu on the interconnections between child labor and juvenile offenses

Abstract

The article presents and analyzes the life trajectory of Enzo—based on his own narrative—a Brazilian adolescent followed through ethnographic methodology while serving a socio-educational measure in a closed facility and, subsequently, in an open-environment setting. It reveals how structural precariousness drove the adolescent into child labor, which began with selling candy on the streets at the age of nine. It highlights the porosity of the boundaries regarding child labor between the informal, the illegal, and the illicit, demonstrating that the transition to juvenile offenses is not a rupture, but rather an intermittency configured as a search for subsistence in territories marked by police violence and the absence of the State in its protective form. Enzo experiences the paradox of accessing basic rights, such as regular meals and healthy housing, only when deprived of liberty. It is concluded that the socio-educational measure highlights the inefficiency of the rights-guarantee system, which fails to interrupt cycles of vulnerability before police repression and criminal subjection become the primary form of state