PERMANÊNCIA E RESISTÊNCIA: POLÍTICAS INSTITUCIONAIS, MOTIVAÇÕES E EXPERIÊNCIAS DE ESTUDANTES TRANS E TRAVESTIS NA UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO MARANHÃO

Abstract

Discussions on retention policies for trans and travesti people in higher education raise urgent debates about belonging, exclusion, and educational justice. In this context, this study investigated: what possibilities do normative discourse and institutional action, in interaction with everyday experience, bring to the development of a sense of belonging and to the permanence of trans and travesti students in undergraduate programs at the Federal University of Maranhão (UFMA), Dom Delgado University Campus? The central thesis is that the permanence of trans and travesti students at UFMA is not guaranteed by institutional policies, but rather constitutes a continuous act of individual and collective resistance consolidated within a constant field of dispute. This political practice of confrontation and self-reinvention underscores the limitations of the institution’s cisnormative structures, which fail to provide material and symbolic support and recognition, thereby requiring a profound restructuring of its retention policies. Based on this, the general objective of the study is to understand the meanings of belonging and remaining in higher education, constructed through the interaction of normative discourse and institutional action with the daily experiences of trans and travesti students in a university program. This qualitative and critical study seeks to grasp the meanings attributed to permanence by seven trans and travesti students and graduates from UFMA, whose narratives were analyzed through the lens of gender studies, education, and the social sciences. The research is structured in seven sections, preceded by an introduction that presents the problem, the main thesis, objectives, and justification. The thesis discusses the historical exclusion of trans and travesti people from formal education and the construction of gender as a normative regime, drawing on authors such as Judith Butler, Guacira Lopes Louro, and Berenice Bento. By analyzing theoretical models of university persistence, with a focus on Vincent Tinto and their limitations, the study demonstrates—through the participants’ experiences—that permanence at UFMA is strained by multiple forms of symbolic, institutional, and material exclusion. The narratives reveal classroom violence, denial of social names, curricular erasure, lack of psychological support, and neglect in health services. The university is shown to be structured by a cisnormative logic in which assistance policies are designed for generic subjects. Nevertheless, the participants develop resistance strategies and affirm their presence as a political act, demonstrating that to remain is a daily practice of confrontation and self-reinvention. The research confirms the thesis by evidencing the gap between institutional regulations and the concrete experiences of trans and travesti people. It highlights the insufficiency of retention policies that ignore the specificities of this population and reiterates the urgency of actions that include identity recognition, mental health care, curricular inclusion of trans epistemologies, and the reformulation of assistance services. Therefore, this thesis contributes to the field of trans and travesti studies and to the debate on educational justice, by proposing a committed form of listening that values the experiences and knowledge of these individuals as central to university transformation.