"The circumstances of life": biographies of young policemen in Argentina

BOVER, T.; CHAVES, MARIANA

Gothenburg

Congreso; XVII ISA World Congress of Sociology Sociology on the move; 2010

International Sociological Association

This work focuses on the analysis of biographical stories of young people entering state security forces. In Argentina, Police institutions recruit low and middle-class youth people that ended the secondary school education. Work, to be a policeman, is a unique election that implies beeing invested in an institution that represents a conflictive relation between State and citizens, mainly young citizens, but to be admitted to the police is also a choice of short survey with warranted job, and implies both the security of a job with continuity, and the insecurity of the risk of interruption of life itself. In their stories of life, this election, is justified by the ?circumstances of the life? that they presented as a contradiction, an option never before evaluated or the only possible to way out, and sets out the ?circumstances? of class, family, labor, gender, and emotional among others, that would oblige them to become policemen. ?The circumstances of life? are spaces where the individual narrative is part of a societal narration, and analyze them implies analyzing the constructions of the biographies of young people in agreement to a world in motion.