Vozes surdas na educação superior: uma abordagem interseccional sobre acesso, permanência e participação acadêmica na UFJF

Abstract

This dissertation investigated how deaf students at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora experienced higher education from an intersectional perspective, understanding that their experiences were simultaneously traversed by markers such as race, gender, class, deaf identity, and accessibility conditions. The central objective was to analyze how these markers were articulated in the participants' narratives and how they impacted their processes of access, permanence, and academic participation. The research, qualitative and exploratory in nature, adopted the narrative method as a structuring axis, recognizing the deaf experience as a legitimate place for knowledge production. Data production was carried out through questionnaires and semistructured narrative interviews conducted directly in Brazilian Sign Language, ensuring respect for the linguistic identity of the participants. The intersectional analysis allowed the identification of overlapping inequalities and tensions that permeated the students' daily university life. The results showed that the academic experience of deaf students was profoundly marked by institutional, pedagogical, and communicational barriers that combined unevenly, producing distinct effects on each participant's trajectory. Resistance strategies, support networks, teaching practices sensitive to difference, and advocacy movements also emerged, expanding the possibilities for inclusion. It was concluded that understanding the university experience through intersectionality was fundamental to repositioning the debate on accessibility and equity in higher education, highlighting the urgency of institutional policies that recognize the complexity of deaf identities and respond to the multiple dimensions that constitute their trajectories.