Narcotráfico, pauperismo e criminalização da pobreza no Brasil

Abstract

This undergraduate thesis aims to understand how drug trafficking presents itself as a survival strategy for the impoverished population in Brazilian society. Based on Marxian analytical categories and qualitative and quantitative specialized bibliographic research, it was possible to identify that those excluded from the formal labor market tend to seek in drug trafficking a means to ensure their own subsistence and that of their families, facing the absence of objective conditions for the production and reproduction of their lives. We observe that drug trafficking, as a branch of the production, exchange, and consumption of goods, becomes embedded in the dynamics of capitalist society and corresponds to it, as it is based on the exploitation of the labor force and the production of surplus value. In this process, capital owners occupy privileged positions in the hierarchy of this informal and illegal market, accumulating wealth through the lucrative dynamics of the illicit drug trade. Finally, we highlight that young, Black, and peripheral individuals make up the majority of the labor force involved in this sector, being daily exposed to the concrete manifestations of social, economic, and racial inequality that shape the country's social formation and limit their access to other means of survival under the dictates and logic of capitalism.