Crianças e Adolescentes Migrantes e Refugiados na Amazônia Brasileira em Situação de Acolhimento: Análise de Fatores de Risco, Fatores de Proteção e Processos de Resiliência

Abstract

This thesis investigated resilience processes in migrant and refugee children and adolescents in the Amazon, articulating risk factors and protective factors in development across two social protection contexts in the municipalities of Belém and Ananindeua, Pará. The study is grounded in the problem of understanding how, in the face of adversities associated with displacement and integration in the host country, these individuals mobilize individual, relational, and contextual resources, and which conditions expand or restrict their positive adaptation in everyday life.The general objective was to investigate resilience processes in refugee children and adolescents in the Amazon within the context of institutional care and a social protection service, with specific objectives of characterizing the biopsychosocial profiles of children, adolescents, and families, understanding professionals’ perceptions, and analyzing risk and protective factors associated with resilience. This is an exploratory and descriptive field study with a qualitative and quantitative approach, grounded in the Bioecological Model of Human Development and the multisystemic conception of resilience, including the seven tensions proposed by Ungar. The scope encompassed trajectories between 2018 and 2024. The documentary phase analyzed 252 case files, identifying 80 children and adolescents, and described sociodemographic, educational, and family variables using descriptive statistics. Family characterization included the administration of a form to 30 families—15 in an institutional care setting and 15 in a community context served at the Social Assistance Reference Center—using descriptive and inferential analyses. The qualitative phase conducted semi-structured interviews with 15 professionals, analyzed through content analysis, with categorization and verification of inter-rater agreement. To measure resources and patterns associated with resilience, a resilience measure for children and a psychosocial instrument adapted for adolescents were applied, with association analyses using correlations. The study was approved by an ethics committee and used informed consent and assent.The results indicated, first, a predominance of school-age children (56.2%) and educational interruptions (6.2%), associated with barriers related to documentation and school enrollment, as well as relevant gaps in record-keeping in the case files (27.5%), which limit assessment and continuity of care. Second, families showed high economic vulnerability, precarious labor market insertion (62.0% and 70.0% for men and women, respectively), and low coverage of social benefits (12.0%), suggesting a mismatch between eligibility and access. Third, professionals described protective practices linked to predictable routines, school inclusion, qualified listening, and intersectoral network coordination, but pointed to constraints such as workload overload, a lack of specialized professionals, language barriers, and episodes of discrimination. Finally, the quantitative analysis supported a multisystemic organization of resilience, with clusters related to variables such as family support, community and cultural ties, individual competencies, school bonding, self-esteem, coping, perceived prejudice, and future expectations; moderate positive correlations were observed among protective factors (r ranging from 0.647 to 0.843; p < 0.001). It was concluded that resilience, in this context, is an ecological construct dependent on the quality of interactions and effective access to rights and institutional mediations, with implications for improving record quality, intersectoral practices, linguistic support, and inclusion in social protection policies.