Negotiating change: Street and delinquent youth in a drug treatment program in Brazil

For many drug treatment centers the twelve steps of Narcotics Anonymous have formed the core of their programming. This dissertation focuses on one such center located in Southeast Brazil. Known as Casa da Esperança (House of Hope), it caters specifically to male children and youth who are classified as delinquents and/or street children. Based on person-centered ethnographic fieldwork data gathered over a 15-month period, this dissertation expands on current debates on identity formation and change by examining the process by which delinquent and/or street children and youth with drug addictions construct new meaningful identities for themselves.; For the boys at Casa da Esperança, the process of recovery involves them constructing a new identity: that of active drug user to that of “addict in recovery”. This process, however, is far from a passive intake of the new program discourse but an active negotiation. It will be shown that: (a) the process of identity change involves a period whereby the youth identify with the program discourse based on their personal life histories; (b) it is an active process of negotiation involving both a resistance to and internalization of the program discourse, as well as an ambivalence towards it; (c) this is done in the context of relationships with others, and (d) importantly, the meaning given to change draws upon pre-existing religious cultural belief systems. The boys often frame their process of change in terms of a battle with the Devil. They talk of the Devil or other spirits tempting them and not allowing them to change. This is a dimension that is overlooked in identity change literature. Authors often neglect to discuss the ways in which treatment discourses become meaningful to those who adopt them and how these discourses relate with existing belief systems. It will be shown that it is through their existing belief systems and personal life experiences that the youth are able to give the program discourse meaning and thus internalize aspects of it to inform their new identities.