Travelling university studants

their practices and sociabilities

Abstract

The article identifies and analyzes, by means of a qualitative approach, the practices and the sociability that take place within the university buses of northern Ceará. Young people from more than 50 municipalities surrounding Sobral, who crave the access to higher education in this city, travel daily from their municipalities of origin in chartered buses or in buses made available by the municipal governments. The daily journeys, which may last up to five hours (round trip), make the bus a social environment, where various practices and forms of sociability flourish. During the trip, the students invent pastimes and create ways of organization to better their coexistence, which lasts for the duration of the course they are attending. Starting from a theoretical dialogue with Auge, Certeau and Simmel, among other authors, we have realized that the “uses” these young people make of these buses turn them into more than mere means of transportation, but a “space” full of practices and tricks through which these young people weave, in their everyday life, a very peculiar way of being a university student.