Diego Silva Balerio
The article examines the construction of the educational bond with adolescents institutionalized for protection purposes, highlighting the dual role of social educators as both guarantors of rights and creative artisans capable of generating networks of participation and access to materialities that enable the exercise of rights. Based on two qualitative studies, in-depth interviews and social participation mappings were conducted, using a biographical-narrative approach and grounded theory procedures. This methodological strategy made it possible to bring out voices usually silenced, recover situated experiences, and understand how educational action can influence processes of subjectivation and desubjectivation. The educational bond emerges as a central category: its presence enables meaningful learning and processes of recognition, whereas its absence leads to mistrust, survival strategies, and institutional violence. Furthermore, the material living conditions within care institutions prove decisive in shaping subjectivity, transmitting implicit messages of dignity or exclusion. Urban mappings identified multiple participation spaces, underscoring the city’s potential as a learning environment. The discussion introduces the concepts of relational sculptures and cartographic subjectivation, which articulate the human and the material in producing bonds and open trajectories. Drawing on the notions of knots and vectors, a relational and materialist reading of socio-educational practices is proposed, one that acknowledges the instituting power of everyday life in shaping adolescent experience and enabling the exercise of rights.