Family arrangements of beneficiaries of the Minha Casa Minha Vida Program: benefit’s trajectories and perceptions of social welfare

Abstract

This article analyzes, through a qualitative approach, the perceptions of beneficiaries of Residencial Jardim Cajazeiras (a housing estate of the Minha Casa Minha Vida Program located in the city of Salvador, northeastern Brazil) about the effectiveness of the public policy. Thus, we problematize the dynamics of the beneficiaries’ family arrangements, introducing the notion of benefit's trajectory, which concerns the understanding of the benefit as a social situation that pervades the beneficiaries’ access to material and symbolic goods and configurations (and reconfigurations) of their different spheres of sociability. The dimension of family arrangements in the situation of benefit, and their capacity to provide welfare to the beneficiaries, proved to be a fundamental element of the experience of access to the public policy.