O direito constitucional ao Benefício de Prestação Continuada da assistência social (BPC): o penoso caminho para o acesso

Abstract

This thesis presents the analysis of the process of regulation and operationalization of the Continued Payment Benefit (BPC), guaranteed by the Federal Constitution of 1988. The Brazilian Social Welfare, introduced in the referred Constitution, assured for the first time Health, Social Security and Social Assistance. Although it represented considerable advance, this historic milestone happened in a context of global crisis and restructuring of social rights under a neoliberal perspective, intensified and consolidated during all governments in the past few decades. The Continued Payment Benefit is a guaranteed payment of one minimum monthly salary for the disabled or elderly person. Its regulation occurred with the Organic Law of Social Assistance (LOAS) in 1993, which established criteria for accessing the benefit, such as: age of 70 for the elderly person; disabling condition for work and an independent life; family income inferior to a quarter of the minimum monthly salary per individual and biennial review. Despite the countless alterations, and some even representing advances, such as the reduction to 65 years of age level and the introduction of the social and medical evaluation for the disabled, paradoxically there have been throwbacks added to the fact that family per capita income has not changed for the course of 20 years, making access to the benefit considerably limited. Not even the governments that expanded and assured visibility to Social Assistance and income transfer policies, considering a rather minimalist perspective, were able to guarantee this adjustment. Under a neo-developmentalist conception, the actions aimed for extreme poverty eradication, which represented, however, nothing more than preserving the establishment. Considering this scenario, the present examination had as central pillar the comprehension of the BPC, which is managed and financed by the Social Assistance Policy, but operationalized by the National Institute of Social Security (INSS), the agency responsible for welfare policies, which leans towards reproducing the social security perspective over social welfare. Thus, the bureaucracy and reproduction of bourgeois ethic values on constitutional daily life have concrete repercussions on the process of the operationalization of the Benefit. Thereby, this research presents a historic panorama of the struggle for the BPC to be guaranteed in the Constituent process, its clashing approval and regulation, the dichotomy between Social Security and Social Assistance, the disputes during its concession, along with its meaning. Accordingly, bibliographic and documental researches, and interview were conducted with workers – social security technicians, experts medicals and Social Workers at INSS – who act in the process of the concession, along with Social Workers at the Municipal Social Assistance Department, recipients and applicants. It was found that, despite being indispensable in the lives of its more than 4 million recipients and their families, BPC’s materialization in two distinct spaces, bureaucracy, absence of information and visibility, and principally the perverse (i)logic of its criteria make an arduous path for its beneficiary to go through