INTRODUCTION

We understand that “people are formed in all the experiences they participate in different contexts throughout life” (^{OLIVEIRA et al., 2014}, p. 36)³. We, therefore, adopt the perspective that education is not restricted to school or home and that we educate ourselves all the time to the world, in reciprocity, teaching, and learning in any space-time in which we participate, according to ^{Oliveira et al. (2014}) and ^{Freire (2018}; ²⁰¹⁶).

Social practices emerge from the relations between people in and for society. These practices produce and reproduce material and symbolic structures whose consequences engender historical and cultural permanence or transformation. In line with ^{Oliveira et al. (2014}), it is explicit that social practices “are built on relationships that are established between people, people, and the communities in which they are embedded, people and groups, groups among themselves, groups and wider society, in a historical context of nationhood and, notably in our day, of relationships between nations” (p. 33) and aim to:

[...] to pass on knowledge, values, traditions, positions, and attitudes towards life; to supply survival needs, material and symbolic maintenance of people, groups, or communities; to seek the recognition of these needs by society; to control, expand the political participation of people, groups, communities in decisions of the wider society; propose, and/or execute transformations in the social structure, in the forms of rationality, of thinking and acting or articulate to maintain them; guarantee social, cultural, economic, political, civil rights; correct distortions and social injustices; seek recognition, respect, valorization of cultures and citizen participation of social, ethno-racial groups marginalized by society; think, reflect, discuss and execute actions (^{OLIVEIRA et al., 2014}, p. 33-34).

Therefore, they can root, uproot, or lead to create new roots, contributing to transformative actions or the reproduction of oppression and human segregation (^{OLIVEIRA et al., 2014}). The social practices give rise to educational processes that can be studied; however, we are in tune with ^{Fiori (1991}) when he says: “Education, thus, is liberating, or it is not education” (p. 83). In this way, we position ourselves for the non-existence of an educational process when these practices reproduce oppression and dehumanize. Nonetheless, we affirm that it is possible, even in contradictory contexts, for educational processes to emerge that promote liberation.

We also understand that we are unfinished beings built daily through multiple and complex experiences. Hence, we prefer to use the term educational processes since it refers to being continuously educated because it is impossible to mark the exact moment someone was educated about something. Regarding the meaning of educational processes, we agree with Gonçalves Junior, Carmo, and Corrêa (2015) when they proposed that:

[…] [educational processes] occur in a mutual learning relationship and not only in a situation where one teaches the other; they have equitable dialogue and intentionality directed towards cooperation as fundamental assumptions for its development, overcoming, being more, and demanding autonomy, the possibility of decision, and transformation. Such conditions allow those involved to understand the context, values, and codes of the group, community, and society in which they live, having the possibility to critically reflect on their condition of belonging to the world with others, educating and educating themselves (p. 176-177).

In the Latin American context, where we live the perspective of suleada science⁴, we understand that investigating educational processes arising from social practices must seek support in reality, starting from lives, experiences, and understandings of the world that, through reflective, dialogical, and critical action, seek collective praxis, which is the producer of new knowledge and transformer of this oppressive reality. Thus, our study is inserted in the social practice of bicycle delivery within the context of the solidarity economy enterprise (SEE) CicloPedaleiros. By accompanying the group, we sought to unveil the resulting educational processes.

The SEE CicloPedaleiros (brand created by the entrepreneurs) is allocated in the service sector and makes deliveries (food, clothing, and documents, among other smaller objectives) using the bicycle as a means of transportation. The group intends to expand the business to bicycle maintenance and ecotourism, albeit this expansion has not occurred so far. The SEE is based in the solidarity economy’s public center in São Carlos, where it has a room to store equipment and hold meetings.

The SEE has four partners: Fernanda, Benedito, Adriano, and Odair⁵, aged between 25 and 64. The primary means of communication between them is a smartphone chat application through which all delivery requests are sent. When someone receives an order (which generally arrives through each one’s private cell phone), they send it on the application and collectively decide who will carry it out (it depends on availability, although there is a preference for rotation among the partners).

The SEE follows the principles of solidarity economy, meaning it has collective management; there is equal division among the partners, who are guided by human valuation, cooperation, and solidarity. The price is calculated fairly, thus avoiding the self-exploitation of labor. It is worth mentioning that this group does not work for any private company related to delivery applications.

CicloPedaleiros began its activities in 2017. In mid-2018, the group began to dedicate itself to expanding the brand in the municipality where it is based to consolidate an alternative to the current work system. In general, they structure their clientele through partnerships with other enterprises and shopkeepers and by spreading the services in the city, combining the brand with sustainability, fair trade, and valuing local businesses.

Currently, the enterprise is active, meeting as needed to talk about agendas and directions, as well as to develop cohesion activities, approve the entrance of new members, and provide training, among others. The SEE is not yet fully structured physically and financially, although it has partnerships in the city that provide minimal stability.

NEOLIBERALISM, UBERIZATION, AND SOLIDARITY ECONOMY

The neoliberal model adopted by various countries in recent decades has promoted a broad destructuring of employment, giving way to informality, flexibility, and job insecurity at the base of the production chain. According to ^{Hespanha (2002}), “the employment system that is being instituted through the new global production model represents an aggravation of social risk and exclusion for a growing number of workers spread throughout the world” (p. 24). According to the cited author:

Social differentiation is one of the processes associated with globalization that explains phenomena quite visible in contemporary societies, including the accentuation of inequalities, the increasing marginalization of certain social classes, and the gradual destruction of social solidarities. It operates through a double effect. On the one hand, a social segmentation effect is the detachment of the weakest segments of the social groups at the bottom of society and the promotion of the strongest at the top. On the other hand, an effect of individualization of social life (i.e., greater autonomy of individuals from collective structures of authority based on tradition or state power) (^{HESPANHA, 2002}, p. 22).

The double effect mentioned by ^{Hespanha (2002}) increases the process of weakening the working class’ power of struggle. By analyzing the working class as a whole and the losses of the last years, it is possible to identify that there is no robust class in Brazil with a well-defined and directed political project. On the contrary, what we have are segmented and individualized groups, politically unstructured and unable to overcome the capital-labor relations established by the neoliberalism in force.

The political deficiency of the class has corroborated the greater flexibilization of labor laws and the withdrawal of historically-won rights. In this context, transnational companies, supported by the advancement of technologies, have implemented a new form of outsourcing in the service sector through a process that has been discussed under the concept of uberization (^{ANTUNES, 2018}). Uberization comes from the word Uber⁶, the first company to put this model into practice. A cell phone application allows non-professional drivers to transport people using their own or rented passenger cars. Afterward, other companies launched applications that operate under the same logic in this and other services, such as delivering food and goods in general.

Uberization is linked to the relaxation of labor laws and the deepening of the exploitation of labor power for the benefit of the profits of transnational companies. In this model, the relationship between employer and employee does not exist, as those who decide to work for the applications register as self-employed. Since there is no record in a work card, all labor regulations in this area are rendered ineffective, including in case of accidents during the service provided. According to ^{Pochmann (2018}):

Regarding this [scenario], one can identify the experimentation of forms of greater capitalist exploitation of human labor through the advance of outsourcing and “Uberism” of labor. Simultaneously, one can note the advance of the degradation of workers’ conquests in the environment of flexibilization and deregulation of the social and labor protection system that challenges the traditional format of organization and representation of the interests of the occupied before the successive explosion of social manifestations of a spontaneous nature, disconnected and disarticulated from a larger project of transformation of capitalism (p. 70).

The uberization of work intends to spread the ideology that everyone involved is an entrepreneur and can decide when and how to earn their own money⁷. Nevertheless, the applications’ companies stipulate the service’s price and make rigorous control through the customers’ evaluations. The company evaluates the work routine through a points system: those who work many hours a week and during busy hours earn points, and those who do not have enough points can be blocked or excluded from the application. The companies charge 15-30% of the total value for each service provided. In many cases, those who hire the service don’t know how much the provider will receive, and those who provide the service do not know how much was paid.

According to ^{Presta (2019}), the advent of these technologies added to changes in labor relations (more flexibility and autonomy of contracts, fewer charges) corroborates the appreciation of entrepreneurship. In these contexts, people work individually and competently, linking income generation to the amount of work done. These new technologies bring the illusion of freedom and insubordination, but what happens is that millions of individuals work in an outsourced way for large groups without any guarantee, protection, rights, or regulation. For Linhart (²⁰¹⁷, n/p):

[...] In their way, these companies seek to reduce the “yoke” that the rights and guarantees that constitute the other side of the salaried relationship represent for them. Thus they strive to develop individuals’ competencies “to enable them to take charge of themselves” to face risks on their own while holding them back with impositions strong enough to guarantee profit. This takes the form of self-entrepreneurship, particularly in the digital platform economy (e.g., Uber). These workers, presented as lovers of freedom and adventure, daring and flexibility, are faced with very specific impositions in equipment (cars and bicycles), clothing, and even verbal interaction scripts, which they are obliged to respect on pain of a fine. The platforms also set the prices to be charged and receive evaluations from customers and do not hesitate to punish workers, thus resorting to disciplinary power. However independent they may appear to be, the “partners” of the Deliveroo platform, for instance, are fined if they refuse more than three service calls during their working hours. A similar rule exists for Uber drivers, although they are the ones who must pay the taxes related to the activity, the social contributions, the gasoline, and the car.

Data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) revealed that 23.8 million people were self-employed in the first quarter of 2019. The average real income of workers in this category remained at BRL 1,600.00 (^{IBGE, 2019}). In 2020, from January to March, the quarter before the pandemic, the number of self-employed people had already grown to 24.1 million, keeping the average income at the same value (^{IBGE, 2020}).

The Locomotiva Institute published a survey in the O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper about the number of workers involved with digital platforms in Brazil. According to the study, in April 2019, 17 million people regularly used apps to supplement their income, and about 4 million as the primary source; the article also stated that, together, IFood and Uber are the largest employers in the country (^{GRAVAS, 2019}).

Growing unemployment and the exclusion of younger and older people from the formal labor market have forced some people to seek alternatives to generate income and support themselves and their families. The advance of digital platforms has made it possible for people to find forms of subsistence other than scarce formal work. Thus, this is the new multifaceted configuration of work in neoliberalism, which has intensified in recent decades and has completely transformed social relations.

Against this process, other options have arisen for the great mass of unemployed or marginalized workers in the labor market. One of them is the solidarity economy (SE), which is developing “in many countries, especially in Latin America, as an operative field of social transformation and political action” (^{HESPANHA et al., 2015}, p. 466). The associative, cooperative, and exchange bases that have existed for over two centuries are now present in the movement known as SE. Hence, SE is not the intellectual creation of a single individual but rather the synthesis of the action of various social movements throughout the 19^th and 20^th centuries, having its historical roots in the struggle of workers against the production of capitalist inequalities in favor of a fair society.

Although it has diverse expressions worldwide, SE has some fundamental principles that differentiate it from those observed in the predominantly capitalist model. According to ^{Singer (2000}), SE is based on the collective ownership of the means of production, the division of surplus among the partners, and collective management. The enterprises that operate under the prism of SE comprise a set of collective experiences of work, production, commercialization, and credit organized by principles of solidarity. To name a few: cooperatives, producers’ associations, self-managed enterprises, community development banks, barter clubs, and various urban and rural popular organizations (^{SINGER, 2000}). These characteristics are the confluence of rules applied by several previous cooperatives, which now appear together. Moreover, SE represents modern challenges of the so-called minorities of the capitalist system:

In addition to its historical roots, the current wave of SEEs [...] is influenced by the countercultural movements that arose in the late 1960s. The questioning of capitalism and the disenchantment with existing socialism provoked the emergence of ecological, feminist, and minority movements and the search for alternatives to existing models. Therefore, the classic forms of EcoSol [...] are the production and consumption cooperatives that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century, reemerge, in the new context of capitalist society, loaded with environmentalist values (of sustainable development), community, feminist, solidarity, among others, which are in line with the criticism concerning neoliberalism, in addition to meeting the technological and organizational changes of recent decades (^{OLIVEIRA FILHO, 2016}, p. 50).

Because of these characteristics, according to ^{Singer (2000}), SE creates an alternative to the capitalist system of production. In this conception, the so-called SEEs are engaged in the materialization of practices configured as forms of politicization and strategies for generating employment and income, manifesting themselves through struggle fronts that seek to overcome social exclusion. According to ^{Hespanha et al. (2015}) “in the case of Latin America, confronted with a socioeconomic reality of marked exclusion, the SE has gained strong expression as a practice for economic inclusion” (p. 468).

In Brazil, the first expressions of cooperativism also date back to the 19^th century; however, SE as a social movement began to have some visibility in the 1980s and only gained momentum in 1990, concomitant with the implementation of neoliberalism. According to ^{Singer (2002}), SE revived in the country “when millions of jobs were lost, leading to mass unemployment and marked social exclusion” (p. 122). It was also in the 1990s that the Technological Incubators of Popular Cooperatives (ITCPs), which are important in supporting SE, began to be founded in universities. According to ^{Oliveira Filho (2016}):

[...] focused on the production of knowledge simultaneously with the intervention, in reality, the work developed in the ITCPs aims at the monitoring and formation of self-managed economic enterprises as an opportunity to generate work and income for excluded populations, as well as the consolidation of solidarity and cooperative principles in society (p. 53).

In addition to the ITCPs and the people linked to SEEs, the broad Brazilian SE movement also includes the Unitrabalho Foundation, which conducts research in the area and provides assistance to the enterprises, the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST), Caritas, an entity linked to the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), among others. The movement is organized through forums (Brazilian, state, and municipal) of SE. It has its representation in governmental instances, including the National Secretariat of Solidarity Economy (SENAES), which was created in 2003 within the Ministry of Labor, with Paul Singer himself as secretary (2003-2016). In 2011, the Brazilian Solidarity Economy Forum launched the Cirandas.net website to promote the economic, social, and political articulation of SE.

About the number of enterprises in 2007:

A broad survey on the solidarity economy has just been carried out in Brazil. Known as the first National Mapping, it was idealized by the Brazilian Solidarity Economy Forum and the Federal Government, with the support of universities, research institutions, and NGOs. In 2006, the end of the main stage of information collection resulted in a database of 15 thousand Solidarity Economy Enterprises, involving an estimated population of 1.2 million participants in all the states of Brazil and 41% of the municipalities. In late 2007, complementary field research included another 7,000 enterprises in the database (^{GAIGER, 2007}, p. 58).

Between 2009 and 2013, a new survey was conducted by SENAES through a National Management Commission, with representatives from the secretariat and other bodies involved with SE, including the Brazilian Solidarity Economy Forum. The goal was to assemble a national database called the National Information System on Solidarity Economy (SIES)⁸ to characterize the SEEs and SE in the country (^{IPEA, 2016}).

According to the II Solidary Economy Mapping, 19,708 enterprises were identified in all states of Brazil and 2,713 municipalities. “Of this total, 11,869 (60.2%) are new SEEs, that is, they had not been registered in the previous mapping, and 7,839 (39.8%) are from revisited SEEs” (^{IPEA, 2016}, p. 10). The mapping also registered about 1.4 million people involved (workers and consumers) in the Solidarity Economy in the country.

Solidarity Economy has been growing in Brazil in the last decades, engaged as a social movement. Although it has stabilized in numerical terms in recent years, the number of new SEEs is expressive, according to the data presented in the first and second surveys. Over the years, it has also been configured as an essential tool for overcoming misery and social marginalization caused by the new economic restructuring since adopting the neoliberal model.

METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH

We adopted a method anchored in the qualitative research approach to develop this study.⁹ In this perspective, the act of researching is to go around the investigated phenomenon, whose intentionality is to seek a possible understanding, given that every phenomenon has varied perspectives. In the words of ^{Garnica (1997}):

In qualitative approaches, the term research takes on a new meaning, to be conceived as a circular trajectory around what one wishes to understand, not being solely and/or a priori concerned with principles, laws, and generalizations, but focusing on quality, on the elements that are significant to the observer-investigator (p. 2).

In order to shed more light on the studied context in its minutiae, thus avoiding generalizations, a careful and attentive insertion was carried out with the EES CicloPedaleiros anchored in participant research (STRECK; ADAMS, 2012). The apprehension is that the act of doing research should focus on ‘doing with’ the population and not ‘doing for’ or ‘doing about’ the people who contribute to the investigation (^{OLIVEIRA et al., 2014}). It also means that we do not adopt a neutral posture but an active one, living together, sharing tasks, and participating in dialogues. The researcher ceases to be a mere observer and becomes part of as much as the community, putting their knowledge in dialogue.

According to ^{Bogdan and Biklen (1994}), the insertion of the enterprise’s participants was recorded in field diaries, which enabled the registration of the descriptive aspects of the experience, as well as the explicitness of the reflective dimension of the observed phenomenon. The objective of the reflective part is to improve the description of the notes and make explicit that there is a research subject who interprets the phenomenon, evaluates the situations, and reflects on the events observed and experienced in the field (^{BOGDAN; BIKLEN, 1994}).

In the context of this article, we bring the analysis of seventeen field diaries made from our participation in the group’s evaluation and planning meetings. We accompanied the CicloPedaleiros from March 2018 to March 2019, assisting in daily tasks, including checking routes, searching for partnerships, adjusting bicycles, and participating in the delivery service. We chose to only collect data in the meetings because, in these moments, the group reflected on the events and planned activities; therefore, all the actions of the SEE went through the meetings at some point.

The meetings, in principle, should occur weekly, but in some moments, the group met weekly, in others monthly, and also had periods of break. This context resulted from the demand for services and the interpretation of the need for meetings defined by the CicloPedaleiros and in no way affected the data collection of this investigation since the research was carried out in a participatory manner and over a year.

After data collection, the analysis began, which was marked by phenomenological reduction, an exercise that includes ideographic and nomothetic analyses. The first one implied several (re)readings of our data sources (field diaries) carried out in light of the research objective. The re-readings made it possible to highlight the so-called meaning units textually. According to ^{Martins and Bicudo (1989}):

[...] as it is impossible to analyze a whole text simultaneously, it becomes necessary to divide it into units. [...] the meaning units are discriminations [...] perceived in the subjects’ descriptions [...]. The units of meaning [...] are not ready-made in the text and exist only in relation to the researcher’s attitude, disposition, and perspective (p. 99).

The diaries were organized in chronological order and identified with Roman numerals, the oldest being the first (I) and the most recent the seventeenth (XVII). At the same time, the units of meaning were noted with Arabic numbers (1, 2, 3 etc.), always restarting the counting from number one in each distinct field diary. During the analysis, we will cite some meaning units, and at the end, in parentheses, we will first indicate the diary in which it was recorded and then the number corresponding to the US. For example, “IX-19” means the passage corresponding to the nineteenth meaning unit in the ninth field diary.

In an interdependent manner to the ideographic analysis, the nomothetic analysis occurred, which consists in the movement of identifying convergences (which express alignments and approximations about the understandings that the research collaborators communicate) and/or divergences (indicating opposing points of view between one or more meaning units) among the different meaning units that were highlighted (^{GARNICA, 1997}; ^{MARTINS; BICUDO, 1989}; ^{GONÇALVES JUNIOR et al., 2021}).

Faced with convergences and/or divergences among the units of meaning, or even idiosyncrasies (individualized positions), thematic categories were created that indicated the educational processes arising from the social practice of bicycle delivery. The analytical categories express the core meanings we captured from the speeches and records in the field diaries. From the phenomenological perspective, this moment is configured as a nomothetic analysis (^{GARNICA, 1997}). In the path traced by the phenomenologically inspired method, the categories emerge authentically at the moment of analysis (ideographic and nomothetic), with no thematic pre-indications.

The following categories emerged from our analysis: A) I gone there to speak and said, I am from CicloPedaleiros solidarity economy enterprise; B) It is good to wear a helmet just to be sure, at right time you’ll be saved; and C) Precariousness is the word of the year. The titles given to the categories were extracted from the participants’ speeches.

CONSTRUCTION OF RESULTS

CONSIDERATIONS

This article sought to discuss the educational processes resulting from the social practice of bicycle delivery. To do so, we understand that it is necessary to contextualize the various faces of work in Brazil, developed within an exclusionary economic model driven in this country since the 1990s. Recently, the precariousness of work has been deepened by the uberization, which removes rights historically won by workers while enabling huge profits for companies. Additionally, the lack of work corroborates the deepening of exploitation, as it weakens the political struggle and individualizes the search for alternatives.

In another way, Solidarity Economy, understood here through the actions of CicloPedaleiros, tries to propose more balanced, fair, and solidary alternatives. Within the principles of SE, entrepreneurship can be developed by those working and creating their own business in an insubordinate and free way. Decisions, taken consciously, promote human enhancement and explore new horizons.

The qualitative methodology helped us to situate experiences in a time and space, in subjects and their praxis. Through shared daily life, we could reflect jointly on what was experienced, bringing an “us” present in each participant and that, soaked in this reality, tried to transform it. Such activity was not alien to the oppressive context, but resisting and showing that it is possible to build new perspectives.

As a social practice that engenders educational processes, bicycle delivery allowed worlds to be expanded through new practices arising from conviviality. It also allowed the participants to become politically engaged, noticing the surrounding precariousness and valuing who they were and what they were building. It gave them the autonomy to structure and expand the SEE. Moreover, although permeated by conflicts, it transformed common relations into dialogical relations. Only in this way was it possible to overcome the different difficulties.

Given the aspects observed, we consider that amid the deepening of labor precariousness, new repertoires are constructed, more balanced, sustainable, fair, and solidary. It unveils, thus, that human work, although necessary for the production of life, cannot be oppressive, dehumanizing, and a promoter of human segregation. Thus, the educational processes presented demonstrate that it is possible to transform the human experience historically constituted as life for work into work for life and liberation.