[Higher education in nursing: between symbolic domination and political emancipation]

In this reflection we problematize the action of caring and teaching how to care in nursing based on some of Pierre Bourdieu's concepts about domination and symbolic power. The basic tenet of this work was to think of education as something vital for our existence on Earth. In this article, we used Pedro Demo's ideas as a reference to talk about education, which is understood as a developer of political subjects and as something far beyond formal knowledge management. It is the very first base on which human autonomy is built, and it leads to a constant growth of opportunities to exercise citizenship, qualifying our everyday existence. In the academic context, where health, education and nursing are all gathered, the competent, critical and reflective teaching work can be highly institutive praxis.