This dissertation investigates public sector work and the desire for concursos in northeastern Brazil. It considers the meaning of civil service to “new” middle class Brazilians and seeks to understand how standardized entry tests are used to further aspirations of upward mobility. The desire for public sector work has its roots in histories of economic instability, paternalism in the private sector, and neoliberal state-craft. Neoliberalism alters the dynamics of the labor market, making available positions in the public sector through the expansion of the penal state. For many participants in this project, the desire for public sector work is at once a proactive alignment with the neoliberal project of the state and a reaction to shrinking public entitlements and instability in the labor market, arising from an environment in which social insecurity threatens families perched precariously on the boundaries of middle class. In Brazil, the system of concursos overlays on previously established forms of governmentality in the labor market and higher education, linking individuals, families, and the state in the construction of desire. This desire shapes patterns of consumption in education, travel, and home ownership, as well as discourses in the moral economy—where critiques of the public sector are most prevalent by participants in this project, despite their own participation in concursos and continued expressed desire for public sector work. Keywords: civil service, public sector, concursos, desire, neoliberalism, subjectivity, anthropology, morality, higher education, home ownership, travel, consumption, new middle class