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  • Women’s experiences of border crossing: gender, mobility and border control
    Publication . Matos, Raquel; Esposito, Francesca
    In recent years, new migration patterns emerged in Europe and border control operations became more complex and broader, resulting in an increasing number of non-nationals detained for migration-related reasons. This paper aims to explore how gender, migration and border control intersect in the lives of women detained for not having authorisation to remain in Portugal. Several visits were made to a detention facility, where ten women detainees were interviewed. Our findings reveal how gender plays a crucial role in women’s mobility pathways, and how the lack of a secure migrant status can be used as a control mechanism within the context of gendered relationships. Overall, due attention is paid to the way crossing borders impacts the lives of these women, reinforcing their vulnerabilities, and to the ways in which women deal with and resist the precariousness and violence they are exposed to, seeking a meaning and continuity for their lives.
  • Criminalidade feminina e construção do género: emergência e consolidação das perspectivas feministas na criminologia
    Publication . Matos, Raquel; Machado, Carla
    Neste artigo, são analisadas as perspectivas feministas na criminologia, em particular, os discursos sobre criminalidade feminina e construção do género. Parte-se de uma visão ampla sobre feminismos e construção de conhecimento e apresenta-se uma revisão histórica da emergência e da consolidação das perspectivas feministas na criminologia. Discute-se em particular o argumento feminista de que a construção social do género pauta os percursos de vida das mulheres que transgridem, e se reflecte na resposta formal e informal a essas transgressões. São analisadas as principais críticas tecidas pelas autoras feministas ao que designam de ‘discursos tradicionais’ sobre mulher e crime e as propostas que apresentam de reconstrução desses discursos.
  • Gender, vulnerability and everyday resistance in immigration detention: lived experiences of women detainees
    Publication . Esposito, Francesca; Matos, Raquel; Bosworth, Mary
    This paper examines immigration detention by looking at women’s experiences of confinement in a Portuguese detention facility. The empirical data—comprising participant observations, informal conversations and interviews with detained women—are read through an intersectional lens. This approach illuminates constructions of gender and sexuality in their mutual and contextualised articulation with other power relations (e.g., processes of racialisation and ethnicisation stemming from colonial histories), as well as the reconfiguration of these constructions by women themselves. Doing so also focuses on the intertwinement between power and resistance in daily life in detention. The women we met did not passively accept their situation, but rather struggled to make sense of, navigate and challenge the detention system. To this effect, they deployed multiple forms of agency, which also passed through the rejection, acceptance and reappropriation of hegemonic gendered constructions and their use in strategic ways to negotiate their positions vis-a-vis the system.
  • Trajectories and identities of foreign national women: Rethinking prison through the lens of gender and citizenship
    Publication . Matos, Raquel
    In Portugal, the proportion of foreign nationals among women inmates rose significantly in the first decade of the 21st Century. This increase draws attention to the need for understanding foreign women’s pathways and their identity (re)construction while in custody. Those were the aims of the research project presented in this article, which comprised in-depth interviews with 41 foreign national women in prison. Results show several migratory paths before custody, where gender plays a crucial role. In the experience of imprisonment, citizenship seems to be essential as it can be an obstacle for accessing the outside or the explanation for an expulsion sentence. At the same time, nationality and ethnicity play an important role as organizers of social relations in prison. In light of these results, it is suggested that prison should be rethought from a lens of gender and citizenship.