One foot in, one foot out: a look at liminal freedoms (or prisons) from a Brazil-Portugal dialogue

Abstract

This project presents a proposal for a Research Internships Abroad Program (BEPE), to be carried out for a period of approximately 6 months (March 2023 - August 2023), with Prof. Dr. Manuela Ivone Cunha, University of Minho, Portugal, as advisor. The objective is to develop questions related to the ethnographic research that, since the second half of 2021, has focused on liminal lives, spaces and times produced "in the folds" between the the streets and the prison, considering forms of being related to the justice system that take place outside of prisons - provisional release, parole, half-open regime and the periodic release from prison, for example. The ongoing ethnography has taken as its center of gravitation the Association of Family and Friends of Prisoners, a São Paulo collective dedicated to receiving, orienting and mobilizing people affected by the criminal justice system, and has followed its threads leading to other places in the city. Continuing the research developed in Brazil, this project seeks to theoretically and methodologically deepen the incursion into three axes of investigation: 1) the place of prisons in the contemporary urban experience, considering the global incarceration process; 2) informal networks of care and solidarity structured around the punitive arms of the State; 3) dimensions of spatiality and temporality in the contemporary production of punishment. For this, it counts on the insertion in an international research network traditionally focused on prison issues from the angle of its porosity. (AU)