Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenors:
-
Luisa Schneider
(Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
Julienne Weegels (University of Amsterdam)
Marcio Zamboni (Universidade de São Paulo)
Send message to Convenors
- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- 22 University Square (UQ), 01/005
- Sessions:
- Thursday 28 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel examines confinement arising from the political, legal, social, economic and spatial abandonment of certain categories of people in society and within institutions. It analyses how people seek to escape confinement, or lessen its impact, by creating relationships of care.
Long Abstract:
Over the past decade, a neoliberal paradigm shift and ongoing socio-economic crises have led to a weakening in public service provision and welfare. As states prioritize whom to support and whom to abandon, the rights and protections of people who have come to be deemed politically unwanted 'surplus populations' have been curbed along gendered, racialized and class lines. This not only exacerbates marginalisation and social suffering but also creates increasingly harrowing parallels between incarceration as a method of punishment and other zones of confinement (Besteman et al. 2018, Gilmore, 2007, Schneider 2021, Weegels et al. 2020). Such zones no longer need prison walls to immobilise, but instead manage to police, confine and abandon certain categories of people within "free society". The construction of prisons as 'a kind of moral space which tags inhabitants as unethical and immoral people' (Ugelvik 2012: 273) can lead incarcerated people to feel abandoned, unwanted and uncared for by society and its members. However, people in and outside prison find new and innovative ways to create meaningful, connected and caring lives in the midst of deprivation. In particular, many seek to escape such political, social, economic, legal and spatial abandonment by creating relationships of care within confinement and in wider society (e.g. Cunha 2008). This panel invites scholars who examine the logics of care and abandonment in contexts confinement (prisons, migrant detention centres, hospitals, asylums etc.) to discuss the possibilities and limits of theoretically and empirically exploring care and protection in contexts of confinement.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 28 July, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
Based on in-depths case studies with houseless and incarcerated people in Leipzig Germany, this paper analyses confinement as the inability to care for another in contexts of imprisonment (spatial) and of livelihoods that are confined along multiple axes of identity (ontolgical).
Paper long abstract:
In Germany, overall reform led to retreating, outsourcing and fragmentation of public services and welfare whereas prisons main justification, rehabilitation' leads services to still be concentrated there. In this paper, I use in-depths ethnographic case studies of rough sleepers who move in and out of prison in Leipzig, Germany to show the extent to which German society has individualised social suffering in its attempts to responsibilise those under their governance (Crain, nY) and to improvise safety and security (De Giorgi, 2006). I will examine examine the consequences of changes in the nature of the democratic contract away from a focus on care (on the side of states) towards one of responsibility (on the side of citizens) (see e.g. Aretz, 2019; Daigneault, 2014; Schneider, 2020a; Schneider, 2021). This responsibilisation leads affected people to be unable to care for others socially, financially and legally. At the same time, houseless people are frequently imprisoned for minor offences and fines they are unable to pay. The construction of both confined lifelihoods and prisons as 'a kind of moral space which tags inhabitants as unethical and immoral people' (Ugelvik 2012: 273) can lead confined people to feel abandoned, unwanted and uncared for by society and its members in both spaces though in different ways. This paper analyses confinement as the inability to care for another and to be cared-for in contexts of imprisonment (spatial) and of livelihoods that are confined along multiple axes of identity (ontolgical).
Paper short abstract:
Using an ethnographic methodology, we explore the existence of irregular, overlapping and fragmented trajectories between the prison and certain neighborhoods (or part of them) in the city of Montevideo, which reveal a daily experience of relegation for certain sectors of the population.
Paper long abstract:
This paper shares elements related to a research line developed within the framework of the Programa Integral Metropolitano from the Universidad de la República (PIM - UdelaR, Uruguay) in which the authors' postgraduate research also converge. From an ethnographic methodology that prioritizes the experiences of the inhabitants, we analyze exclusion processes in the city of Montevideo, where the prison and certain neighborhoods (or part of them) are considered as territories of relegation. In contrast to binary approaches to think about the relationship between prison and the city, and complexifying the idea of a territorial continuum, we explore the existence of overlapping and fragmented trajectories that reflect a daily experience of relegation for certain sectors of the population.
Beyond identifying common aspects that show the practices of stigmatization and marginalization, we intend in this paper to focus on the articulations that exist between these relegated territories in the city. Daily life in both territories presents ways of being that allow us to think of the existence of trajectories that link them in partial, diverse and intermittent articulations that we intend to characterize. The aim of this paper is to identify how these articulations have an impact on the reinforcement of confinement and punishment practices, as well as on the articulation of care and protection among those who maintain relationships in and from these territories.
Paper short abstract:
Drawing on ethnographic work with prisoners and mental health practitioners, the paper argues that concerns around expanding care and ‘inclusion’ for mental health disorders in target populations has driven a rapid expansion of carceral infrastructure in the UK.
Paper long abstract:
People subject to imprisonment in the UK are routinely invited and/ or coerced into mental health based interventions as part of their sentence. From ‘trauma-informed’ prisons, to behaviour-change programmes, to criminal justice pathways aimed at managing people with particular mental disorders or elemental ‘traits’, the UK prison system has within it an elaborate mental health infrastructure.
This paper is grounded in the concerns of prisoners and mental health workers caught in this situation, and based on ethnographic research about personality disorder (PD), the most overrepresented mental disorder in UK prisons. It begins with testimonies of ambivalence: when your therapist is assessing your need for captivity, what trust is produced? What kind of caring intervention continually returns to the worst thing you have ever done? How can an institution so notoriously traumatic be ‘trauma informed’?
From here, it is argued that these increasingly merged systems of care and punishment are emblematic of a broader historical pattern, in which appeals to care for mental ill health drive carceral development. The ambivalence experienced by research participants is correlated with UK justice and health strategy, wherein appeals to include and care for troubling disorders like PD have driven the expansion of penal infrastructure, and the recruitment of mental health workers into the assessment of criminal risk. Concurrently, comparable mental health support outside prison walls has been emaciated. This imperative of care, then, ultimately folds ever greater numbers of prisoners and mental health workers into prisons: engines of social harm and exclusion.
Paper short abstract:
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, people living in Long-Term Care homes have been subjected to long confinements and social isolation. This paper aims to explore coping strategies that care home residents have developed through interviews and group discussions elicited by their own photographs.
Paper long abstract:
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, people living in Long-Term Care (LTC) institutions or homes have been subjected to long confinements and severe social isolation. Not only were they severely hit by COVID-19, but also by the consequences of these anti-COVID measures. Assessing them is the main objective of ResiCOVID-19, a project funded by the Catalan government to evaluate the impact of the pandemic on people living and working in Catalan care homes, as well as on their families. Drawing on the results of this project, this paper focuses on the coping strategies residents developed to deal with the disruptive consequences of these measures. The paper aims to approach them as resourceful agents that sought to counter the consequences of the measures, even challenge them, and not only as passive and vulnerable actors, victims of both the institution and the pandemic.
Thirty-six residents from 6 Long-term care homes in Catalonia (4 geriatric homes, 1 mental health home and 1 disability home) participated in the study: firstly, they were interviewed, secondly, they took pictures that represent their experience and coping strategies (assisted by the research team) and later, they engaged in group discussion elicited by the pictures.