(UN)GOVERNED BODIES IN (UN)CONTROLLABLE TIMES AND SPACES: MULTI-SITED ETHNOGRAPHIC PATHS ON THE MOVE, BETWEEN BRAZIL AND FRANCE, AND SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS OF ELECTRONIC MONITORING.
Punishment and control of bodies; Electronic monitoring; Multi-sited ethnography in movement; Social representations; Moral panics.
The thesis focuses on the lived experiences of people monitored with electronic anklets during the fulfillment of judicial measures in Brazil and France, based on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in movement in the prison services in both countries. Considering that the body of monitored people has been the place/space/time of punishment and psycho(techno)political controls, the aim was to understand the narratives of these individuals marked by monitoring, the interactions and tensions in/of the monitored body and this body with other bodies (of state agents, family members, of people close to them and others), in their theoretical and practical, moral and non-institutionalized aspects, moral panics triggered by them and social representations elaborated from common sense about and beyond these bodies in their different social markers (of gender, class, ethnicity/race, geography, among others). The contexts and singularities of the experiences of people being monitored in an attempt to adapt to the demands of the state apparatus for managing electronic monitoring, such as monitoring centers and/or hubs, as well as social reintegration services, when they exist (as in the case of French probation, with its protocols for reception and monitoring during compliance with the measures imposed by the courts), show that, contrary to the objectives officially declared by the governments in their criminal policies, the monitoring of people with electronic anklets has been a technological resource for scrutinizing and containing (un)governed bodies in (un)controllable times and spaces, in both countries, in the face of the “punitive moment”, under the aegis of the “racialized prison continuum” instrumentalized by the security and punishment industries.