Mothers, agencies and forms of resistance: youth deprived of freedom in the socio-educative centers of Fortaleza

Abstract

This work seeks to understand the role of women mothers who organized and
formed a group to be able to fight for the rights of their children, young people deprived of freedom in socio-educational centers in the city of Fortaleza. Based on this scenario, I highlight the fact that two mothers interviewed in the research are women living in peripheral areas of the city, self-declared as brown and/or black and have their experiences elaborated by situations of violence. From field research between 2016 and 2020, I seek to understand how the group emerged and how mothers managed to organize and articulate themselves. As a methodological resource, I focused on the experiences of mothers, appropriating two main techniques: in-depth interviews and
participant observation. I emphasize that the research made it possible to understand the disputes that cross the activation of the term mother. Such disputes involve moral implications around the meanings of the term "mother", precipitated from power
relations and the expression of emotions that guide the interactions between the subjects involved in the situations of deprivation of freedom described throughout the work.