Geographies of death: an intersectional analysis of police lethality and the racialized regimes of citizenship in São Paulo

Vargas, João Costa; Alves, Jaime Amparo

doi:10.1080/01419870903325636

Cited by 81 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…The phenomenon of racially biased lethal policing extends beyond the United States. In Brazil, the logic of police lethality also follows an ideological pattern of anti‐Blackness (Vargas and Alves ; Ferreira da Silva ; Smith ). There, the police kill approximately six people per day (Forúm Brasileiro de Segurança Pública ).…”

Section: Black–mothers–sorrowmentioning

confidence: 99%

Facing the Dragon: Black Mothering, Sequelae, and Gendered Necropolitics in the Americas

Smith

2016

Transforming Anthropology

127

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Anti-Black state violence across the Americas reflects a global gendered necropolitical logic. Yet, we often misread this violence by suggesting that the primary victims are men. Although state terror often results in the immediate physical death of young Black men, it is principally, yet tacitly, performed for Black women and impacts Black women disproportionately. This essay argues that the gendered necropolitics of trans-American anti-Black violence is expansive and includes the direct, immediate death of Black people and the lingering, slow death caused by sequelae. Within this calculus, Black mothers bear the particular weight of antiBlack state violence. Black mothers (social, biological, or otherwise) are scripted within the racial, hetero-patriarchal social order as enemies of the state. As such, they pose a unique political threat to the social order. Yet, while the intent of the state is to kill, instill fear and intimidate, the result has been the creation of new political knowledge and resilient political tactics. This paper considers the gendered necropolitics of anti-Black state violence in Brazil and the United States and Black mothers' responses to this violence [anti-Blackness, violence, necropolitics, gender, sequelae]Raising Black children -female and male -in the mouth of a racist, sexist, suicidal dragon is perilous and chancy. If they cannot love and resist at the same time, they will probably not survive. And in order to survive they must let go. This is what mothers teach -love, survival -that is, self-definition and letting go (Lorde 1984, 74).In 1984, Black, lesbian, mother, warrior poet Audre Lorde wrote these words in the epigraph to her essay "Man Child." It is a provocation. For Black mothers-those Black women who biologically and communally care for Black children -raising our children and simply surviving ourselves is a perilous game.

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Section: Black–mothers–sorrowmentioning

confidence: 99%

Facing the Dragon: Black Mothering, Sequelae, and Gendered Necropolitics in the Americas

Smith

2016

Transforming Anthropology

127

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“…Police violence is also a significant concern in many regions, particularly for youth. In Brazil for instance, state-sanctioned lethal violence perpetrated by the police is rampant and disproportionately affects AfroBrazilian males (Costa Vargas and Amparo Alves, 2010;Wacquant, 2008). Given the rigid class and race hierarchies in Latin America, the police largely serve the needs of the elite at the expense of the poor.…”

Section: Fear and The Latin American Citymentioning

confidence: 99%

Zero Tolerance in Latin America: Punitive Paradox in Urban Policy Mobilities

Swanson

2013

Urban Geography

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In Latin America, high levels of crime have prompted many politicians to embrace zero tolerance policing in order to quell public fears. While the overall impacts on urban crime are debatable, zero tolerance in the region has morphed into a powerful policy narrative that symbolizes strong leaders who crack down crime and disorder. Its impacts have been far-reaching; to date, it has been implemented in various guises in Mexico, Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela, Chile, Argentina, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic. Yet, the policy transfer of zero tolerance to Latin America has mutated into a much more punitive approach. In this paper, I develop a critical analysis of the punitive inequalities of zero tolerance policing in Latin American cities, and the consequences for marginalized and racialized youth. I also explore the emergence of a new, unexpected consequence of zero tolerance: the South-North migration of undocumented people. [

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“…If the Mediterranean and the US–Mexico border have been transformed into deeply racialised geographies of death, then, so also have communities on the frontlines of urban displacement. We therefore urge poverty scholars to attend to the geographies of death that haunt our cities, most notably to well worn patterns of racist police lethality (Vargas and Alves ), even as the expansive geographies of border deaths serve to haunt but also discipline migrant life in the “interior” spaces of urban everyday life. Here once again we must interrogate the legal production of illegality.…”

Section: Geographies Of Deathmentioning

confidence: 99%

Practices of Illegalisation

Genova

Roy

2020

Antipode

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This article contributes to theorising the often unrecognised continuities between the illegalisation of migrant and refugee mobilities as an effect of lawmaking or other state practices of border policing and immigration law enforcement and the illegalisation of the rights, claims, and juridical status of minoritised citizens. Against a backdrop of resurgent right-wing nationalisms, we pursue this transversal analysis of state practices of illegalisation to draw attention not only to labour subordination and disposability but also the more fundamental relationship between law and terror. The making of such regimes of citizenship takes place in obvious ways at the ostensible outer edges of nation-state territories. They are also replicated in the various spatial arrangements that ensure racialised dispossession within global cities, cities that are better understood as reconfigurations of settler-colonial cities. We argue that the study of practices of illegalisation allows critical poverty scholarship to better discern how sociopolitical categories and classifications that are central to wider processes of marginalisation and domination may arise or be reinforced as effects of the state's legal productions of illegality.

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Geographies of death: an intersectional analysis of police lethality and the racialized regimes of citizenship in São Paulo

Cited by 81 publications

References 10 publications

Facing the Dragon: Black Mothering, Sequelae, and Gendered Necropolitics in the Americas

Facing the Dragon: Black Mothering, Sequelae, and Gendered Necropolitics in the Americas

Zero Tolerance in Latin America: Punitive Paradox in Urban Policy Mobilities

Practices of Illegalisation

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