Nós somos gente, nós pode ser mãe: existências e resistências à retirada compulsória de filhas/os pelo Estado

Abstract

Understanding the determinations of permanence (but also of distancing) of children from their families in the context of psychoactive substance use presupposes a complex movement, which shows a plot saturated by historical, cultural, political, economic and social mediations. Supported by a social theory that considers historicity, the continuous movement of the real and its contradictions, this study aims to access the experiences of families that managed to stay with their children, seeking to unveil the resistances and insurgencies undertaken both by them and by workers (especially social workers), as well as identifying the care actions offered in terms of social and health protection. The research turns in to a dimension of daily life and the reality of professionals and families who fight and resist the logic of inequality, judgment, moralism and prejudice, especially in situations involving the use of psychoactive substances, which presence has been associated automatically to the impossibility of exercising motherhood and fatherhood, this masks situations of violence, racism and lack of protection, often made invisible in the name of the best interest and protection of the child. The methodology is quantitative-qualitative, as a way of approaching reality and the historical processes experienced and told by the research participants through: documentary research; participant observation; interviews with workers and families, based on the Oral History methodology; care, protection and resistance itineraries. The study showed the contradictory face of judicialization and the characteristics of families (in which women are central) that can have their children removed in the established flow between the maternity/hospital and the Judiciary System: mostly black women, young (up to 35 years old), with incomplete elementary school, who are faced with inclusion in precarious jobs, who have the street as a reference territory or who live in uncertain and precarious housing conditions, to whom are denied fundamental social rights and who live in constant violations and lack of protection. This thesis also made possible to apprehend the dissonant voices, the “disruptive and committed looks” that act to recreate, in the present time, practices of resistance to oppression and the expropriation of the right to motherhood, a motherhood that has been denied, especially when it comes to black women with street trajectories and/or use of psychoactive drugs. Resistances also appear in the form of apprehension of reality, in listening, in writing and in shared, collective and networked care. The aim of the study is not to exhaust the reflections mentioned, but to sow new questions about reality and its process, complexity and totality, so that the compulsory removal of children is not the only solution imposed on the path of many families who happened to have their lives judicialized. In times of hopelessness, betting on resistance is a way to continue resisting, existing and fighting for a more protective and fair society