Visiting women. The prison visit from a spatial approach

Abstract

In this article we analyze the experience of female relatives of prisoners when they go to visit them in prison, understanding the network of places they pass through and the practices they develop there that make up the expanded prison space. We will consider how negative discourses about prison partly shape the features of these spaces and, at the same time, how they are experienced by women. We will focus on the analysis of the practices and meanings that come into play during the trip to the prison, its periphery and entry. We will see how visiting a prisoner is an extremely laborious task that requires money, contacts and accumulated knowledge that are used and managed contingently, forming an experience of place. Thus, the web of links that makes transit through these places possible will be central when it comes to building networks of solidarity, assistance and activism. The testimonies are part of the field work carried out since 2017 in Prison Unit n°33 in La Plata and interviews carried out in 2020 and 2021, as a member of the GT-CLACSO “Neighborhoods, families and prisons in circuit”, with relatives who go to Buenos Aires penitentiaries in the La Plata and Centro complexes.