State Predation? How the Carceral Care Economy Harms Black and Latine Women - CANCELLED

• In Event: Collateral Damage - The Impact of Incarceration in the Lives of Women

Abstract

While literature on mass incarceration has historically focused on incarcerated men, their children, and romantic partners, this paper builds on a smaller body of work that highlights the harms to mothers under the constraints of the neoliberal carceral state. In this study, I examine how mothers with incarcerated adult children have been conscripted to perform extractive caring labor. Drawing on data from 21 in-depth interviews, I find that mothers often travel long and costly distances, drain their savings, and work multiple jobs in order to ensure the survival of their incarcerated children. I argue that, through a reliance on the gendered and racialized obligations of care work, the carceral state preys on poor and working-class Black and Latine women on the outside, extracting often limited time and resources. I introduce the term carceral care economy to conceptualize the neoliberal commodification of incarceration and the labor imperative it creates for mothers with children who are incarcerated.

Author

• Raquel Guzman Delerme, University of Southern California