(Des)Proteção do Estado e Racialização em Portugal: um estudo do impacto do sistema de proteção das crianças e jovens nas mulheres negras e Roma

(Un)Protect aims to study the interrelation between racialization and the implementation of the system of State protection for children and young people, and its impact on Black and Roma women’s lives and their families, in Portugal. The project approaches racialization as a historically rooted process of dehumanisation inflicted on peoples and individuals seen as the opposite of white/Western men/women/family who overrepresent the universal, generic mode of being Human. Anti-Black and anti-Roma structural discrimination are historically specific processes of racialization that have shaped routine institutional practices. Accordingly, (Un)Protect has four key objectives: ­ - To identify and analyse how the State protection system in Portugal is permeated by racialized institutional practices at the level of expert knowledge production and the justice system; ­ - To analyse the impact of interventions and judicial decisions of the State protection system on Black and Roma women’s lives and their families; ­ - To unravel how protection models respond to the interlocking nature of vulnerabilities (class, race, ethnicity and gender); ­ - To identify the meanings of protection from the perspective of Black and Roma women and forms of community organisation regarding the interaction with the system. In order to achieve these four main goals, the breakdown of the project consists in the following specific objectives: ­ - To develop an innovative scientific approach to child and youth protection systems from the perspective of Race Critical Theory, Black studies and Roma critical studies that are centred on: the Black and Roma lived experiences/agency, and a critical approach between socioeconomic vulnerabilities and the racialization of “deviance”; ­ - To analyse the practitioners and expert approaches to the models of protection and the key notions used in decision-making processes, when knowledge is applied to Black and Roma women and families living in vulnerable conditions; ­ - To analyse the role of the Portuguese justice system in cases of State child and youth protection concerning Black and Roma families (2005-2020), differentiating three levels: interventions by the Public Prosecution Service, judicial decisions by courts of first instance and courts of appeals/second instance, and jurisprudence of superior courts (Constitutional Court and Supreme Court of Justice); ­ - To develop innovative and participatory methodologies with Black and Roma women developed by Race Critical Theory and intersectional methodologies; ­ - To map existing resources/responses/projects in the communities that aim to inform women about the rights of children and youth, sexual and reproductive rights, and the functioning of policies and legislation for the protection of children and youth.