How Do Foreign Women End Up in Prison? An Intersectional Approach of Criminal Pathways

Female Crime and Delinquency: A Kaleidoscope of Changes at the Intersection of Gender and Age

“…When we consider the gender lens, and particularly the intersectional approach (Crenshaw, 1991;Gomes, 2018;McCall, 2005;Potter, 2015), we confirm that women face multiple vulnerabilities and obstacles due to being women, foreign and poor, with different combinations of these positions occurring throughout their trajectories until their imprisonment. However, they retain a certain ability to "break free" and challenge traditional gender roles, while still doing gender.…”

“…Therefore, the gender naturalization of traditional gender roles is visible in the motivations presented for crime involvement. There are conformity narratives regarding gender roles, which focus the narratives of these women on family and their central role in taking care of it (Gomes, 2018;Gomes et al, 2018).…”

“…In Portugal, the first studies on female crime and delinquency appeared in the 1980s and underwent a boom at the beginning of the millennium (Gomes & Duarte, 2018a). These studies focus on women in law (Beleza, 1993), women in prison (Carmo & Fr aguas, 1982;Cunha, 1994Cunha, , 2002Cunha, , 2010Gomes & Granja, 2015a;Granja, 2015Granja, , 2017Granja et al, 2013;Matos, 2008), the criminal trajectories of women in general (Leal, 2007;Pedroso et al, 2017) and of foreign and Roma women in particular (Esposito et al, 2020;Gomes, 2014Gomes, , 2018Gomes, , 2019Gomes & Granja, 2015b;Matos, 2014, Matos et al, 2019, and violence and female juvenile delinquency (Carvalho, 2017(Carvalho, , 2018(Carvalho, , 2020Duarte, 2012;Duarte & Carvalho, 2017;Duarte & Cunha, 2014;Duarte-Fonseca, 2000;Duarte & Vieites-Rodrigues, 2015;Pedroso et al, 2017). This boom closely followed profound social changes in Portuguese society in terms of the nature and extent of female crime and delinquency, particularly in the two Metropolitan Areas of Lisbon and Oporto.…”

“…This boom closely followed profound social changes in Portuguese society in terms of the nature and extent of female crime and delinquency, particularly in the two Metropolitan Areas of Lisbon and Oporto. In fact, the profound social inequalities in these particular geographical areas are an expression and provide a basis for understanding and analysis of the deviant and criminal involvement of particular groups, such as children and young people (Carvalho, 2010(Carvalho, , 2013(Carvalho, , 2014(Carvalho, , 2015(Carvalho, , 2019, ethnic minorities (Cunha, 2002(Cunha, , 2010Gomes, 2014Gomes, , 2019, and also females offenders (Carvalho, 2017(Carvalho, , 2018(Carvalho, , 2020Cunha, 2002;Duarte & Carvalho, 2017;Gomes, 2018). In addition, the new nature of female crime can be observed in the role of women as offenders in extremely gendered crimes such as stalking, where traditionally we saw them as victims rather than perpetrators (Grangeia & Santos, 2018).…”

(Dis)trusted outsiders: conducting ethnographic research on prison settings

“…The empirical material presented in this article was collected within three different studies developed in Portuguese prison contexts. The first aimed to explore the pathways to prison of ethnically and gender diverse prisoners and their relationship with the criminal justice system (Gomes and Silva 2014;Gomes 2014Gomes , 2017Gomes , 2018. The second research focused on how prison professionals and prisoners conceive and act upon the re-entry process in the prison context (Gomes 2019).…”