June 1, 2025 to May 30, 2028

36 months

(Un)Protect presents an innovative study of the interrelationship between racialisation and the child/youth state protection system in Portugal, focusing on its impact on the lives of black and Roma women and their families. The project approaches racialization as a historically rooted process of control and 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. 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” that constitute the specific place of black and Roma women and their families in the system of racial oppression (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.

• The development of 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”;
• An analysis of 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;
• A study of 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);
• The implementation of innovative and participatory methodologies with black and Roma women that have been developed by Race Critical Theory;
• A map that identifies 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;
• The co-creation of an educational video, a podcast centred on the experience and counter-narratives of black and Roma women, grassroots organisations and researchers, and an educational toolkit on how the protection system works.

Silvia Rodríguez Maeso (coord)

racialisation, child/youth protection system, black and roma women, socioeconomic vulnerabilisation

FEDER - Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional e por fundos nacionais através da FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia