The prison life: ways to endure in a Mexican women’s prison

Abstract

The comprehension of everyday prison life is fundamental to show the resistances that people deprived of their freedom implement against the conditions imposed by the institution: mortification, exclusion and deculturization, specifically. The present research has a qualitative approach, utilizing participant observation within a workshop held in a Mexican prison, focusing on the interns experiences from their own narratives. The results highlight a paradox: while institutional strategies (exclusion, control of the bodies and subjection of individualities) do not encourage the discourse of social reintegration given its mortifying character, ironically, it is through the resistances that interns produce a momentary space of resignification closer to the social reintegration discourse, because said practices of resistance steer away from those institutional de-socializing elements and, in doing so, they are more consistent with the dynamics of social life from outside the walls.