Sumários
Welfare, Social Citizenship and the Politics of Need
26 Outubro 2026, 15:30 • Patrícia Matos
This session moves beyond civil and political rights to examine social citizenship: welfare, income, food, housing, and the material conditions required to exercise agency. We analyse how welfare institutions identify needs, define eligibility categories, and distinguish “deserving” from “undeserving” subjects. Particular attention is paid to austerity and the Portuguese case, including the relationship between rights, need, measurement, and redistribution.
Main bibliography
Ferguson, J. 2013. “Declarations of Dependence: Labour, Personhood, and Welfare in Southern Africa.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 19(2): 223–242.
Matos, P. A. de. 2025. “Political Struggles over the Logic of Human Needs Quantification: Negotiating Capitalist Welfare Futures.” Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, advance online publication, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.3167/fcl.2025.0903OF3.
Secondary bibliography
Matos, P. A. de. 2020. “Austerity Welfare and the Moral Significance of Needs in Portugal.” In Grassroots Economies: Living with Austerity in Southern Europe, edited by S. Narotzky, 113–131. London: Pluto Press.
Muehlebach, A. 2012. The Moral Neoliberal: Welfare and Citizenship in Italy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Fraser, N., and L. Gordon. 1994. “A Genealogy of Dependency: Tracing a Keyword of the U.S. Welfare State.” Signs 19(2): 309–336.
Koch, I. 2015. “‘The State Has Replaced the Man’: Women, Family Homes, and the Benefit System on a Council Estate in England.” Focaal 2015(73): 84–96.
Core seminar question
When does welfare become a right, and when is it transformed into assistance granted only to those whose need can be demonstrated and morally justified?
Borders, Migration, Asylum and Statelessness
19 Outubro 2026, 15:30 • Patrícia Matos
The session examines citizenship as a system that governs both mobility and membership. Borders do not merely exclude outsiders; they produce differentiated legal statuses, forms of deportability and unequal access to work, housing, healthcare and family life. Particular attention is paid to migrant “illegality”, asylum, refugee governance and the European border regime. Statelessness is considered a limiting case that reveals how effective rights depend on recognised political membership.
Main bibliography
De Genova, N. P. 2002. “Migrant ‘Illegality’ and Deportability in Everyday Life.” Annual Review of Anthropology 31: 419–447.
Bhagat, A. 2024. Governing the Displaced: Race and Ambivalence in Global Capitalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Introduction, pp. 1–14.
Secondary bibliography
Andersson, R. 2014. Illegality, Inc.: Clandestine Migration and the Business of Bordering Europe. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
Cabot, H. 2014. On the Doorstep of Europe: Asylum and Citizenship in Greece. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Ticktin, M. I. 2011. Casualties of Care: Immigration and the Politics of Humanitarianism in France. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Baird, M., K. M. Ordaz, and A. Gabster. 2025. “Embodied Borders: Navigating Transit Migration Through Darién, Panama.” The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 30(4): e70033.
Core seminar question
What does the production of the “illegal migrant” reveal about the relationship between citizenship, sovereignty and rights?
Translating Rights: Legal Pluralism and the Social Life of Human Rights
12 Outubro 2026, 15:30 • Patrícia Matos
Summary
Human rights do not remain unchanged as they move from international conventions into everyday life. This session examines what happens as rights circulate among international institutions, governments, courts, NGOs and local actors. Particular attention is paid to Sally Engle Merry’s concept of vernacularisation, legal pluralism, and the role of intermediaries who translate global legal languages into locally recognisable claims.
Main bibliography
Merry, S. E. 2006. Human Rights and Gender Violence: Translating International Law into Local Justice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chapter 1.
Goodale, M. 2006. “Toward a Critical Anthropology of Human Rights.” Current Anthropology 47(3): 485–511.
Secondary bibliography
Cowan, J. K., M.-B. Dembour, and R. A. Wilson, eds. 2001. Culture and Rights: Anthropological Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wilson, R. A., ed. 1997. Human Rights, Culture and Context: Anthropological Perspectives. London: Pluto Press.
Coleman, L. M. 2024. Struggles for the Human: Violent Legality and the Politics of Rights. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Core seminar question
What is gained — and what may be lost — when supposedly universal rights must be translated into culturally and institutionally recognisable claims?
Session 2
28 Setembro 2026, 20:30 • António Medeiros
Some necessary notes on the history of anthropology. Why the discipline, once renovated, mattered in the XXth century? Introducing 3 concepts cherished by anthropologists: "culture", "ethnocentrism", and "cultural relativism". How do these concepts relate to citizenship and human rights?
Citizens, Subjects and Others: Colonialism, Race and Citizenship
28 Setembro 2026, 15:30 • Patrícia Matos
Summary
This session examines the colonial genealogy of modern citizenship. Rather than presenting citizenship as an initially universal institution that gradually became more inclusive, it asks whether differentiated inclusion and exclusion were constitutive of modern citizenship from the outset. We examine colonial distinctions between citizen and subject, racial classification, indirect rule and differentiated sovereignty, and their postcolonial legacies.
Main bibliography
Mamdani, M. 1996. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Introduction and Chapter 1.
Bhambra, G. K. 2015. “Citizens and Others: The Constitution of Citizenship through Exclusion.” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 40(2): 102–114.
Secondary bibliography
Fanon, F. 2008 [1952]. Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by R. Philcox. New York: Grove Press.
Stoler, A. L. 2002. Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hall, S., with B. Schwarz. 2017. Familiar Stranger: A Life Between Two Islands. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Core seminar question
Was exclusion a failure of modern citizenship, or one of the conditions through which citizenship itself was historically constituted?