Houses for “taking care of children” and public daycare centers: relationships of care and interdependence between peripheries and the state

Abstract

This article analyzes the relations of coexistence between informal care practices carried out in the peripheries in their interface with State administrations. The ethnography was carried out in a slum complex located in the North Zone of Rio de Janeiro. The analysis seeks to highlight the dynamics of interdependence between houses of slum dwellers who take care of “children” alongside public daycare centers. From the reflections on the care transacted in these spaces, we seek to reflect on the ideas of dependency, the provider state, sexuality and female reproduction. The complementary relationship between these places points to the existence of local care circuits in which relations of vulnerability, scarcity and demand for social resources are elements of dispute that refer to processes of stratified reproduction of historical inequalities of gender, class, sexuality, territory and race.