ABSTRACT
The chapter focuses on women’s agency and the vulnerabilities generated by institutions, specifically the carceral institution, and its effects on criminalised women in the Basque Autonomous Community in Spain. The chapter shows how women use formal and informal support as a means to practice their agency. They act as subjects who are striving to counteract their vulnerabilities when searching their ways to resist the material and symbolic effects of imprisonment through the support of welfare services and/or family and partners. In their aspiration of a ‘normal life’, informal and formal support are crucial for overcoming the vulnerabilities arising from imprisonment and their previous background. Aspirations to find a job, obtain housing and being a mother tend to be based on hegemonic notions of gender, glass and race. Social support from family members and romantic love with a partner are here interpreted as particular dimensions of agency, as much as they distort prison logics and offer symbolic resources that are valuable in carceral contexts.
