Consejo Tutelar como tecnología de gobierno. Relaciones agonistas entre protección y vigilância

This is an analysis of the practices of the Tutelary Council (TC) as a technology of government, from long-term ethnographic research (2005-2007 and 2010-2014) carried out with young women who “left” foster care (care-leavers), in southern Brazil. The ethnographic work allows us to think that the TC operates from an “agonistic relation” between protection/care and control/surveillance and constitutes an articulating axis of experiences of institutionalization and deinstitutionalization, acting as the central figure of intervention in the families these young women come from, and later on, in the ones they will start. At times, these young women place their expectations and the longing for change in their lives upon the figure of the TC; at other times, their frustrations and discontent over changes in relationships and family ties. In short, TC acts as a producer of subjects, who in turn resist and subvert its functions when interacting with it.