Entre o íntimo e o político:

os contornos atuais da governança reprodutiva

Abstract

This article, which opens the dossier on contemporary family and kinship patterns, analyses how human reproduction is intertwined with political, economic and social dimensions, particularly in Brazil and Latin America. The authors argue that, in contexts marked by profound inequalities of class, race, and gender, reproductive governance operates simultaneously as a mechanism of state control and an arena of resistance, where female strategies of solidarity and intergenerational care networks emerge in the absence of a consolidated welfare state. The dossier brings together ethnographies that shed light on the ‘shadow spaces’ neglected in previous discussions and in other geographical realities, examining everything from motherhood prevented by legal and cross-border barriers to the removal of parental rights, revealing how moral economies, emotions and everyday negotiations materialise tensions between individual rights, state regulations and ethics of care, always permeated by social hierarchies that determine who can reproduce, raise children, and under what conditions.