Background: Living in society as a mother means being part of a social category that will inevitably confluence causal links for stigmatization. However, these links are not necessarily attached to negative outcomes. Stigmatization processes that occur within motherhood, as other processes of stigmatization, are related to exclusion, deviance, rejection, abnormalities and nonconformities. Though, the symbols that are (re)produced through these processes are part of the same mechanisms that foster inclusion and equality, i.e. the same processes that define deviance and abnormality, define compliance and normality. Inclusion actions might entail exclusionary processes, which are at the core of inequality explanations and might result from stigmatization, steaming from personal patterns of credit and blame that determine choices and actions.
Methods: A diverse material including field notes from observations, walking tours, interviews and other sources was collected during field work in 2015 at the neighborhood Bela Vista, in São Paulo, Brazil. Sixteen mothers living in rented rooms and eleven mothers living in “entire” houses or apartments (owned or rented) responded to in-depth semi-structured interviews; in addition to that two mothers that were also non-governmental agents and one agent related to social projects implemented in the area also granted their speeches. The subjects ranged from personal biography, place of living, and motherhood everyday life. The empirical material was transcripted, coded and analysed within the relevant selected literature. Some interviews lasted a little more than one hour. Others depended on different engagements to happen, and with some I had assistance. Their age varied from seventeen to eighty-four years old, though the majority were around thirty. Interviews were made at the house of the informants, or at their place of work. Another important aspect was the possibility of walking conversations (Evans and Jones 2011). The interactions realized through walking tours (Benson and Jackson 2012), were more than just a tool to select and get familiar with the geographical space. Walking through the streets, much without thinking about the district borders indicated by the city map, just going along with individuals while they solved their everyday errands, consisted in an important tool to comprehend the daily living in the area.
Results: The occurrence of a public acknowledgement of stereotypes and nonconform identities, play a fundamental role in individuals public familiarity (Blokland and Nast 2014), however, they do not necessarily have a cause-effect relation to negative outcomes. Stigmatization processes are related to durable inequalities (Tilly 1998), making possible for the reproduction of long-lasting characteristics. Processes that entail stigma shed light on categorizations that take place and are reiterated through daily practices, which in turn are socially reproduced in areas considered problematic. As a process that designates identities symbolically, stigmatization qualify negatively its differences, but operates in both ways.
Conclusions: The ways individuals deal with stigmatized public notions pervade their social existences in the place they live (Wacquant 1996). But living in a place where stigma is present, does not means necessarily negative outcomes. In this sense, preserving anonymity is a virtue: anonymity means freedom from stigma, and even more, a possibility of managing informations about the self. Anonymity is strongly valued if you live in a place where the public notions about dwellers is already fixed in the imaginaries of the city. In the end, we are not becoming more lonely because of the development of the cities, but with the possibilities of spreading public notions (which are even higher if you consider internet and the facility of communication through smartphones), there is an imperative of managing informations about the self. Following this, stigma is an important tool for researchers to go further on studies about long-lasting inequalities. Furthermore, the notion of public familiarity associated with territorial stigma, might shed light on how stigmatization processes occur and entails not only its negative definitions, but all the symbolic differentiations brought up together.