Visualization and Drawing As Research Tools. Prison Workshops with Transgender Inmates

The Secondigliano prison in Naples has the only "special" section reserved for the incarceration of transgender women in all of peninsular southern Italy. In order to detect the penitentiary conditions of this population and to identify possible intervention levers to improve them, I conducted field research for 2 years, by doing individual interviews, group meetings, workshops and collecting diaries. In this proposal I present a methodological reflection on the use of drawings as a technique for co-constructing qualitative data. The creation of the drawings was preceded by visualization exercises aimed at evoking a safe space and defining interpersonal boundaries. Prison as a total institution does not allow for the possibility of separating "scene" and "backstage", so I asked the participants to visually represent a human figure, a house and the prison. Prison as a total institution (Goffman 1961) does not allow for the possibility of separating "scene" and "backstage" (Goffman 1956), so I asked the participants to visually represent a human figure, a house and the prison. The research was carried out as part of my PhD in gender studies while I was volunteering in prison. My identity as a non-binary person and a relative of prisoners has prompted me to have a section of my notebook dedicated to exercises in reflexivity (Bourdieu 1992) about my positioning and emotional ethnographic notes. The visual materials produced by me and the participants were analyzed together, in the perspective of participatory research. The techniques themselves were decided together, in order to implement an emancipatory research (Massari and Pellegrino 2020).