Abolishing Bars and Cages: Intersections of Confinement and Liberation across Prisons, CPR, Animal Farming and Slaughterhouses

This research explores the parallels and interconnections between different forms of oppression and confinement, analysing carceral spaces, repatriation detention centres (CPR), farms, and slaughterhouses in the Italian context, adopting an abolitionist, anti-speciesist, transfeminist, and decolonial perspective. The study argues that such transcarceral spaces are not natural and necessary entities, but rather products of a colonial, capitalist, and patriarchal system which relies on the oppression of marginalised bodies, both human and non-human. Drawing from the historical roots of abolitionism and the processes of animalisation, it seeks to connect theories and visions from Black feminist carceral abolitionism, Border Studies, Critical Migration Studies, and Critical Animal Studies. In addition to the theoretical framework, the research includes interviews with people who have experienced incarceration in prison or CPR, as well as accounts from someone who worked undercover on farms. Furthermore, it relies on testimonies from humans and non-humans regarding escapes, riots, and other forms of protest that occur every day against borders, bars, and cages. This work proposes that such liberation efforts must be reached through abolitionism because to imagine a world without cages it is necessary to dismantle the system that creates them in the first place. Such vision necessarily urges a collective rethinking of social relations, as well as notions of guilt and justice. By linking the abolition of prisons, CPR, and borders with animal liberation, the study advocates for a world where no life is confined, oppressed, and rendered disposable.