Erika Alcantara Pinto

Abstract

The thesis, developed under ethnographic inspiration, aims to understand how the Federal Public Defender’s Office (Defensoria Pública da União – DPU) in Rio de Janeiro, through the Office of Human Rights and Collective Protection and the work of its regional human rights defenders, produces meanings and fulfills its constitutional duties of promoting and guaranteeing human rights. The investigative path reconstructs the conditions of possibility that contributed to the emergence of a particular way of doing ‘access to justice’. The research combines observation, interviews, and document analysis, while also acknowledging the agency of non-human actors such as normative instruments and various documents. It historically reconstructs the process of institutionalization of the Public Defender’s Office in Brazil since the 1988 Constitution, highlighting the political and symbolic disputes that positioned it as an institution for the promotion and defense of the human rights of vulnerable individuals and groups. The category of ‚vulnerability‘ is analyzed as a relational device of distinction and legitimation, operating as a native category that guides priorities of action, redefines institutional identity, and sustains rights-promotion strategies. Finally, the case study of the ‚‘urban land conflict‘ of the Zumbi dos Palmares Occupation demonstrates that the defense of human rights by the DPU/RJ is carried out primarily through collective protection, in judicial and extrajudicial practices of mediation and translation that reframe social demands in legal terms. The results highlight a particular way of doing ‘access to justice’, structured by territorial presence, attentive listening, network-based work, and a willingness to engage in dialogue. This openness, however, proves to be contingent: it depends on the continuity of alliances among actors, the mobilization of scarce resources, and the active engagement of public defenders in the shared construction of solutions.