"Novias de la Unión Tepito": The Symbolic Configuration of a Criminalizing Typology

Abstract

Based on the main postulates of the concept of criminal subjection, the socio-symbolic process through which the label "Novias de la Unión Tepito" was configured as a criminalizing social typology is analyzed. Empirically, it addresses the genealogy, narrative structuring, sedimentation and expansion of such category in Mexico, identifying the way in which it crystallized in public opinion as a narrative referent under which multiple women victims of femicide and disappearance were subsumed. Analytically, we offer a comprehensive framework that, taking distance from notions such as stigma or secondary deviance, allows us to understand the intersubjective mode of production of different social typologies that personify crime, as well as the intersecting symbolic field that enables the structuring of criminalized subjectivities, especially women.