Conference Program

Many penal systems formally present imprisonment as a transitional phase intended to support social inclusion. Yet this narrative often gives rise to re-education discourses that become ends in themselves, reinforcing processes of disculturation, control logics and further imprisonment (Clemmer, 1940; Goffman, 1961; Vianello, 2019). This generates a paradox in which the total institution assumes responsibility for resocialisation through mechanisms of exclusion(Sbraccia, 2021). At the same time, disciplinary measures and systems of rewards and punishments cultivate dynamics of dependency and behavioural governance that limit autonomy and agency among incarcerated people(Foucault, 1975; Gallo & Ruggiero, 1989; Melossi & Pavarini, 1977; Rostaing, 2014).

This paradox unfolds within a broader European climate shaped by penal populism (Pratt, 2007), characterised by the politicisation of crime, the appeal to public insecurity and the consolidation of punitive common sense. In such a context, carceral expansion and security-driven priorities tend to marginalise educational initiatives or frame them instrumentally within risk-management logics. Prison education thus appears as a fragile and contested practice, negotiated within institutional arrangements that privilege discipline over emancipation.

Against this backdrop, academic institutions operating in prisons can open alternative spaces for learning, participation and identity construction, challenging—albeit partially—the isolating and control-oriented nature of the carceral environment (Borghini & Pastore, 2020; Pastore, 2018). In Italy, the consolidated experience of the Prison University Campus supports continuity in university studies, whereas in Spain the UNED provides distance tutoring and academic support through the Programa de Estudios Universitarios en Centros Penitenciarios (PEUCP)(Viedma Rojas, 2019, p. 201) (Viedma Rojas 2017).

This paper focuses specifically on the cursos de verano en centros penitenciarios promoted within the Spanish prison system. Unlike standard distance-learning provision, these summer courses create temporary face-to-face academic encounters inside prison walls, bringing incarcerated and external students together in shared educational practices. In doing so, they make visible—and partially unsettle—the symbolic boundary between “inside” and “outside,” offering a concrete setting in which to observe relational dynamics and processes of social inclusion (Borghini, 2020).

At the same time, these encounters remain embedded within institutional temporalities and security constraints that shape participation and interaction. The cursos de verano thus exemplify prison education as a transformative yet contradictory arena, where dialogical pedagogies unfold within the structural limits of confinement.

The analysis draws on a ten-month qualitative study conducted between 2024 and 2025, adopting an ethnographic orientation. Fieldwork included participant observation during two summer courses held in Spanish penitentiaries, complemented by informal interviews with educational staff and with both incarcerated and external students. Attention was paid to classroom interactions, narrative self-representations and institutional framing, in order to explore how educational encounters are negotiated in practice.

Viewed through this lens, the cursos de verano offer insight into the emergence of hybrid subjectivities: incarcerated participants may temporarily inhabit academic roles that exceed prisonised identities, while external students confront and rework their assumptions about imprisonment. Rather than dissolving asymmetries, these encounters reveal the ambivalent and relational character of prison education within contemporary punitive contexts.