This book is based on the author’s doctoral thesis, completed as part of the ‘Human Rights in Contemporary Societies’ doctoral programme, and on her work as a junior researcher at CES/UC on the research project POLITICS ‘The politics of (anti)racism in Europe and Latin America: knowledge production, decision-making and collective struggles’ (ERC-Consolidator Grant, 2017–2022), coordinated by Silvia Rodríguez Maeso.

The book examines the demands of Black social movements and their reception by the State, offering an in-depth analysis grounded in a broad empirical basis that highlights the internal tensions within the Racial State and the mechanisms that underpin the maintenance of the racial order. Starting from an understanding of racism as a system of oppression that produces race as an ontological difference, the work focuses on anti-Black racism as a legacy of racial enslavement. By analysing legal norms, judicial decisions, public policies, and struggles for rights in Brazil and Peru, the author transcends national borders to understand anti-Black racism as an interrelated phenomenon, which is contextualised locally by the legal regulation and institutionalisation of race. The historical analysis highlights how this legacy continues to define the boundaries of humanity and to undermine Black subjectivity within the justice system in contemporary struggles for rights.

Programme
Book Presentation - Luana Xavier Pinto Coelho, collaborating researcher at CES/UC, Research Associate in the postgraduate programme at the Faculty of Law, University of Brasília (UnB), where she coordinates the project “Race, Law and Property: legal subjectivity and the racial property regime in Brazil” (2025–2028). She completed postdoctoral research at the Centre for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra on the project S-DREAM - The self-segregation dream: analysis of racial property regimes and urban planning in Nova Lima, Brazil (2024–2025). She holds a PhD in Human Rights in Contemporary Societies from the same university. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Law (UFOP, Brazil) and a Master’s degree in International Cooperation and Urban Development (IUG-UPMF, Grenoble, France, and TUD, Darmstadt, Germany).

Comments
Renata Coutinho de Almeida - PhD candidate in Sociology: Labour Relations, Social Inequalities and Trade Unionism at the Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra (FEUC). She holds a Master’s degree in Labour Law from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (2019) and a postgraduate qualification in Individual, Collective and Procedural Labour Law from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (2016).

Nathalie Nunes - PhD in Sociology of Law from the University of Coimbra (Portugal), I also hold master’s degrees in International Careers (Université d’Auvergne-Clermont 1, France) and in International and European Law on Fundamental Rights (Université de Nantes, France), as well as a bachelor’s degree in International and European Law (Université de Paris Nanterre, France).

Moderator
Silvia Rodríguez Maeso - PhD in Political Sociology (University of the Basque Country), Silvia is a senior researcher at CES and vice-coordinator of the research line “Democracy, justice and human rights”. Silvia is co-coordinator of the Doctoral Programme “Human Rights in Contemporary Societies” (CES/IIIUC) and lecturer on the “Sociology of the State, Law and Justice” programme (CES/FEUC). She was coordinator of the project POLITICS ‘The politics of (anti)racism in Europe and Latin America: knowledge production, decision-making and collective struggles´ (ERC Consolidator Grant, 2017–2022).