Ramos de Castro, Leandro; (2025) Unclaimed dead: a study of forgotten persons, found bodies and disappearances in Brazil. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This thesis studies the unclaimed dead in contemporary Brazil, defined as individuals who die without known relatives. These deaths often occur under conditions of social abandonment and precariousness, reflecting deeper patterns of structural violence and inequality. Unclaimed deaths may also conceal cases of missing persons as systemic failures prevent families from being notified. Through ethnographic research, this study explores the social trajectories of unclaimed bodies from death to burial in the metropolitan areas of Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro) and Belém (Pará). It investigates the material and social dimensions of structural violence and inequality embedded in the corpses and their documentation. The focus is on the practices and relations that classify, examine, store, document, and ultimately dispose of these bodies. Fieldwork was conducted in hospitals, morgues, and justice system offices. In these settings, unclaimed dying challenges institutional norms and epistemological frameworks for understanding death, constituting a distinctive category of death without mourning. The thesis delves into the experiences of interaction with these dead, whether by death management professionals or families discovering that relatives were mistakenly buried as unclaimed. It argues that the materialities of these corpses profoundly affect the living, shaping and being shaped by the same practices and understandings that enact their unclaimed status. Through ethnographic engagement, this thesis demonstrates that studying unclaimed deaths is fundamental to understanding contemporary forms of governance. It explores how moralities and perceptions of violence, inequality and epistemic definitions of the biosocial human body that inform and are informed by these governance structures circulate within the society. The research findings suggest that acknowledging unclaimed deaths in contemporary Brazil and beyond has a redemptive effect of addressing anthropological crises in a world already in turmoil by reinforcing social rites and the boundaries – and continuities – between life and death.

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