Juridical–Patriarchal Habitus: Invisibility of Moral Violence Based on Gender Against Women in the Legal Field of Queretaro, Mexico

This article examines how justice institutions produce and reproduce gender-based violence against women through the invisibilization of moral violence, with particular attention to their spatial dimensions. Drawing on the concept of juridical–patriarchal habitus, the study conceptualizes justice institutions not only as sites of legal action but as spatial formations that shape the visibility, recognition, and adjudication of harm. Using a feminist ethnographic approach, the article analyzes two cases of gender-based violence documented in 2020 in the municipality of Querétaro, Mexico. The findings demonstrate how movement into legal and institutional spaces transforms lived experiences of violence, as procedural requirements, evidentiary expectations, and institutional interactions operate as spatial filters that render certain forms of harm visible while obscuring others. In this process, justice actors construct and reproduce gendered stereotypes about what counts as violence, simultaneously positioning women as victims and subjecting them to processes of revictimization. By conceptualizing the invisibility of moral violence as a spatially mediated process, the article contributes to debates in legal and feminist geography, highlighting how institutional spaces not only respond to gender-based violence but actively participate in its production and concealment.