Francisca Benítez is a lecturer at the Faculty of Social Sciences and History at Universidad Diego Portales, and the Master’s Program in Economics and Public Policy at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Santiago, Chile. She is an editor of Cuadernos de Teoría Social. Her research centres on the fundamental question: why and how do some lives count as more valuable than others in everyday interactions? Drawing on Vania Bambirra’s work on how structural dependency materialises in the exclusion and invisibilisation of women, she examines mechanisms of historical exclusion and their intersection with multiple forms of violence: gender-based, xenophobic, and racist. Her research interests include the political economy of inequality, gender studies, and the ethnography of social reproduction. She has collaborated on FONDECYT, FONDART, and FONDAP projects. She is currently a doctoral candidate in Political Processes and Institutions at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, where she conducts ethnographic research on social valuations of life in the emergency waiting room of Santiago’s Hospital de Urgencia Asistencia Pública. [francisca.benitez@mail.udp.cl]