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2019 | Book

Introduction Read chapter Read first chapter

Living and Working in Poverty in Latin America

Trajectories of Children, Youth, and Adults

Editors: María Eugenia Rausky, Dr. Mariana Chaves

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Book Series : Governance, Development, and Social Inclusion in Latin America

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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About this book

This edited volume studies the complex interrelation of poverty, work, and different stages in the life course, and how it contributes to the permanent existence of poverty and inequality in vulnerable groups in society. Mechanisms of productions and reproduction of these relationships are identified through empirical research carried out in four Latin American countries: Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, and Cuba. This book centers on the experiences of individuals in those less favored social groups who may have suffered structural poverty for decades, or who may have been simply deprived of a basic income to cover their most essential needs.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter
Chapter 1. Introduction
Abstract
In this chapter, the editors present the aim and scope of this comparative volume, reconstructing an image of what it is like to live and work in poverty at different stages of life in four different countries: Argentina, Brazil, Cuba and Mexico. It also sets the political, economic and social context in Latin America over the past two decades to demonstrate structural features of social inequality and poverty. Thereafter, it lays out the common methodological framework and conceptual tools used in the research projects laying the ground for the individual chapters. Lastly, it outlines the structure of this book.
María Eugenia Rausky, Mariana Chaves

Childhood, Poverty and Child Labor

Frontmatter
Chapter 2. Resizing Children’s Work: Anthropological Notes on Mexican Girls
Abstract
The main objective of this chapter is to analyze the limits established between the city as an adult, masculinized space and the girls who work in the streets of Mexico City. By means of an ethnographic approach based on interviews, participant observation, life stories, and drawings, this study deals with three aspects that are essential to an understanding of this phenomenon. First, the spaces of girls’ work will be analyzed, visibilizing the double inequalities to which they are exposed because of their age and because of their sex. Second, the gender differences in their working conditions, compared to the group of boys. Finally, based on the analysis of these inequalities, it is necessary to review the discourses and programs of social attention to childhood derived from the 2030 Global Agenda on Sustainable Development.
Begoña Leyra Fatou
Chapter 3. From Childhood to Adolescence: Vulnerable Life Stories and Persistent Inequalities in Argentina Since Post-Convertibility (2003)
Abstract
Recognizing that child labor allows a clear view of how social inequalities are structured, linked, and reproduced from an early age, this chapter shares the results of a mixed methods research developed between 2014 and 2016 in the urban area of the city of La Plata (Buenos Aires, Argentina), with children who work on the streets. Through the analysis of the life stories of these workers, this research aims to reveal the heterogeneous ways in which the new generations inhabit a part of their life course: childhood and youth. The reconstruction of the trajectories allows showing the different risks to which these children are exposed throughout childhood, as well as the different ways in which integration into the fabric of society can be blocked.
María Eugenia Rausky

Youth, Poverty and Labor

Frontmatter
Chapter 4. Working Lives of Youth in Poverty in Urban Argentina
Abstract
This chapter analyzes how people between 15 and 24 years old work and live in poverty. These young people have several years of working experience, since most of them began working during childhood or adolescence and are part of families—both nuclear and extended—with low incomes. Methodologically, the text has been based on the complement of fieldwork by the two authors. Chaves’ fieldwork was located in a suburban neighborhood of the city of La Plata (Province of Buenos Aires), and Assusa’s fieldwork was located in different neighborhoods of the city of Córdoba (Province of Córdoba). Both made interviews and kept records of participant observation. Population analysis through Permanent Household Survey (PHS) processing is also provided, contributing elements for an initial characterization of the situation of working and poor youth in Argentina, which also allows us to make diachronic (change in time) and synchronic (differences and inequalities among social classes) comparisons that make possible for readers from other regions to understand the strong trends in social conditions in Argentina. The richness of combining both data records and the complement of quantitative and qualitative results provide a much wider interpretation framework for the analyzed phenomenon.
Gonzalo Assusa, Mariana Chaves
Chapter 5. Work and Schooling in the Life Course of Poor Young People in Rio de Janeiro
Abstract
Investigating different life courses of young people includes understanding processes of social individualization but also the vectors of unification of socializing standards in a world that became simultaneously globalized and excluding, which enlarged fields of possible choices in the face of what is determined by tradition but does not provide support and condition to make these very choices true to everybody. We will address processes of poor young people going into adult life taking the school-work relationship as the main vector. The empirical basis of our discussion comes from quantitative and qualitative data about young high-school students in the city of Rio de Janeiro between 2013 and 2015.
Ana Karina Brenner, Paulo Carrano

Adulthood, Poverty and Domestic Paid Work

Frontmatter
Chapter 6. “You Can’t Have It All”: Patterns of Gender and Class Segregation in Paid Domestic Work in the City of Buenos Aires
Abstract
This chapter focuses on the labor trajectories of a group of women who enter the labor market mainly through paid domestic work. Studying these trajectories will enable us to see how the characteristics of the ways that they enter the market considerably limit their occupational mobility. For this reason, the form of labor mobility observed among domestic workers is strictly horizontal. In cases when workers do find a way out of domestic employment, it is into other occupations with similar characteristics. Based on a qualitative study that we have been carrying out in Buenos Aires since 2009, we will examine these forms of mobility so as to account for the dynamics of inequality that limit the horizon of opportunities for women from popular sectors in the world of work.
Débora Gorbán, Ania Tizziani
Chapter 7. The Restructuring of Labor in Cuba (2008–2016) and Paid Domestic Workers: Broken or Reconstructed Labor Trajectories?
Abstract
Based on a qualitative study, this chapter proposes a reading of the configuration and reconfiguration processes experienced by domestic workers and paid domestic work in the informal space after the labor restructuring process who has been implementing since 2008 in Cuba. There are problems associated with this type of work, which reappear and worsen in the current context and could be pointing to possible setbacks in terms of social equity and gender. In this sense, it is interesting to understand how these women have reached this situation, what and how their labor trajectories have been, how social inequalities in this sector are (re)configured within the current context, which persist in relation to previous periods and what factors have contributed to reproduce them over time.
Magela Romero Almodovar
Chapter 8. Conclusion: Final Reflections
Abstract
This concluding chapter reflects on the main results from each chapter and points to future research in the main areas of study.
María Eugenia Rausky, Mariana Chaves
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
Living and Working in Poverty in Latin America
Editors
María Eugenia Rausky
Dr. Mariana Chaves
Copyright Year
2019
Electronic ISBN
978-3-030-00901-4
Print ISBN
978-3-030-00900-7
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00901-4