Brazil: inequalities, labour exploitation and new informalization processes

This chapter discusses transformation and permanence in the Brazilian labour market since the 2000s. The analysis takes place in three stages. The first analyses the changes in Brazilian social stratification, promoted by the Workers’ Party administrations (2003-2016). It is argued that a poverty-reduction development model was adopted, without altering the concentration of income. In the world of work, there was an increase in the minimum wage, a reduction in unemployment, a reduction in informality, while the extremely unequal structure in terms of race and income distribution remained practically unchanged. During this period, the working class gained visibility as a central target for expanding access to credit and consumption, and also for its importance as an electoral base. However, the exploitation of work and the recognition of the elements that organize daily life and forms of resistance by workers remained invisible. We then move on to the 2013 protests, which mobilized millions of people across the country and are related to the political instability that culminated in the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff. The possibility of protests signalling the exhaustion of this development model are analysed. Changes in the direction of government policies are analysed which, since 2018, have been drawing a clear attack on the social forces of labour with new labour regulations. Finally, new processes of work informalization are analysed, associated to uberization and, more clearly, to work through digital platforms. One of the arguments that guides the present analysis is that processes of work informalization with global dimensions give new perspectives to informal work, its centrality and its association with capitalist development. It is discussed how these processes give new visibility to informality, now recognized as an element that globally permeates new forms of work management and control.