Home > Events > Unemployment and Precarious Work in Brazil: How International Comparisons Illuminate Brazilian Workers' Experiences

Unemployment and Precarious Work in Brazil: How International Comparisons Illuminate Brazilian Workers' Experiences

Presented by Nadya Araujo Guimarães, Chair and Professor in Sociology at the University of São Paulo, Brazil.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010
12:30 PM - 2:00 PM
279 Haines Hall
Los Angeles, CA United States

 
Literature on labor market and employment relations transformations has been emphasizing the expansion of unemployment as well as low quality and precarious jobs as consequences of economic restructuring. The "Brazilianization" of Western former protected labor markets was coined as as an apparently useful metaphor to describe this process. Recent comparative research has been conducted from 2000 on three world metropolises (Paris, Tokyo and Sao Paulo) to better describe both the forms of unemployment, its effects on workers trajectories under different welfare regimes, and the different meanings of being unemployed (and on the search for a job) when employment system and unemployment protection varies. Instead of supporting a convergence hypothesis on the "Brazilianization" of different labor markets, this research stresses the cultural and social dimensions of labor market operation and individual experience.

Nadya Araujo Guimarães is Chair Professor in Sociology at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, coordinating its Graduate Program in Sociology. She is also Senior Researcher at the Center for Metropolitan Studies, CEBRAP, Brazil, doing research on labor and economic sociology. She had been engaged in a broad research in partnership with French and Japanese colleagues on labor market trajectories and unemployment experience comparing world metropolis (São Paulo, Paris and Tokyo) under different welfare regimes and employment systems. Her present research project deals with the mechanisms of job search and the role of labor market institutions and social networks in the search for job in São Paulo, Brazil.  From 2004 to 2009 she published or co-authored six books on changes in work organization and impacts on firms strategies, workers trajectories and employment inequalities in Brazil.

Cost: Free and open to the public

For more information please contact

Gloria Tovar
Tel: (310)825-4571

Download File: unemploymentandprecariousworkflyer.pdf

Sponsor(s): Latin American Institute, Center for Brazilian Studies, Sociology, Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE),Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER)