The Legacy of Erik Olin Wright´s Class Analysis for Latin America: A marxist explanation to the class location of informal workers

ELBERT, RODOLFO

Puerto Alegre

Congreso; IV ISA Forum of Sociology; 2021

International Sociological Association

Latin American labor markets are characterized by comparatively high levels of labor informality. Some authors consider that informality constitutes a class cleavage that separates formal and informal workers. In this paper, I use Erik Olin Wright´s legacy of class analysis to challenge the idea that the contrast between different groups of workers has the conceptual status of a class cleavage. Form Wright´s perspective, informal (and precarious) workers can be considered as significant fractions of the working class, but they do not constitute a new class because they share an objective material interest with formal workers (i.e. all groups of workers are exploited and dominated in production). I use the basic class schema proposed by Wright (1997) and treat informality as adding complexity to class relations at a subsidiary level through temporal and mediated class locations. In particular, I determine the type of informality regime that exists in contemporary Argentina through the study of interconnections between formal and informal workers at the level of family formation and in the job trajectory of workers. Data shows the prevalence of a lived experience across the informality boundary among both type of workers. In addition, I explore the effect of different type of job trajectories on the class self-identification of workers. In order to answer my research questions I use data from a survey study applied to a probability sample of the population (ages 25-65) of the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires in 2015. The study was conducted by the research team of the ?Programa de Investigación sobre Análisis de Clases Sociales?, that I co-direct at the Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani (Universidad de Buenos Aires)