Globalization, Inequalities and Labor in Latin America

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The Latin America Regional Advisory Panel co-sponsored a regional effort to analyze the impact of processes of globalization on labor throughout the Americas. On July 10-11, 2000, the SSRC held a seminar at FLACSO Costa Rica entitled "Latin American Labor a Decade After Reforms," which brought together 15 people working on three clusters of labor-related issues in Latin America, and three Asianists who provided a comparative perspective from outside the region.

This workshop was organized jointly by the RAP and the Council's Collaborative Research Network on Globalization, Local Institutions and Development. It was chaired by Juan Pablo Pérez Sainz, a researcher at FLACSO-Costa Rica who served on both of these Council entities.

The premise underlying this workshop was that contemporary social and economic trends are calling into question many of the key analytical categories employed by social scientists to think about the experiences and prospects of Latin American workers, both as individuals and as collective social agents. Memoranda presented at the workshop focused on conditions facing labor in Latin America, with commentary by specialists on East Asia providing a comparative perspective.

A similar structure, in which Latin Americanists discussed memos on East Asia, proved highly productive at a meeting held a year earlier in Hsinchu, Taiwan.

In an effort to promote dialogue among researchers analyzing labor from different perspectives, the workshop discussed the issues in three parts:

the first section addressed how shifts in the organization of production, firm structure and inter-firm networks associated with processes of globalization may affect opportunities for workers;
the second section considered trends in employment, unemployment and labor market (de)regulation;
the third section focused on household responses to globalization; i.e. demographic changes that occur as households become increasingly connected to labor markets around the world. This section encompassed issues of migration, as well as questions of poverty and vulnerability.

Subsequently, in collaboration with a Princeton University-based project on Paradoxical Inequalities in Latin America, it was decided to prepare a manuscript analyzing linkages between globalization, labor and the contours of inequality in Latin America. Edited by Pérez Sainz, Orlandina de Oliveira and Eric Hershberg, the volume was submitted for review in early 2006.

Social Science Research Council