Aspectos históricos e mudanças estruturais da informalidade no mercado de trabalho: um estudo comparado entre Brasil e Argentina

Abstract

The dynamics of economic activity and the structural transformations that capitalism has undergone throughout the twentieth century have affected and modified labor relations, with strong consequences for workers. The changes resulting from processes such as economicfinancial globalization and the productive restructuring of the 1980s and 1990s had effects on the economic structure and the world of work, especially for informal activities. In the cases of Brazil and Argentina, added to these processes, specificities and structural characteristics historically constituted of the economy and the labor market. The marks of exclusion and economic and social heterogeneity conditioned and perpetuated informality as one of the main challenges for these societies. In this context, the present study has the general objective of analyzing the question of informality in these countries, through a conceptual perspective - since the phenomenon is understood from different theoretical frameworks - and historical - seeking to present the main transformations occurred in the context of the labor market throughout its formation, until its most recent reconfiguration, resulting from changes promoted by public policies adopted in the scope of labor relations and legislation. Initially, an attempt is made to present the main theoretical approaches that define the concept of informality and, subsequently, a historical rescue of the evolutionary trajectory of informality is made, highlighting the main constitutive moments of this phenomenon in the economic sphere, throughout the process of formation of the labor markets in Brazil and Argentina, from the roots to its most recent reconfiguration. An effort was also made to characterize the phenomenon of informality in the 21st century, in these two countries, based on information provided by official household surveys, with the aim of quantifying and qualifying it from the perspective of its relationship with the performance of economic activity and its consequences for workers considered informal, in terms of weekly hours worked and income. The results do not suggest structural changes in its characteristics that go back to the roots of the formation of the labor market, both in Brazil and in Argentina, and corroborate that informality is perpetuated as a phenomenon that negatively affects, with more intensity, the workers who need it most social protection.