Labor Informality and Unemployment in Brazil: Insights from the Perspective of the Relative Surplus Population

This transformation in the organization of capital, especially since the 1980s, has been taking place through the political and economic consolidation of neoliberalism, with figures like Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom ferociously pushing through neoliberalizing reforms. This ideology stimulates policies committed to reducing labor rights (so hard won by the working class), and to replacing them with the idea of laissez-faire in which the state allows free, relatively unregulated, exploitation of workers by capital. Neoliberal policies have been effective in demonizing trade unions and guaranteeing the advance of the process of individualization of workers, who are now called collaborators, entrepreneurs, and so on, thus consolidating the so-called free market cultural ethos that conceives of workers in a more individualized manner—not only in the eyes of employers, but also through the mystification generated by the law. ⁴

The neoliberal prescription leads to a classical scenario of higher unemployment on the one hand, and more precarious and informal jobs for a large portion of workers on the other. In addition, there is the advancement of technological elements that—although generating a tremendous amount of wealth—are mainly appropriated by large monopolistic companies. The use of labor-intensive technologies generally worsens unemployment/underemployment, even in technology sectors.⁵

Therefore, our research concerns the part of the working class that exceeds the capitalist demand for labor force, referred by Karl Marx as the relative surplus population (or industrial reserve army). More specifically, our focus will be the stagnant form of workers’ reserve army in contemporary Brazil. The hypothesis is that the study of the relative surplus population or reserve army of labor can add nuance to the phenomena of informality and unemployment, given that the people who are part of the industrial reserve army are central to the function of capitalist accumulation as a whole.

The analysis of the relative surplus population is therefore indispensable to understand the conditions faced by workers as a whole. These conditions are historically characterized by the persistence of informality, especially in the Global South.⁶ Thus, the construction of a new indicator that covers the entire category of reserve army of labor provides an opportunity for a more fruitful social analysis, which can reach the deepest determinations involving workers in the informal labor market.

A principal aim is to highlight the social indicators that make it possible to deal with the reserve army of labor and its contributions to a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of informality. But the official statistics on the labor market do not directly include the relative surplus population, which makes it necessary to introduce a contemporary methodology for measuring it. We will make use of some data made available by the Continuous National Household Sample Survey (Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios Contínua, or PNADC), prepared by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística, or the IBGE). We will also present data on the total size and internal composition of the relative surplus population in Brazil from 2012 to 2022.

Unemployment and Informality Beyond the Official Data

According to the IBGE, unemployment refers to individuals of working age (above 14 years old) who are not working but are available for and actively seeking employment. Currently, it is estimated that more than eight million workers are unemployed in Brazil. However, it is necessary to question the approach behind the official data, not in terms of its veracity, but to understand the possible insufficiencies and lack of information regarding the complexities of unemployment itself.

The concept of population, as Marx explained, is an abstraction if we disregard the elements behind its constitution, resulting in a chaotic conception. Therefore, it is important to comprehend the totality behind the constitution of a population, which is shaped by class, gender, race, nationality, and other factors, as well as political and economic elements that organize labor relations.

Moreover, it is a common approach to treat official data as methodologically neutral, given that the instruments behind data construction are seldom scrutinized for their practical effects.⁷ Nevertheless, it is important that research methods reflect the social life that enabled their existence. Such methods are even capable of shaping forms of power and domination.⁸ By prioritizing one form of analysis, official research methods can conceal contradictions and less desired elements.

According to the IBGE, along with eight million unemployed workers in Brazil, there are another three and a half million discouraged individuals: those who would like to work and are available to do so but are not searching for employment because they do not believe they would be able to find it. Additionally, there are sixty-six million working-age adults out of the labor force (students, housewives, and others), many of whom have been prevented from entering the labor force for structural reasons, such as lack of transportation or childcare, together with part-time employees who lack sufficient working hours but would like to work more and are available to do so.

The way social groups are constructed through official data clearly produces a specific understanding of the Brazilian workforce. As José M. Pais has noted, there is an evident difficulty in official statistics in capturing the totality of unemployed workers, resulting in a form of hidden unemployment that is not reflected in official censuses.⁹ Taking into account the discouraged population, to what extent can we completely separate them from the unemployment phenomenon, considering that many of them were also searching for work initially?

In fact, along with unemployment, there has been an evident increase in precarious, informal, and part-time jobs. It is not by chance that Aaron Benanav highlights that current labor relations are experiencing a continual rise in underemployment, which is extremely difficult to measure but affects a significant portion of the working class, especially in the Global South, historically marked by informal and insecure labor relations.¹⁰

Therefore, is it appropriate to consider a worker who works only when called or moonlights as a waiter on weekends closer to a formal or regular job than to unemployment? What do official and quantitative data overlook when they do not consider the overlap of these rigidly separated social groups? These and other questions guided the way this research was approached, aiming to go beyond official data and contribute to the discussion involving critical data and quantitative/qualitative approaches to understand the complexities of today’s world of labor.

Analytical Potential of the Relative Surplus Population Category

The Absolute General Law of Capitalist Accumulation, as conceived by Marx, draws attention to the key contradiction of capitalism, insurmountable within this mode of production: namely, the greater the social wealth on the side of those who accumulate capital, the greater the relative misery on the opposite side, of those workers who produce the wealth. This general law is enforced by the effect of the relative surplus population in depressing the relative income of the great mass of the population and allowing for the accumulation of wealth at the top of society.

Marx observes that, “it is capitalist accumulation itself that constantly produces, and produces in the direct ratio of its own energy and extent, a relatively redundant population of laborers, i.e., a population of greater extent than suffices for the average needs of the self-expansion of capital, and therefore a surplus-population.”¹¹ Capitalism, Marx argued, in its search to increase relative surplus value, is characterized by constant technological change, displacing labor, and thus increasing the organic composition of capital (the ratio of constant capital, or dead labor embodied in structures, machinery, and so on, in relation to living labor utilized in production). Capital wins the class war not by recruiting labor, so much as discharging it, with the help of technological change and an increasing organic composition of capital. It thereby constantly renews a relative surplus population that is always at its disposal and that weakens and divides the working class. The existence of the industrial reserve army allows for the continual expansion of capital. It constitutes the great lever of capital accumulation that serves to keep wages low, through competition between workers, while ensuring that sufficient labor is always available with which to expand production. As a system, capitalism is thus constantly dependent on the reproduction of a relative surplus population of the unemployed and underemployed.¹²

Rather than a kind of anomaly, the existence of a relative surplus population is therefore a fundamental condition of capitalist social relations, a sort of law of population proper to the capitalist mode of production.¹³ A law valid, therefore, for this historical moment—just as other moments in history present population laws particular to their respective modes of production. Thus, the industrial reserve army can be understood as a necessary element of capitalism.

The relative surplus population is that portion of the working class that is always ready to meet the demands of expansion or retraction of the capitalist economy, without the need for a corresponding increase in the total population. The cycles of production both recruit and discharge this surplus population. To speak of full employment in capitalism is a structural impossibility.¹⁴

The relative surplus population expresses itself in capitalism in different forms. Marx noted that there are three forms through which the relative surplus population continuously expresses itself: the floating, the latent, and the stagnant (a fourth sector is that of paupers, some of whom are drawn into the labor force at the very peak of an economic expansion).¹⁵ Given the limits of space, we will focus on the stagnant layer of the relative surplus population, and how it can reflect both informality and unemployment advances in the twenty-first century. The stagnant form is commonly characterized as part of the active army of workers, but in such an irregular way that it actually constitutes, according to Marx, part of the reserve army. It consists of populations of workers who have precarious and informal relations to employment. They do the most intensive forms of labor while receiving a minimal wage. An important element distinguishing the stagnant layer of the reserve army, compared to the other two forms of the relative surplus population, is that it tends toward constant augmentation with the development of industry.

One of the keys to addressing contemporary issues in the world of labor, particularly the issue of informality, is to be found in the stagnant section of the relative surplus population. This is because it involves workers engaged in irregular activities such as underemployment and precarious jobs.¹⁶ Examination of this form of relative surplus population shows that Marx was already calling attention to what today is called precarious work.¹⁷

There is no doubt that, as Marx and Frederick Engels noted, capitalism needs constantly to recreate itself in order to maintain its domination, so there are always new elements and relations of labor exploitation to be investigated.¹⁸ Although precarious work may assume different forms throughout history, it is clear that the capitalist mode of production tends to increase both unemployment and underemployment over time.

Measuring Relative Surplus Population in Brazil, 2012–2022

In measuring the relative surplus population in Brazil between the years 2012 and 2022, we will focus on the path taken by Nelson Nei Granato Neto and Claus Magno Germer with respect to the industrial reserve army in Brazil during the 2000s, using these authors’ formulations to carry out our own measurement. Next, we will make some clarifications about the database mobilized in our measurement, the PNADC of the IBGE. Finally, we will analyze the results.

Although official statistics use the concept of unemployment, relying on this concept alone can obscure the complexities involving informality, part-time jobs, and other insecure forms of labor that shape the current conditions of the working class. Therefore, researchers such as Granato Neto and Germer aim to adapt the official statistics produced by the IBGE to the concept of industrial reserve army for 2001–2009.¹⁹

The methodological construction carried out by Granato Neto used as a data source a household survey that preceded the database we use, the PNADC. The former was discontinued in 2016 and replaced by the latter, which features an updated methodology and greater territorial coverage.

The PNADC is part of the Integrated System of Household Surveys, which from 2006 was implemented in Brazil in order to reformulate the household surveys conducted by the IBGE, the main producer of economic, social, and demographic statistics in Brazil. The survey has the objective of producing information about the Brazilian labor market, associating information about the insertion of the population in this market, with demographic and educational characteristics, thus providing the opportunity for studies about the socioeconomic development of the country.

Following Granato Neto and Germer’s analysis, Table 1 makes a transposition between the data produced by the PNADC and the Marxist categories of population.

We collected the quarterly results for each of the PNADC indicators. However, taking into account the scope of this paper, we opted to calculate the average for each year of analysis. Thus, the data presented below refer to the average of the figures for the four quarters of each year. In the same way, the rates that we will present in sequence also refer to annual averages.

It is worth highlighting the indicators that provide an opportunity to measure stagnant relative surplus population, given the links between it and informal work. The first indicator is people employed in the private sector (excluding domestic workers) without an employment contract. Another indicator related to the stagnant relative surplus population is domestic workers who do not have a registered contract. The third indicator is that of employees in the public sector who also do not have a registered contract. Finally, the fourth indicator is the number of people working as self-employed. To better understand the figures for this population group, let us examine Table 2.

As can be seen in Table 2, the total number of people working as self-employed can be disaggregated into those who are officially registered with the National Register of Legal Persons and those who are not officially registered and, therefore, operate irregularly. However, this disaggregation only began to be carried out by the IBGE as of the fourth quarter of 2015. Because of this, for the calculation of the stagnant relative surplus population, we took into account the total value of self-employed workers. We also present the values disaggregated by the presence or absence of official registration, given that they demonstrate the numerical prevalence of self-employed people without official registration.

In relation to the total numbers, it is possible to perceive a perennial increase in self-employed workers. With regard to disaggregated figures, in 2015, 4,278,000 people were officially registered, while 18,142,000 people were not. This difference between those who worked regularly and those who worked irregularly (or informally) remained for the following years, with the second group being, in general, three times larger than the first.

The enormous presence of informal and self-employed workers in Brazil’s labor force can be related to what Benanav describes as a real trend unfolding across the world: a chronic under-demand for labor.²⁰ Therefore, alongside mass unemployment, we have continuously rising underemployment, which has been the norm for Global South countries like Brazil, historically characterized by insecure labor relations and the superexploitation of its labor force.²¹

Based on the transposition shown in Table 1, it is possible to calculate the total figures for each segment of the working class (active workers and relative surplus population) and the capitalist class, as seen in Table 3.

We see in Table 3 that the total expression of the working class increased quantitatively between 2012 and 2022. Its active segment began the historical series with 45,862,000 workers, a number that did not grow continuously until 2022. There was an increase until 2014, with a turning point in 2015, after which the numbers began to decline, with the exception of 2019, which showed a slight increase, and 2022, which ended the period with a figure slightly higher than in 2012.

The total relative surplus population, in contrast, begins the series with 53,079,000 people and, until 2014, declines. The following year, 2015, represents a year of inflection for this indicator, since from this point on the figures begin to increase continuously until reaching the highest value of the series in 2021, with 68 million people. However, 2022 ends the series with a significant decrease, with the relative surplus population totaling a little over 65 million people.

The stagnant relative surplus population in Brazil outnumbers the other sections of the industrial reserve army, while rivaling the active labor army itself. In 2012, there were 37,540,000 people in the stagnant relative surplus population. The general movement of this population was upward, with the exception of the year of 2020, which presents a drop in the value. But, 2022 ends with the amount of 45,576,000 people, the highest value of the whole series.

In addition, from the figures in Table 3, it is possible to verify several rates that relate to relative surplus population, as seen in Table 4.

When we look at Table 4, we see that the participation of the relative surplus population in the total working class is around 50 percent in Brazil, meaning that about half of the workers are surplus to capitalist demand. In 2012, 53.6 percent of the working class belonged to the reserve army, a figure that decreased until 2014 and then started to increase in 2015. The year 2021 saw the most significant participation, with 61.1 percent of the working class being surplus. In 2022, there was a decrease.

The stagnant relative surplus population is the largest form of the relative surplus population in Brazil. In 2012, 70.7 percent of the relative surplus population was stagnant, a value that increased until 2014. In 2015, it began to decrease, continuing until 2017, when 63.5 percent of the industrial reserve army was stagnant. There was a slight increase in 2018 and 2019. In 2020, the value fell significantly to 58.4 percent. In 2021, there was a substantial increase to 62 percent, and in 2022, it jumped further to 69.9 percent of the relative surplus population.

Considering the data presented regarding to the relative surplus population in Brazil, Table 5 presents the PNADC data published by the IBGE with respect to informality.

An important observation is that the IBGE only started to disclose data related to informality from the fourth quarter of 2015, at least with the indicators we now present. The informality rate is calculated by the IBGE as the ratio between people aged 14 years or older who were employed in informal situations during the reference week in relation to all people aged 14 years or older who were employed during the reference week. In 2015, this rate corresponded to 38.3 percent. The values present a movement of increase until 2019, when the rate became 40.7 percent (the highest value of the historical series). Followed by a year of decrease, in 2020, when the lowest value of the series (38.3 percent) was repeated. But the fact is that there is no great variation during the years of analysis, and the rate is around 40 percent.

In view of these official data on informal workers, we can see the similarities and differences with the data on stagnant relative surplus population. In relation to absolute numbers, the figures we arrive at for the stagnant layer of the reserve army are more expressive than the figures for people in informal employment. For example, 2022 ends the historical series with an annual average of nearly 39 million people in informal jobs, while the average for the stagnant relative surplus population reaches 45.5 million people—a difference of almost 7 million people.

Furthermore, the informality rate shows a small variation around 40 percent, whereas the participation rate of the stagnant relative surplus population varies between the minimum value of 58.4 percent and the maximum value of 73.5 percent. Although the rates do not reflect the same total population, the results point to the more penetrating nature of the analysis when utilizing the category of stagnant relative surplus population. Drawing this brief comparison in the data allows us to see the differences that distinct social indicators generate for the overall analysis.

It is worth considering some contributions from the Programa de Investigación sobre el Movimiento de la Sociedad Argentina, which highlight the substantial differences between the labor market concepts mobilized by official statistics and the Marxian categories of analysis. Despite the crucial distinctions between the two, by being aware of the frameworks in which the information base was formulated, it is possible to present the potential and limitations of the data published.

Thus, we are interested in the criticism made by the Argentinian program regarding the mechanical use of official statistics. In its intention to construct indicators that make it possible to deal with the position and function of the fundamental social groups, the program points out that such construction cannot be done by mechanically assimilating such groups. This is because official statistics define the fundamental groups based on different occupational categories.²²

In a similar way, we can problematize the use of official statistics and indicators in Brazil. Using data from the PNADC, we can observe that the relative surplus population is not only made up of the openly unemployed or underemployed, but it is also necessary to consider populations that are classified by official statistics as occupied or as inactive, examples of which are the self-employed, the discouraged, and so on. To assume that surplus workers are not limited to those who are openly unemployed or under-employed means going beyond the categories on the labor market proposed in official statistics.

Therefore, we propose a new paradigm of interpretation for the issue of informality and unemployment, which provides an opportunity for a deeper understanding and a better dimensioning of the phenomena.

The Profile of Informal and Unemployed Workers in Brazil

Marx’s theory of relative surplus population, we have argued, offers pertinent insights into the conditions of the working class today, entrenched in informal and precarious labor relations, along with unemployment. The classic dichotomy between full employment and unemployment has become insufficient to capture the gray area between these situations. It is essential to also consider the numbers of workers in informal, uncertain, part-time, and casual labor. Thus, the category of relative surplus population (especially the stagnant form) can help us understand the capitalist economy’s tendency to produce vast numbers of surplus workers, including not only those who are experiencing the conditions of unemployment, but also underemployment conditions.

Taking into account the complex and ongoing metamorphosis of the world of labor, the aim of this final section is to emphasize the importance of considering both critical quantitative and critical qualitative analysis methodologies in order to understand the real effects of informality and unemployment. Analyses that investigate the everyday life and profile of the informal and/or unemployed workers cannot be disregarded. As highlighted by Jennifer Jihye Chun and Rina Agarwala, the roots of economic subordination also involve elements such as class, gender, ethnicity, migration status, and so on.²³ Indeed, the informal sector is significantly composed of women, Black people, and immigrants.

Regarding unemployment itself, Nadya Araujo Guimarães makes it clear that this condition is socially selective, meaning it does not occur homogeneously among all workers.²⁴ When considering the situation of female workers, many studies elucidate the difficulty they face in finding employment, and when they do, it often turns out to be low-quality jobs.²⁵ Helena Hirata also emphasized the higher likelihood of women being dismissed, as they are seen to present certain “risks to productivity,” such as pregnancy.²⁶ Long-term unemployment affects the lives of many single mothers who, unable to find proper care for their children, are compelled to seek jobs that allow them to reconcile with their caregiving responsibilities.²⁷ Consequently, both rising child care costs and medical caretaking may hinder some women from seeking employment, especially in a scenario marked by the advancement of neoliberalism and privatization of basic services for the population, resulting in a crisis of care.²⁸

In relation to the Black population, high rates of informality and unemployment also stand out. In countries like Brazil, marked by a history of slavery, the Black population is subject to extremely precarious job positions. Not coincidentally, Lélia González emphasized that the sub-proletariat in Brazil is predominantly Black, with the Black workforce confined to lower-skilled and lower-paid jobs, coupled with high rates of unemployment and precarious employment.²⁹

However, oppressions such as those related to gender, race, and ethnic discrimination are also evident in other countries, including in the Global North. In the United States, Angela Davis’s analyses are emblematic in revealing how both women and Black people have been historically marginalized.³⁰

Another element that stands out in the profile analysis of informal and unemployed workers is their migratory status or immigrant condition. It has frequently been observed that there is a national trend in the United States of structuring people into groups of different statuses and characters, depending on elements such as race, class, and ethnicity. This trend is evident in the marginalized populations of Black and Puerto Rican communities in New York, who had extremely low employment rates compared to white workers. In the context of industrial advancement in the United States, Paul Le Blanc asserts that “New York’s large immigrant population created a vast reserve army of the unemployed and wages remained painfully low.”³¹

Currently, similar to the Black population, immigrants have become targets of low wages and informal employment in the United States, particularly after the advancement of neoliberal policies in the 1980s. Pietro Basso emphasizes that the continuous influx of immigrants from Latin America and Asia has supplied the so-called first world countries with a large available workforce.³² Those immigrants accept the worst working conditions imaginable, driven either by the necessity to survive or by the constant threat of deportation.³³

Therefore, the vulnerability of immigrants makes them potential targets of informality and unemployment, to the extent that many are discouraged from seeking rights or assistance in the country they are in, as this may be seen as misbehavior and subject to deportation, especially for those who are undocumented.³⁴ There are numerous ways in which immigrants attempt to remain minimally recognized as legal citizens, with practices that Irene Bloemraad refers to as “claims-making.”³⁵

In addition to gender, race, and migratory status, numerous other elements can impact the profile of the informal workers and the unemployed. What we seek to demonstrate briefly is the necessity of a qualitative analysis to examine closely the social identity of the working class affected by precarious employment and underemployment, and how understanding the particular experiences of individuals alongside their class condition can lead us to grasp numerous important factors.

Thus, qualitative research and studies that also examine informality and unemployment more closely are essential contributions to social analysis in the sense of capturing the profile and daily lives of these workers, as well as the possible resistances and struggles for legitimacy that they may seek.

Conclusion

Throughout this work, we demonstrate how, due to the complexities of a working class marked by informal and precarious labor relations, official data on unemployment and informality overlook the ways in which these conditions intertwine in an uncertain and irregular labor market. Thus, beyond the dichotomy of full employment and unemployment, Marx’s category of relative surplus population reveals the vast contingent of workers who face conditions of informality that bring them closer to open unemployment than to stable employment. When presenting the General Law of Capitalist Accumulation, he highlights the impact this accumulation has on the working class as a whole. Such impact has two detrimental effects on workers. On the one hand, it creates a reserve portion of the working class, a growing mass of people who are totally or partially unable to sell their labor force, thereby preventing them from purchasing the means for their subsistence. On the other hand, it compels much of the active part of the working class to subordinate themselves to the dictates of labor precariousness, given the competition that the reserve army exerts on workers as a whole.

The existence of the stagnant relative surplus population points to one of the forms of expression of the supernumerary, characterized by nominally appearing to belong to the active army of labor, but in such an irregular and precarious manner that it more fundamentally belongs to the reserve army. The stagnant relative surplus population, therefore, is a very fruitful Marxian category of social analysis for reflecting on informality, unemployment, and the contradictory movement that surrounds them.

By questioning the social nature of methodology and data research, we can understand how different analyses and methods can illuminate or obscure the contradictions of capitalist society. Moreover, by linking both critical quantitative and critical qualitative analyses, our understanding of the complex conditions of informality in the twenty-first century can be better established and create alliances with the working-class movements that are emerging before our eyes in various forms involving both formally employed and informal and precarious workers.³⁶

Despite the high rates of informality and unemployment in the current labor market in Brazil, the tide can be turned toward a different future when the working class, in alignment with social movements focused on gender, race, and immigration, refuses to accept a persistent decline in the demand for labor and instead fights for a different way of organizing society politically and economically.

Notes

1. ↩ David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Inquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 1990).
2. ↩ Ricardo Antunes, Os Sentidos do Trabalho: Ensaio Sobre a Afirmação e a Negação do Trabalho (São Paulo: Boitempo, 2009).
3. ↩ Aaron Benanav, “The Origins of Informality: The ILO at the Limit of the Concept of Unemployment,” Journal of Global History 14, no. 1 (March 2019): 107–25.
4. ↩ David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); V. B. Dubal, “Wage Slave or Entrepreneur?: Contesting the Dualism of Legal Worker Identities,” California Law Review 105, no. 1 (February 2017).
5. ↩ Gavin Mueller, Breaking Things at Work: The Luddites Are Right About Why You Hate Your Job (London: Verso, 2020).
6. ↩ Rina Agarwala, “Incorporating Informal Workers into Twenty-First Century Social Contracts,” UNRISD Working Paper no. 2018–13, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Geneva, 2018.
7. ↩ Evelyn S. Ruppert, “Producing Population,” CRESC Working Paper no. 37, Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change, Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom, 2007.
8. ↩ Mike Savage, “The ‘Social Life of Methods’: A Critical Introduction,” Theory, Culture & Society 30, no. 4 (July 2013): 3–21.
9. ↩ José M. Pais, Ganchos, Tachos e Biscates: Jovens, Trabalho e Futuro (Porto: Ambar, 2006).
10. ↩ Benanav, “The Origins of Informality.”
11. ↩ Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (New York: The Modern Library, 1906), vol. 1, 691.
12. ↩ Paul M. Sweezy, The Theory of Capitalist Development (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1942, 1970), 87–95.
13. ↩ It is important to note that the concept of “law” in Marx’s theory is not understood in a positivist manner, as if it was universally present in all historical periods, but rather as a law that manifests historically in a specific mode of production that is subject to changes through human action.
14. ↩ Renata Falavina Cardoso de Oliveira, “Precarização do Trabalho no Brasil de 2012 a 2019: Superpopulação Relativa e Superexploração da Força de Trabalho na Periferia do Capitalismo,” Bachelor’s final coursework, Universidade Federal de São Paulo, São Paulo, 2021.
15. ↩ For an account of Marx’s theory of the various segments of the industrial reserve army and the application of this to global capitalism today, see John Bellamy Foster, Robert W. McChesney, and R. Jamil Jonna, “The Global Reserve Army of Labor and the New Imperialism,” Monthly Review 63, no. 6 (November 2011): 1–31.
16. ↩ Marisa Silva Amaral and Marcelo Dias Carcanholo, “Acumulação Capitalista e Exército Industrial de Reserva: Conteúdo da Superexploração do Trabalho nas Economias Dependentes,” Revista de Economia 34, no. 4 (December 2008): 163–81.
17. ↩ Davisson Charles Cangussu Souza, “Sindicalismo e Desempregados no Brasil e na Argentina de 1990 a 2002: Unidade e Fratura Entre o Exército de Operários Ativo e de Reserva,” PhD thesis, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, 2010; Nelson Nei Granato Neto, “Exército Industrial de Reserva: Conceito e Mensuração,” Master’s dissertation, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, Paraná, 2013
18. ↩ Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto Comunista (São Paulo: Boitempo, 2010).
19. ↩ Nelson Nei Granato Neto and Claus Magno Germer, “A Evolução Recente do Mercado de Força de Trabalho Brasileiro Sob a Perspectiva do Conceito de Exército Industrial de Reserva,” Revista Ciências do Trabalho 1, no. 1 (November 2013): 162–81.
20. ↩ Aaron Benanav, “Automation and the Future of Work—2,” New Left Review, no. 120 (November–December 2019).
21. ↩ Ruy Mauro Marini, Dialética da Dependência e Outros Escritos (São Paulo: Expressão Popular, 2022).
22. ↩ Stella Cavalleri, Ricardo Donaire, and Germán Rosati, “Evolución de la Distribución de la Población Según Grupos Sociales Fundamentales: Argentina, 1960–2001,” PIMSA Working Paper no. 51, Programa de Investigación sobre el Movimiento de la Sociedad Argentina (PIMSA), Buenos Aires, 2008–2009.
23. ↩ Jennifer Jihye Chun and Rina Agarwala, “Global Labour Politics in Informal and Precarious Jobs,” in The SAGE Handbook of the Sociology of Work and Employment, eds. Stephen Edgell, Heidi Gottfried, and Edward Granter (London: SAGE, 2016), 634–50.
24. ↩ Nadya Araujo Guimarães, “Por uma Sociologia do Desemprego,” Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais 17, no. 50 (October 2002).
25. ↩ International Labour Organization, “The Gender Gap in Employment: What’s Holding Women Back?,” updated February 2022.
26. ↩ Helena Hirata, “Gênero, Patriarcado, Trabalho e Classe,” Trabalho Necessário 16, no. 29 (January–April 2018).
27. ↩ Sarah Damaske, “Job Loss and Attempts to Return to Work: Complicating Inequalities Across Gender and Class,” Gender & Society 34, no. 1 (February 2020): 7–30.
28. ↩ Tithi Bhattacharya, “Introduction: Mapping Social Reproduction Theory,” in Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression (London: Pluto Press, 2017).
29. ↩ Lélia Gonzalez, Por um Feminismo Afro-Latino-Americano: Ensaios, Intervenções e Diálogos (Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2020).
30. ↩ Angela Davis, Women, Race, and Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1983).
31. ↩ Paul Le Blanc, A Short History of the U.S. Working Class: From Colonial Times to the Twenty-First Century (Chicago: Haymarket, 2016), 21.
32. ↩ Pietro Basso, Tempos Modernos, Jornadas Antigas: Vidas de Trabalho no Início do Século XXI (Campinas, SP: Editora da Unicamp, 2018).
33. ↩ Jones Gast, Dina G. Okamoto, and Emerald T. Nguyen, “Making Requests: Filipina/o and Latina/o Immigrant Claims-Making and Racialization,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 44, no. 7 (June 2021): 1211–30.
34. ↩ Alexandrea J. Ravenelle and Savannah Knoble, “‘I Could Be Unemployed the Rest of the Year’: Unprecedented Times and the Challenges of ‘Making More,’” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 9, no. 3 (May 2023): 110–31.
35. ↩ Irene Bloemraad, “Theorising the Power of Citizenship as Claims-Making,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 44, no. 1 (November 2018): 4–26.
36. ↩ Chun and Agarwala, “Global Labour Politics in Informal and Precarious Jobs.”