Human Rights and the world of rural labor: an analysis of slave rural labor in Brazil century XXI and legal strategies for its eradication

• Grant number: 13/02037-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: April 01, 2013
• End date: November 30, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Law - Public Law
• Principal Investigator: Fabiana Cristina Severi
• Grantee: Stéfanie dos Santos Spezamiglio
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais (FCHS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Franca. Franca , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research project aims to analyze the problem of the persistence of labor analogous to slaves in Brazil's countryside. The importance of the subject strikes the eye, because it is today's issue of human rights violations that persist even in the face of legal institutional efforts, recognized even internationally. Within this analysis, it is necessary to understand the limitation of human rights in the Brazilian case. Therefore, one has to evaluate historically the conditions of our so contradictory modernity, especially regarding rural issues. This work aims to give an overview on the current situation of the contemporary slave labor in Brazil between the years 2003-2011, as well as seek a reflection about the achievements and legal and institutional barriers to combat slave labor work, focusing on the process of turning effective human rights of rural workers undergoing such work practice. As specific objectives we seek to: a) the identification of legal strategies to fight slave labor in Brazil after the 1988 Constitution, b) data collection with the Pastoral Land Commission, the Public Ministry of Labor and Employment, as well as, other organs of slave labor in rural Brazil, c) the analysis of the territorial distribution of the contemporary slave labor in Brazil and the occurrences of denunciations. The research will be based on indirect sources of data about slave labor in Brazil, collected and systematized by official agencies. As a theoretical background will be favored theoretical criticism on human rights and on the sociology of labor.(AU)