Territorial labor mobility of young rural workers in flex-crops territories. Oil palm in the departments of Meta and Casanare (Colômbia) and sugar cane at the Pontal do Paranapanema (São Paulo, Brazil)

Author(s)

Robinzon Piñeros Lizarazo

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Presidente Prudente. 2019-01-07.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp). Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia. Presidente Prudente
• Defense date: 2018-09-19
• Advisor: Antonio Thomaz Junior

Abstract

The main aim of this thesis was to understand the territorial advance of the agro-hydrobusiness of flex crops and its consequences upon the labor mobility of rural young wage earners in two countries of South America between 2000-2017. The empirical regions of the research were the Pontal do Paranapanema (São Paulo, Brazil) and the Departmentos of Meta and Casanare (Colombia). We used a theoretical framework based on the Geography of Labor and its contributions for the analysis of the control and exploitation of the labor force. The methodological approach included the use of qualitative research methods to collect information coming from secondary sources through bibliographic review and data collection; it also included the collection of primary sources through interviews and field journals. We used content analysis techniques to analyze the interviews and the selected bibliography. In addition, we used descriptive statistics to analyze data about employment and planted and harvested areas. The results allowed us to confirm that, within the globalized context of the Corporate Food Regime, the territorial advance of crops and agro-processing plants to produce agro-fuels and commodities is disputing land, water and other territorial resources. In this context, the couple agro-hydro-business capital/State and the practices of the ruling classes are using the environmental discourse in order to keep available new areas for the expansion of these crops. We also identified the dynamics of the territorial mobility of the rural youth when working in sugarcane and palm companies. These dynamics are based on the segmentation of the labor market by age, on the strategies of companies to mobilize and organize the availability of labor, as well as on the trajectories of workers. Therefore, we understand that the rural youth are defined in their transversality of class by their age and by their grouping as a useful generation for the expansion of the capital: the orphans and heirs of the sugarcane and other new “llaneros” of the oil palm. This working class group is key to the restructuring of the productive processes, and to the new profile of the worker in the regions of this study. Their functions are related to the mechanization of the sowing and to the harvesting of sugar cane in the State of São Paulo. They are also part of a mass of migrant workers with agricultural functions within the oil palm plantations in the departments of Meta and Casanare. Finally, along with the analysis of the trajectories of the young rural workers, we show the experiences related to the process of dispossession and expropriation that peasants, settlers of the agrarian reform, and Afro-descendant communities experience, along with the forms of flexible labor and labor precarity present in these processes. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 15/10470-0 - Territorial work mobility and capture of subjectivity of the youngs in biofuels production territories in the Meta department (Colombia) and Pontal do Paranapanema (São Paulo, Brazil)
• Grantee: Robinzon Piñeros Lizarazo
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate