Garment migrants in São Paulo: pieces of work, city and state

Author(s)

Tiago Rangel Côrtes

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2013-12-02

Examining board members

Vera da Silva Telles; Nadya Araujo Guimaraes; Cibele Saliba Rizek

• Advisor: Vera da Silva Telles

Abstract

This research has three main objectives. The first is to understand the garment workers migration. It analyzes the functioning of the sector that attracts this transnational workforce, located in the urban dynamic of Metropolitan Area of São Paulo. Our approach denies national and ethnic aspects to explain the migration flow that enters the city through the work in the garment industry. The hypothesis is that it was established an elective affinity between the changes in this industry, since the restructuring process, and the way in which is structured the transnational circulating migration, settled in what was called as the garment workshop dispositif. This dispositif provides the conditions for the realization of the migratory project: mobility, qualification, work, housing and nourishment. The second aim lies in understanding the relationship of the garment workshop dispositif with the idea of slave labour. The debate on slave labour is tracked from the rural to the urban mode, with reference to the garment workers migration. It is showed the treaties, national and international laws that concern these migrants. Then, some representations of these migrants about this subject are evidenced. The last aim shifts the understanding of slave labour. We put forward the Zara case, an inspection that identified slave labour in Zara´s chain production. We examine the transformations of the performance of state agents in the fight against slave labour: from repression and criminalization to the government of the flow and the incorporation of migrants with the mobilization of the large companies and NGOs. Slave labour is understood as agglutinating the various politics of inclusion, referred on the market, which seek to organize this labour market and govern the migration flow. This research seeks to highlight the limits and contradictions of these actions. The methodology used was largely qualitative, based on field research, documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 10/14102-1 - Sociability network and relational web of Bolivian migrants: the constitution of a circulatory territory
• Grantee: Tiago Rangel Côrtes
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master