Precarious labour and social reproduction in Bolivian immigrant sweatshops in São Paulo, Brazil

Abstract

This paper analyses labour and social reproduction conditions in Bolivian immigrant garment industry sweatshops in São Paulo, Brazil. The analysis contributes to an understanding of the ways in which precarious labour is articulated with a simultaneous precarization of social reproduction. Working conditions in Bolivian immigrant sweatshops include 14-hour or longer workdays, piece-work, low wages and unsafe working environments. Based on the life stories of three Bolivian women migrants in São Paulo, I spotlight the gender-based arrangements of paid work and reproduction upon which the sweatshops are predicated and further detail the reproductive conditions within these sweatshops, which tend to be uncomfortable, unsafe and unhealthy for workers as well as owners. These arrangements blur the dividing lines between the home and the workplace, as well as the distinctions between paid labour and social reproduction. Through this empirical work, I argue that social reproduction can make labour more precarious in contexts such as this one. I further contend that the crisis of social reproduction in peripheric countries extends beyond the retreat of the welfare state, rather constituting a generalized precarization of reproductive conditions that both supports and is supported by extremely precarized labour.