From Corporatist to Autonomous: Unemployed Workers’ Organisations and the Remaking of Labour Subjectivity in Argentina

Abstract

This chapter is about the transformation of the subjectivity of labour during the second half of the 1990s in Argentina, and in particular, the role of unemployed workers in the politicisation of labour issues and the emergence of new forms of non-governmental public action. The subjectivity of labour refers to the historical forms of identity, organisation, mobilisation and political contestation through which labour subjects articulate collective action within a particular context. The chapter focuses on the contentious political dynamics around neo-liberal reforms between what is called here ‘labour subjects’ and the state. These dynamics include the relationship between the labour movement and new labour subjects in search of adequate forms of resistance to new forms of subordination that emerged out of the process of transformation.