A precarização do trabalho na contemporaneidade: um estudo sobre o trabalho dos recenseadores na cidade de Manaus

Abstract

This dissertation, linked to the Graduate Program in Social Work and Sustainability in the Amazon (PPGSS/UFAM), analyzes the working conditions of enumerators from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) involved in the 2022 Population Census, focusing on the city of Manaus. In the Amazon, a region marked by socio-environmental challenges and the need for public policies adapted to its diverse reality, it is assumed that the work of enumerators, marked by transience to meet the temporary need of exceptional public interest, expresses structural trends in the contemporary world of work, such as the flexibilization of rights, instability of employment relationships, advance of neoliberal rationality, socio-spatial challenges. The general objective of the research was: To analyze the changes in the world of work in contemporary times, based on the reality experienced in the professional daily life of enumerators, with a view to strengthening and subsidizing the struggles for the improvement of working conditions and relations, and as specific objectives: (i) To identify the changes in the world of work and their consequences for the daily life of workers in the Brazilian census; (ii) To know the reality faced in the work of enumerators, with emphasis on working relationships and conditions; (iii) Discuss the main trends of precariousness in the world of work, based on what can be identified in the reality of enumerators; (iv) Demonstrate the strategies of resistance in the work of enumerators. The method that guided the research was historical-dialectical materialism, which allowed us to apprehend the contradictions inherent to precarious work in the current socioeconomic conjuncture, articulating part and totality, as well as qualitative and quantitative dimensions of the phenomena analyzed. The research, with a quantitative-qualitative approach, was developed in different phases, involving bibliographic, documentary research and content analysis. The results show that, although the Population Census is strategic for public policies, enumerators face instability, absence of guarantees and pressure for productivity. The industrial reserve army as a disciplinary mechanism. In Amazonas, enumerators summarize this reality: temporary contracts, remuneration for production and institutional invisibility. These findings reinforce the analysis that the precariousness of census work is a concrete expression of the structural transformations of contemporary capitalism.