Legal activists and intellectuals interactions with workers who are on the margins of law in Cordoba-Argentina

This paper intends to look into the relationship between workers and intellectuals in cases in which workers’ status recognition as such is not clearly defined in the juridical system (legally marginalized) and legal activists and intellectuals are in possession of legal knowledge, therefore operating within the juridical field.

We found those particular relationships interesting for two main reasons. On the one hand, in their interaction with workers, legal activists or intellectuals might face certain issues which are inherent to the mainstream logic of the juridical field, such as: language colonization, conflict expropriation, binary labels in law, normalizing or emancipatory function of rights, legitimated knowledge, etc.

On the other hand, workers who's status recognition as such is not clearly defined in the legal system could be considered as being on the margins of law. Workers who's position is on the margins of law might build a tense relationship with law and therefore those perceptions and experiences can also be translated into the concrete interaction with legal activists and intellectuals.

We will examine three experiences from Córdoba-Argentina related to: 1) sex workers, 2) enterprises recovered by workers, and 3) jail-guards. These three cases are linked by the fact that workers involved have had interactions with intellectuals and legal activists as a way to deal with their struggles to change their position in law. All of them have challenged the set of juridical norms and therefore their position in law and society, many times hand by hand with legal activists and intellectuals.