Labor Risk Typologies and Life Course in Latin America

Global labor markets and the internationalization of economies have changed the kind and nature of social risks. Life subject to comprehensive job security systems is questioned in different societies. In this context, the paper considers contradictory hypotheses on occupational life course related with work uncertainties:

• Standardization process: progressive concentration of biographical transitions on specific ages related with tripartition of work careers: education- work- retirement.
• Individualization of occupational life course: pluralization and de-standardization of individual labor trajectories.

The main of the paper is to analyze the links between job uncertainty and life course in Argentina and Mexico, in three cohorts. The aim is to develop an empirical approach to life course perspective linking it with a sequential analysis to:

• Model individual trajectories of occupational status related with job uncertainties (identifying different typologies of risks).
• Assess the social conditioning of these trajectories, namely the influence of socio economic status, educational level, family structure and birth cohort.

Optimal Matching Analysis is applied to model time-related processes in order to identify labor trajectories typologies. The premise of this method is to consider empirical sequences of events in labor trajectories and compare them to existing theoretical models rather than defining them a priori on theoretical grounds. Data come from the Retrospective Survey of Labor Insecurity 2011.

The results of the analysis suggest:

• The tripartition model exists but it is gendered and different for each cohort. 
• There is no unique model to link individualization of occupational life course and risks typologies. Rather, this link is dependent on: 1. Family and occupational constraints; 2. Social resources and; 3. Institutional performances in each country.
• These results indicate new kinds of social inequalities, by means of widespread labor uncertainty and individualization of work trajectories, that implies new challenges for how we do research in the fields of social risks.