Unprotected Labour and New Fields of Conflict: New Political Subjects in Public Spaces in Brazil?

This work aims to examine the non-wage based labour relations and understand its implications for the State and Society. These kinds of labour relations have been referred to as "informal" or "non typical". In this sense, they have been viewed academically and politically as lacking or unviable. However, if it is true that from the perspective of the traditional labour institutions (Unions, State, and the juridical forms of labour regulation) these labour relations are aliens and cannot be characterized but for absence of the key attributes that traditionally have defined labour, in the context of political and economical changes that took place in the past decades, these labour relations are an important part of the accumulation model and have generated new fields of conflict and have been trying to get politically organized, building identity and pushing forward with their agenda. This work proposes to study social movements and organizations which represent unprotected workers - those who are not in the condition that they are employees and cannot be properly considered unemployed. Workers that are exercising gainful activities with work relationships that don’t include the contractual relationships of employment (wage) - and the role they play in public spaces for the world of work in Brazil. It is intended to delineate the public invisibility of these workers, the (institutional, political and academic) discourse around these empty sociological subjects, public policies and regulatory frameworks built for these people in the last decade and the trials and possibilities of construction of new political figures and rights. We try to understand the emergence of this new reality and the development of new political subjects with their own agendas and identities. However, although these labour relations and its workers are not informal, they still not recognized in their relation with the State as having rights.