Labor-capital relations under neoliberal reforms. The role of the state in the regulation of informal-precarious labor: A case study in Chilecito, a town in the northwest of Argentina, 1991--2001

This is a study of the labor market of Chilecito, a town in the northwest of Argentina, where I address the role of the state in the process of informalization of employment experienced under neoliberalism and the respective reforms in labor legislation during the 1990s. This case study demonstrates the analytical deficiencies of conventional understandings of formal and informal labor when addressing markets subjected to deregulation and flexibilization policies. In Argentina, these policies have rendered the state a promoter of precarious employment that resembles informal markets. In addition, flexibilization policies have undermined the state's finances by reducing labor taxes. In contrast with this scenario, established theories consider precariousness and reduction in tax revenues effects of informal-unregulated markets. Indeed, in the conventional frameworks, the analysts have established a formal-regulated-protected vs. informal-unregulated-unprotected duality, where state regulations divide these two dimensions.; My dissertation focuses on the implementation of flexible labor policies known as planes de empleo [employment programs], through which the state promotes and regulates temporary, unprotected, and cheap labor (precariousness), while benefiting employers with reduction in direct and indirect labor costs. From an ethnographic perspective, I demonstrate how neoliberal policies have rather re-regulated the labor market of Argentina and subjected worker to precariousness, yet under the very leadership of the state. I argue that in Argentina the state is actively involved in the regulation of informal-precarious conditions of labor.; This research also shows how global processes such as flexibilization materialize in remote and marginal economies like Chilecito, where the state responds to the new demands of capital by institutionalizing precariousness and, as a consequence, consolidates poverty and social exclusion. I argue that analyzing and comprehending the impact of reforms in marginal areas would enrich our understanding of broader (global) processes at the local level, while establishing the basis for fruitful and comparative analyses of socio-economic reforms and labor relations.