ILPC 2026

 The purpose of our multidisciplinary contribution is to make a South-South comparison between two countries of similar level of development, being the largest Latin American economies, but with different policy regimes – Mexico and Brazil – during the period from 2002 to 2014, focusing mainly on labor market precariousness. First, we will analyze the evolution of precariousness in both countries using an index that takes into account the national labor market context.  Further, to complement the comparative picture, we will use the results of two case studies – one from each country – dealing with the working conditions in the apparel sector.

            Following Rubery (1989), we aim to situate the precariousness in the national labor market context. In other words, given the traits that have historically outlined the structure of employment in the country and labor relations, we need an operational definition of precarious work. We will restrict precarious work to waged work to define a precarious work index constructed from the following characteristics: absence of a permanent contract, the absence of contribution to social security, income less than two minimum wages, non-union membership, work with days less than 15 hours or greater than 48 hours per week. We will use the multivariate statistical method of principal component analysis (PCA) in order to construct such index (Salas, 2012). The set of variables used is readerly available in the household surveys of both countries, and data is strictly comparable.

            To complement this quantitative analysis, we will present the results of a field work done in each country on the working conditions of people employed in the apparel sector. The reason of choosing this sector is the historical precariousness that surrounds these activities, its relative size in terms of employment in both economies, and the gender bias of its labor force. We interviewed apparel workers which migrated towards Northern border cities and those who lived in Central Mexico. In the case of Brazil, we interviewed union leaders at the national level in the garment industry on the working and living conditions of people in this industry at the São Paulo metropolitan area. The comparison between those experiences will be valuable to assess the impacts of union organization on precariousness levels in the sector, which is well known to include some of the worst working conditions in many Latin American cities and other places around the world.

            Our proposal seeks to fill the gap between highly aggregated quantitative analysis and qualitative sociological-oriented studies on how precariousness express itself at the national labor market level and at sectoral and local level. The index main achievement is to summarize a multidimensional definition of precariousness into a single number, which is helpful to, among other things, make comparative analysis between countries and different periods. On the other hand, the qualitative analysis helps to bring into fore the experiences of workers in one of the most precarious economics activities, which is the apparel sector.