The Experience of Unemployment in Contemporary Argentina

317 Pages·2002·0.82 MB·English

Copyright
by
María Cristina Bayón
2002
The Dissertation Committee for María Cristina Bayón Certifies that this is the
approved version of the following dissertation:

Coping with Job Insecurity:
The Experience of Unemployment in Contemporary Argentina

Committee:

Bryan R. Roberts, Supervisor
Ronald Angel
Peter Ward
Robert Cushing
Henry Selby
Coping with Job Insecurity:
The Experience of Unemployment in Contemporary Argentina

by
María Cristina Bayón, B.A., M.A.

Dissertation
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of
The University of Texas at Austin
in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements
for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

The University of Texas at Austin
August 2002
Dedication

For my husband Gonzalo, for our shared projects.
For my adored son Felipe, with whom I learnt that difficult does not mean
impossible.
Acknowledgements

My dissertation could never have been done without the support of
numerous individuals and institutions to who I am in debt. I am very grateful for
the permanent support and encouragement received from my advisor Bryan
Roberts, who is not only an excellent Latin America scholar but also an
outstanding person because of his human warmth and integrity. I want to thank
the other four members of my committee, Ronald Angel, Robert Cushing, Peter
Ward and Henry Selby for their valuable comments. To Henry Selby in particular,
for his generous comments and commitment with the Argentinean society.
I should like to acknowledge the financial support received from several
institutions. Clearly, without such support my doctoral studies and dissertation
research could never have been done. To the Ministry of Culture and Education of
Argentina through the International Cooperation Scholarship and the Facultad
Lationoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO)- Mexico for supporting me to
pursue my doctoral studies. To the Andrew Mellon Foundation for awarding me
fellowships for conducting my fieldwork in Greater Buenos Aires and writing my
dissertation.
I want to express my gratitude to all the people and institutions that helped
me while I was carrying out my fieldwork in Florencio Varela and Lanús.
Without their help my fieldwork could never have been done. In Florencio Varela
I would like to thank Ana Rita Diaz Muñoz, responsible at the national level of
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the Programa de Apoyo a Grupos Vulnerables (PAGV) for facilitating me the
access to the NGOs operating at the local level. To the people of the Sociedad de
Fomento “El Nacional” in Villa Arias. My special thanks to the people of the
Centro Cultural Mariano Moreno in Don Orione and Centro Cultural José
Artigas in Santo Tomé, particularly to Verónica, Julio, Enri and Eduardo. In
Lanús, I feel particularly in debt to my good friend Antonio “Chacho” Camou,
who generously help me to access to the people and infrastructure of the
University of Lanús, whose institutional support was invaluable for my fieldwork.
To the Instituto Encuentro in Monte Chingolo, particularly to Ramón. To Carlos,
responsible of a soup kitchen for children in Monte Chingolo. To the Secretaría
de Desarrollo Humano of the Municipality of Lanús, particularly to Susana in
Villa Jardín and Viviana in Remedios de Escalada.
To our great friend, Georgina Rojas, for her cheerful support and ‘odd
inclination’ to Argentinean people.
To my husband, Gonzalo Saraví, for his patience, tolerance, and
permanent and unconditional support, for being the greatest companion and a
brilliant colleague in this shared project that we began seven years ago when
doing our master studies in FLACSO-Mexico.
But I reserve my warmest thanks for the men and women interviewed in
Florencio Varela and Lanús, who unselfishly and friendly accessed to share with
me their histories, experiences, hardships and expectations, sometimes obtaining
at least a temporary and cathartic release. To all of those that opened their doors
and let me in, all my gratitude.
vi
Coping with Job Insecurity:
The Experience of Unemployment in Contemporary Argentina

Publication No._____________

María Cristina Bayón, Ph.D.
The University of Texas at Austin, 2002

Supervisor: Bryan R. Roberts

This dissertation analyzes the experience of unemployment in
contemporary Argentina, emphasizing its multidimensional, heterogeneous, and
dynamic character. It examines the perceptions, impacts and responses to
unemployment on different dimensions of individual and social life in a context
characterized by a sharp worsening of the labor market, pervasive job insecurity
and uncertainty regarding the future. Argentina, which used to have a privileged
position in Latin America is going through the sharpest crisis in its history.
Previous certainties, based on stable and formal employment and well-established
channels of social mobility are no longer present. Its entire social and
occupational structure is collapsing. It is precisely this background what
constitutes the particularity of the Argentinean case.
vii
The research strategy combines quantitative and qualitative analysis as a
way to grasp the complexity and dynamic character of the unemployment
experience. Quantitative analysis, based upon the Argentinean Permanent
Household Survey for Greater Buenos Aires during the period 1990-2000.
provides a broad picture of the worsening of the labor market during the 1990s,
identifying the main changes experienced during this period, their nature and
incidence, and the groups most affected by them. Qualitative analysis relies on 59
in-depth interviews to unemployed people of different ages, gender, social
classes, and family status conducted in two contrasting locations of Greater
Buenos Aires in terms of economic history and profile, social structure, and
location in respect to Buenos Aires city.
The main findings of this research show that the disruptive impacts of
unemployment at the individual and social levels acquire particular dimensions
under the present Argentinean context because the basis of previous frames of
reference of work, social belonging, and social mobility have vanished. The
mounting constraints that households experience to cope with their present
situation and the increasing depletion of the few resources available in a context
of an unprecedented crisis result in an overwhelming sense of vulnerability and
lack of future perspectives.

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Table of Contents
List of Tables........................................................................................................xiii
List of Figures.......................................................................................................xv
List of Illustrations...............................................................................................xvi
Chapter 1: Introduction...........................................................................................1
1.1. Objectives and Significance of the Study...............................................1
1.2. The Particularity of the Experience of Unemployment in Argentina.....4
1.3. Methods and Data....................................................................................6
1.3.1. Quantitative analysis...................................................................7
1.3.2. Qualitative analysis.....................................................................8
1.4. Organization of the Dissertation...........................................................11
PART I: THE WORSENING OF THE LABOR MARKET: BASIC ISSUES,
CONTEXT AND TRENDS 16
Chapter 2: Understanding the Experience of Unemployment: Continuities and
New Issues....................................................................................................16
2.1. Revisiting the ‘Unemployment Problem’: Old and New Questions.....18
2.1.1. The Interwar Period...................................................................21
2.1.2. The Experience of Unemployment ...........................................25
2.2. The re-emergence of the ‘unemployment problem’: The 1980s and
1990s...................................................................................................30
2.2.1. Job Insecurity and Unemployment............................................32
2.2.2. The Household and the Labor Market.......................................36
2.2.3. Gender and Unemployment......................................................37
2.2.4. Social Class and Unemployment...............................................39
2.2.5. Social Networks and Unemployment........................................40
2.3. Summary...............................................................................................41
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Chapter 3: The Context of Unemployment: The New Economic Model and
the Deterioration of the Socio-Economic Structure in Contemporary
Argentina......................................................................................................43
3.1. Labor market dynamics before the 1990s.............................................45
3.1.1. The 1950-1975 period...............................................................45
3.1.1.1. Formal Labor Tradition.................................................48
3.1.1.2. The Importance of Self-employment............................50
3.1.2. The 1975-1990 period...............................................................53
3.1.2.1. The “Latin Americanization” of the Argentinean
Labor Market.....................................................................57
3.2. The 1990-2000 period...........................................................................66
3.2.1. The Axis of the New Economic Model: Convertibility,
Deregulation, and Privatization..................................................66
3.2.1.1. Labor Reform................................................................77
3.2.1.2. Retirement Pension Reform..........................................82
3.2.1.3. The Deterioration and Segmentation of Health
Services.............................................................................84
3.3.The spatial location of the study............................................................87
3.3.1. Greater Buenos Aires................................................................87
3.3.1.1.The selection of fieldwork locations: Lanús and
Florencio Varela................................................................90
Chapter 4: The Worsening of the Labor Market during the 1990s:
Unemployment and the Informalization of Labor Conditions.....................96
4.1. Causes of Unemployment: Labor Supply, Employment Creation,
and Informal Labor..............................................................................97
4.1.1. Employment Creation and Labor Supply...............................100
4.1.2. Employment in the Informal Sector........................................107
4.2. The Worsening of the Labor Market: Unemployment, Job Insecurity
and Self-employment........................................................................112
4.2.1. The Extension of Job Insecurity..............................................112
4.2.2. Unemployment, Unprotected Jobs and Self-employment.......116
4.2.3. Income Precariousness............................................................123
x