Labor in a Globalizing City Economic Restructuring in São Paulo, Brazil

The extraordinary stories of low-income women living in São Paulo, industrial case studies and the details of three squatter settlements, and communities in the periphery researched in Simone Buechler’s book, Labor in a Globalizing City, allow us to better understand the period of economic transformation in São Paulo from 1996 to 2003.  Buechler’s in-depth ethnographic research over a period of 17 years include interviews with a variety of social actors ranging from favela inhabitants to Wall Street bankers. Buechler examines the paradox of a globalizing city with highly developed financial, service, and industrial sectors, but at the same time a growing sector of microenterprises, degraded labor, considerable unemployment, unprecedented inequality, and precarious infrastructure in its low-income communities. The author argues that informalization and low-income women’s labor are an integral part of the global economy.  Other countries are continuing to use the same kind of neo-liberal economic model even though once again with the latest global financial crisis, it has proven to be detrimental to many workers.

Introduction.- The Spectrum of Voices in the São Paulo Economy.- Six Industrial Case Studies: Internal and External Flexibilization and Technological Change.- The History, Politics, and Economies of Three Communities and their Inhabitants.- Outsourcing Production and Commerce: A Close Examination of Unregistered Salaried Workers, Sweatshop Workers, Homeworkers and Ambulant Vendors for Firms.- The Increasingly Precarious Nature of Self-Employment.- “Destiny is not set in stone”: Social Actors, Cooperatives, and Local Coalition-Building.- Conclusion.

Simone Buechler, PhD is an assistant professor in Latin American and Latino Studies. She received a PhD from the Department of Urban Planning at Columbia University, where she studied under Saskia Sassen and Peter Marcuse. She was a post-doctoral fellow with the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University under Prof. Stiglitz after finishing a faculty fellowship in Metropolitan Studies at New York University. Before, she worked with the United Nations Development Fund for Women and US President Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham Sutoro, setting up a coalition of micro-credit lenders. Since 1996 she has conducted extensive ethnographic and statistical research on the impact of economic globalization on low-income women in São Paulo. Her previous publications include chapters in The Global City Reader and Deciphering the Global and an article on Bolivian sweatshops in São Paulo in Latin American Perspectives. In addition, she has conducted research on the effect of the financial crisis on Brazilian immigrants in Newark, NJ and on declining levels of inequality in São Paulo.