The Poor's Struggle for Political Incorporation The Piquetero Movement in Argentina

This book offers an innovative perspective on the ever-widening gap between the poor and the state in Latin American politics. It presents a comprehensive analysis of the main social movement that mobilized the poor and unemployed people of Argentina to end neoliberalism and to attain incorporation into a more inclusive and equal society. The piquetero (picketer) movement is the largest movement of unemployed people in the world. This movement has transformed Argentine politics to the extent of becoming part of the governing coalition for more than a decade. Rossi argues that the movement has been part of a long-term struggle by the poor for socio-political participation in the polity after having been excluded by authoritarian regimes and neoliberal reforms. He conceptualizes this process as a wave of incorporation, exploring the characteristics of this major redefinition of politics in Latin America.

Part I. Theoretical Framework: 1. Introduction: a theory for the popular sectors' quest for inclusion in Latin America; 2. Beyond repertoires of contention: conceptualizing strategy making in social movements; Part II. The Second Incorporation in Argentina: 3. From the origin of unemployed workers' protests to recognition of the 'piquetero question' (1996–9); 4. From recognition of the claim to the legitimation of the piquetero movement as a national actor (1999–2001); 5. From movement legitimation to failed state reincorporation in the socio-political arena (2002–3); 6. Party territorial reincorporation in the socio-political arena (2003–9); 7. The aftermath of second incorporation: between continuity and change (2009–15); Part III. Comparisons and Conclusions: 8. Social movements and the struggle to reshape the socio-political arena in Bolivia and Brazil; 9. Conclusions.

Federico M. Rossi is a Research Professor of CONICET at the School of Politics and Government of the National University of San Martín, Argentina. Rossi received his Ph.D. in Political and Social Sciences from the European University Institute in Florence. Rossi's research interests focus on the relational study of social movements - state dynamics and on the historical analysis of strategy-making. His work has been published in more than fifteen edited volumes, in Latin American Politics and Society, Latin American Perspectives, Social Movement Studies, Mobilization, International Sociology, Desarrollo Económico, and América Latina Hoy, among others. He is the co-editor of Social Movement Dynamics: New Perspectives on Theory and Research from Latin America (2015). Rossi has been Global Visiting Scholar at New York University, Postdoctoral Fellow at Tulane University, Louisiana and the European University Institute, and Visiting Researcher at the Universidade de Brasília and Singapore Management University.