The trajectories of the sugarcane workers in the Pontal do Paranapanema region and the fear of unemployment

Abstract

In this work, we show that the territorial movement and the flexibility of the labor are inseparable events that mark the trajectories (labor, social and territorial) of the people that work in the fields of sugarcane agro-businessin Pontal do Paranapanema. We propose to interpret the trajectories through the meanings present in interviews collected from the workers. In this perspective, these oral sources allow us to “grasp the dialectic of coming and going”, in the face of the incessant changes in mining induced by the multiple restructuring of “agro”, which have altered, in addition to its productive dynamics, the lives of workers. The centrality of listening to workers, valuing their memories, allowed us to see that their trajectories are permeated by the fear of unemployment.Thus, unemployment is not a passing moment in the lives of workers; it leaves marks, since periods of extreme difficulty do not only affect the life of the worker, but the whole family.