Securitisation of employment, de-regulation and
super-exploitation in Brazil
Dr. Francis Portes Virginio
HR410
Leverhulme Research Fellow at the Department of Work, Employment and
Organisation
➢ This has shaped not only production but also emerging forms of labour control in
the global south (Federici, 2000; Graham, 2011; Mohanty, 2011; Nguyen, 2011;
Mbembe, 2006; 2020).
➢ The cumulative authoritarian processes have been structured across the state
and strategic sites for socially reproductive operations – the household, the
village, the community (Brufff and Tansel, 2019; Federeci; 2000; Peck and
Theodore, 2019).
➢ The securitisation of migration emerges as a strategy to control international
mobility.
➢ In 2019, approximately 85% of the 26 million refugees in the world was hosted in
developing countries (UNHCR, 2020).
2
The authoritarian turn
➢ Theoretical perspectives from the Global South
remain under-explored in the existing literature
(Castles and Wise; 2008; Munk, 2008; Delgado
Wise and Covarrubias, 2015; Fishwick and Selwyn,
2016).
➢ The literature often neglects historical grounds in
the host society and the specific struggles of
workers within the Global South (Biles, 2009, Pun,
2016; Munck, 2013; Xiang, 2013).
➢ Authoritarian measures such as militarisation,
deficit in social rights and racial patriarchy remain
a constitutive force of the postcolonial state
(Mohanty, 2011; Rodney, 2018).
A theoretical challenge
(Agcht, 2018)
• There is a renewed interest in the concept to explain the links between the
conditions for labour exploitation and strategies for economic growth in
developing countries (Latimer, 2016; Selwyn, 2018; 2020; Smith, 2016).
• Super-exploitation (Marini, 1978) means that the super-exploitation as a
form of labour exploitation in which workers are paid below the amount
required for their social reproduction under normal conditions.
• Social reproduction remains surprisingly under-explored in the super-
exploitation literature (Selwyn, 2020) and in better understanding of migrant
workers (Peña Lopez, 2013).
• The materialist feminist literature has shown how a set of social relations
essential for the reproduction of the working class, in both unwaged and
waged labour, have shaped unequal patterns of subordination (Federici,
2012; Strauss, 2013).
Super-exploitation
• The inflow of personal remittance payments to developing countries has
increased from less than $50 billion to over $529 billion in the last three
decades and serves to illustrate this important tendency (World Bank,
2019).
5
Remittances
Remittance payments in Haiti
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
P
e
rc
e
n
ta
ge
o
f
G
D
P
Year
Humanitarian Migration in the Brazilian Amazon
➢ Over the last decade, over 350,000
migrants in need of humanitarian protection
arrived in Brazil and received a visa with a
permission to work.
➢ They were granted humanitarian protection
and full access to the labour market.
➢ The region is geopolitically important due to
its location and natural resources.
➢The increasing dependence on export of
commodities and the extraction of natural
resources has increased the precarisation of
workers in the region.
Reference: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/FIGURA-2-
Delimitacao-geografica-da-Regiao-Amazonica-
Brasileira_fig1_284092918
8Adapted from Nozaki(2021)
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
2010 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
Military Personnel with Civilian Positions in Brazil`s
Federal Government
Phase 1
➢ In the first phase we conducted research in the Brazilian
states of Roraima, Acre, Mato Grosso, Amazonas and in
the destination state of Paraná to understand the local
challenges and the organisation of local responses.
Phase 2
➢ In the second phase we organised workshops that
gathered together migrant workers in order to
➢ (a) share common experiences of struggles and
challenges in relation to working rights, working
conditions and injustice;
➢ (b) collectively better understand why these
situations are reoccurring and how this reality can be
transformed.
9
Data collection - ESRC project
Phase 1
➢ We conducted 80 in-depth interviews with
immigrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba,
Nigeria, Colombia, Senegal, Benin and
Syria in four Brazilian states.
➢ This was also complemented by set of key
interviews and meetings with 40
representatives of local organisations,
NGOs, ministry of labour and scholars.
63%
37%
Gender

0 10 20 30 40 50
Haiti
Venezuela
Senegal
Nigeria
Cuba
Nationality
11
Phase 2
➢Trained facilitators led discussions
with approximately 230 migrant workers
in a set of two workshops “Trabalho
Migrante” .
➢Participants – women, men and
children – originally from Venezuela,
Haiti, Cuba, Nigeria, Colombia,
Senegal, Benin and Syria
Humanitarian response – ‘Welcoming operation’
➢ The national response is coordinated by the
National Army in partnership with UN agencies
and a wide range of philanthropist
organisations.
➢ They are responsible for the management of
militarised refugee camps, providing migrants
with food, documentation, social assistance, and
secure living areas.
➢ They also intermediate the incorporation of
these migrant workers into the labour market
and push migrants to be to be entrepreneurs.
(Operação Acolhida, 2020)
12
The local labour market
Unemployment rate per study unit.
13
(IBGE, 2019)
National rate 12,7%
0 5 10 15 20 25
Acre
Amazonas
Roraima
Mato Grosso
Federation Unity City capital
Year Minimum Wage Living Wage
2002 R$200.00 R$1,154.63
2003 R$240.00 R$1,396.50
2004 R$260.00 R$1,527.56
2005 R$300.00 R$1,497.23
2006 R$350.00 R$1,436.74
2007 R$380.00 R$1,688.35
2008 R$415.00 R$2,178.30
2009 R$465.00 R$1,994.82
2010 R$510.00 R$2,011.03
2011 R$545.00 R$2,212.66
2012 R$622.00 R$2,519.97
2013 R$678.00 R$2,750.83
2014 R$724.00 R$2,915.07
2015 R$788.00 R$3,325.37
2016 R$880.00 R$3,992.75
Table 4.1: Comparison between the minimum wage and the living wage in Brazilian reais during Brazil’s development model ( Adapted from Dieese, 2016).
The rate of informal work
National rate 36,3%
Acre
Amazonas
Roraima
Mato Grosso
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Brazilian state City Capital Interior of state
15
(IBGE, 2019)
• Lack of decent work
• Flexible employment
arrangements.
• Informal intermediaries.
• High informality
• Parallel form of control
• Insufficient social rights and
spatial segregation in camps.
• Difficulties in accessing the
existing social rights.
• Dependence on voluntarism and
charity institutions and the
National Army
• Discrimination and xenophobia
Authoritarian protection
Findings (Stage 1 and 2)
Work and Labour Intermediation
• They lack of basic services in informal settlements, live in overcrowded
areas and are pushed to leave shelters to find a job.
• They rely on collective strategies of families and communities to ensure the
social reproduction.
• This requires extensive hours of unpaid labour at home, and frequently
involves the work of many family members and production costs.
We have to leave (the shelter) at six every morning. To be entrepreneurs, to
try doing lots of stuff, because this was temporary. The church was offering
something temporary. We were sleeping in tents, but often there was no space
so we had to stay outside(…)
Margarida, woman, Venezuelan
17
Reproductive struggles
Super-exploitation
➢ Between care and control, the super-exploitation of
migrants is characterized by a patterns of
subordination in employment and households settings.
➢ Key issues:
➢ A gap between the income of migrants and the
living wage.
➢ The lack of social rights is replaced by
militarisation + philanthropy.
➢ Reproductive-exploitative relations across in
household dynamics.
➢ Under temperatures constantly above 38 degrees, migrants sell water
bottles, homemade food items and popsickle sticks at traffic lights.
➢ The form of street work and other form of daily work are prevalent.
The average income of interviewed migrant has been close to R$ 600
or less.
➢ Labour intermediation occur with informal intermediaries without
monitoring or long term protection.
➢ Rise in the numbers of cases of slave labour, gender violence and
racial-ethnic discrimination against migrants.
19
Informal labour market
20
Final remarks
➢ Productive and reproductive struggles of displaced workers in humanitarian
zones in this region is a defining element in their super-exploitation.
➢ The employment experiences of migrant workers in Brazil have deeper structural
connections with the nature of capitalism in the Global South.
➢ Authoritarian-Philanthropic responses created new patterns of dependence
which interlock both production and reproduction processes, shaping
contemporary conditions of super-exploitation.
➢ New forms flexibility: The subordination of migrant to this precarious work,
some of them illegal, was perceived as an essential advantage for local
employers in hiring these workers.
Thank you for your attention!
Francis Portes Virginio
Email: francis.portes-virginio@strath.ac.uk