Novos sentidos da pobreza e refuncionalização da servidão: uma análise da permanência do trabalho degradante e escravo na agroindústria canavieira de Campos - RJ - no século XXI

Abstract

The aim this work is to describe and analyse the permanence of the degrading job in the sugar cane agroindustry of Campos dos Goytacases – Rio de Janeiro –, concerning a case study of the Santa Cruz and Cupim plants. The study is based on the denunciations from the “Delegacia Regional do Trabalho” in the years of 2003 and 2004 against these plants for keeping working conditions similar to slavery. In order to highlight the meaning of the “new significance of poverty” and the “refunctioning of servitude “ which have a privileged visibility in this agroindustry, the starting point of this piece of work is the understanding of the historical characteristcs that were crucial to the process of unequal development in Brazil –mainly in the sugar cane agroindustry production—and its expressions after the process of productive restructuration and the neoliberal adjustment in the last decades.