Território e identidades em trânsito no subúrbio industrial: uma análise das transformações socioeconômicas na região do Complexo do Alemão

Abstract

The last decades have shown profound changes in the work and employment structure in the global scenario. This movement brought several social implications to the everyday life experience of workers in the industrial cities. The research sought to investigate whether the expressions of these socioeconomic changes in a particular territory of the Rio de Janeiro s city, the Complexo do Alemão brought results on the definition of the workers identities and the emerging of a new ethos of work. The Complexo do Alemão has become a region of industrial investment as from the 1980's, when after that moment begins to decline up. The transformations perceived there, and the urban form built in that context, is an expression of broader social changes that have occurred in recent decades in the city and the state of Rio de Janeiro. Worked itself with the hypothesis that the build of large industrial enterprises and a network of small and medium businesses in the area supported on protected wage labor, either would have helped in the construction of workers identities and on the other hand, the decentralization and emptying of that pattern would have impacted the way the subjects build their identities mediated by work. Another hypothesis raised referred to the possibility of the emergence of new work conceptions and professional aspirations that could help to build new ways of organizing individual and collective identities in the region. Was put into discussion the model of industrial modernity installed in Brazil and the manner how the industrial zoning occurred in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The research presented the themes of labor, industrialization, production restructuring and identities. In addition to theoretical discussions, the research used semi-structured interviews with employees of different ages who have worked or are still working in the region of the Complexo do Alemão. The research argued that nowadays the mechanisms of exploitation are republished, in a game contradictory and dialectical, where workers construct representations about themselves and about collectivity. The horizon of a free labor and protected in our peripheral modernization, was put as an important element for the construction of a workers identity, and wages and the factory as a gateway to citizenship. Finally, the thesis has shown that new perspectives are putted to the question of the workers identities and the factory, which occupied a place in the territorial space and in the population imagery of that region, is surrounded by new connotations.