(Des) heirs of the work. Labor transitions of young Peruvians in Córdoba, Argentina

Abstract

From an ethnographic fieldwork carried out during the period 2012-2015, the article discusses the trajectories of a group of young Peruvian people residing in the suburbs of the city of Cordoba, Argentina.  From the intersectional approach’s contributions it analyzes the way in which they are incorporated into the work of their families; from caring roles up to those kind of jobs in which men must participate, jobs that happen to coincide with their father’s work due to the fact that they are associated with male gender. In addition, it shows how young people learn their parents’ work (related to the construction, textile and care) especially because that is what they do at home. Finally it reflects the way in which these trajectories reveal that the reconfiguration of the labour market and the increase of inequalities lead to the labour insertion of these young people stop being thought as a change in their occupations, that is to say from students to workers but as a long labour transition period that most of the times begins during the schooling process. These early work experiences are often found as an unpleasant inheritance by these young people, so much so that they question it and in fact, carry out different strategies in order to modify it.