Revisited shop-floor ethnography: Immersion in a sweatshop with Bolivian migrants in São Paulo, Brazil

Abstract

Without the arms and hands of Bolivian migrants, the garment industry based in the metropolitan area of São Paulo would be paralyzed. This is the sensation when deepening in the study of South American sewers' mobilities between the Andes and the referred area. The sweatshops are the places where these subjects live and work, andare inserted in the productive circuits responsible for popular clothing production. These and other elements of the labor relationship instituted between the workshop managers and sewing men and women have given rise to their characterization as slave labor. In this work, I revisit shop-floor ethnography as a form of immersion, that is, through the insertion of the ethnographer in the productive process. In the present case, this meant inserting myself as another sewer inside a sweatshop with Bolivian migrants in BomRetiro neighborhood, located in São Paulo downtown. Findings corroborate some of the previous researches in terms of hiring and employment, and reveal new subcontracting and employment relationship configurations.