Diante da lei: percursos e discursos da precarização flexível do trabalho

Abstract

The new precariousness of work, the flexible precariousness, presents changes and new significant elements in the framework of the precariousness of work. As a historical phenomenon, it is gradually inserted into the bulge of structural-economic and institutional-political reforms. We hereby defend the thesis that the flexible precariousness of work is formed by new social practices and shaped by the neoliberal vulgate. It, therefore, has its path and discourse. Our objective in this research was to highlight the structuring elements of the precariousness of work. To map the route, we developed a concept map, a critical tool for a scientific investigation that articulates concepts, context, and theoretical influences to promote research advancement in the context of the object of study. For the transcription of the discourse, this research used the theoretical-methodological framework of Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), which understands that discursive instruments have an intrinsic connection with the new capitalism and the alleged economy globalization. Through the application of the CDA, it has become evident that there is a discursive order that employs several strategies which aim to perpetuate the current social order. The path of flexible precariousness became evident in three dimensions that substantiate the proposed map: the context, synthesized in the rise of neoliberalism, the financial sector hegemony, the productive restructuring and the globalization of the economy; flexible practices, as manifestations and causalities of social arrangements, exposed in terms of naturalization of unemployment, economic fatalism, State weakening, the sanctity of contracts, deregulation, intensification of work, the capture of savoir-faire, decentralization and deterritorialization of productive units, technocratic manipulations, weakening of unions, part-time or temporary jobs, outsourcing and de-specialization; and the categories, relational expressions identified as flexible capitalism, flexible company, flexibility (flexible regulation), social precariousness and the passage from formal to real subsumption. Regarding the discourses, the analysis of corpora evidenced hegemonic discursive order dissemination strategies through legitimation, dissimulation, fragmentation, and purge of the other. Furthermore, the hegemonic discourses rely on an ostensible economic fatalism and generalized use of keywords from the neoliberal lexicon, such as “entrepreneurship”, “great revolution”, “deepening crisis”, “modernization” and “flexibility”.