Unemployed Workers’ Movements and the Territory of Social Reproduction

Unemployment soared in Argentina when the country fell into economic crisis in the late 1990s. Amid these dire circumstances, women took the lead in organizing resistance to the neoliberal policies that had caused the crisis, as well as in developing everyday alternative practices that would allow thousands of people to survive the crisis without support from the state. Out of these actions, the unemployed workers’ movements were formed, which became well-known for organizing large roadblocks on major highways across the country and for creating alternative economic practices. Based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork, this paper examines the role of women in the unemployed workers’ movements of the urban periphery in Buenos Aires. It argues that one of the movement’s main achievements was politicizing and making visible issues of social reproduction. The paper shows how organizing around social reproduction involves a new spatiality of struggle—privileging spaces of everyday life in the neighborhood—and a form of politics that prioritizes creating new social relations and increasing democratic control over everyday life. The paper goes on to explore the alternative economic practices and autonomous forms of social reproduction created by the unemployed workers’ movements in the territories in which they operate.