Waged domestic work in Argentina: the regulation of care provision

This paper addresses the condition of domestic work in Argentina, in a perspective that draws from the literature on care work. In this approach, domestic work can be interpreted as one of the mercantile forms in which care work is socially organized, due to the persistence of the traditional sexual division of labor and the weakness of public policies. From these considerations, I develop a quantitative study on the levels of informality, precarity, and wage inequality that characterize domestic work in that country. Thereafter, I discuss the main measures adopted by the Argentine government since 2003, with the goal of reducing legal discrimination of domestic workers and promoting their formalization. On this basis, the paper highlights the advances in the recognition of domestic workers’ labor rights, while emphasizing how social and cultural restraints still permeate labor relations in this sector.

Brazilian Social Segurity and Social Work: reflections on the Continuous Cash Benefit Programme

Guaranteed under the Federal Constitution of 1988, Brazilian social security covers rights relating to health, social welfare and social care. The Continuous Cash Benefit Programme (BPC) was approved as part of social care policy and is regulated under the Social Care Act (Ley Orgánica de Asistencia Social) of 1993. This benefit guarantees a minimum monthly income for persons with disabilities and for older adults. Certain requirements must be satisfied in order to obtain the assistance: medical and social assessment of disabled persons, a minimum age of 65 years for older adults, and, in both cases, the value of per capita income for the nuclear family in question, which must be lower than a quarter of the minimum wage. Regulation of the BPC has incorporated advances and setbacks in terms of legislation and implementation. In this framework, this article presents a theoretical reflection, an analysis of the legislation on the matter, and some reflections on the challenges that it poses for social workers.

Facultad por Facultad. Origen familiar y empleo de los licenciados en CCSS y Humanidades de la UCM en el año 2003

Muchos estudios encuentran un efecto del origen social sobre la ocupación y el salario incluso tras controlar la educación. Este efecto, que suele ser pequeño, puede ser un artificio resultante del deficiente control de la educación. Este trabajo examina la importancia de controlar en detalle la educación desagregando las carreras universitarias. Estudiamos el clasismo del mercado de trabajo para una promoción de titulados en Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) en los seis años entre su graduación en 1997 y 2003. Esta es la fecha de la encuesta gracias a la cual podemos medir la influencia del status social de los padres sobre las oportunidades de empleo de los hijos no con título universitario en general, sino con el mismo título universitario. Encontramos que la influencia del origen social sobre la clase profesional y los ingresos disminuye mucho cuando se controlan las titulaciones, y que no se observa en la mayor parte de ellas, pero sí en algunas, en concreto Políticas y Sociología y Económicas. Esta concreción allana el camino para investigar las vías por las que esta influencia se produce.

Digitizing dissent: cyborg politics and fluid networks in contemporary Cuban activism

Communication technologies shape how political activist networks are produced and maintain themselves. In Cuba, despite ideologically and physically oppressive practices by the state, a severe lack of Internet access, and extensive government surveillance, a small network of bloggers and cyberactivists has achieved international visibility and recognition for its critiques of the Cuban government. This qualitative study examines the blogger collective known as Voces Cubanas in Havana, Cuba in 2012, advancing a new approach to the study of transnational activism and the role of technology in the construction of political narrative. Voces Cubanas is analyzed as a network of connections between human and non-human actors that produces and sustains powerful political alliances. Voces Cubanas and its allies work collectively to co-produce contentious political discourses, confronting the dominant ideologies and knowledges produced by the Cuban state. Transnational alliances, the act of translation, and a host of unexpected and improvised technologies play central roles in the production of these narratives, indicating new breed of cyborg sociopolitical action reliant upon fluid and flexible networks and the act of writing. 

Analysis of a socio-professional group underestimated: officials of notaries in Southern Spain according to the cadastre of Ensenada.

This paper tries to show the reality of one of the trades more important for historians, the officials of the notaries. The work of these officials has allowed us to have great historical sources; we refer to the notarial documentation and documenta-tion of the City Council. They were the executive arm of the pub-lic notaries. Nevertheless, the approach to this figure seems diffi-cult, since we do not find lavish allusions of them or any of their obligations in the documentation preserved. However, we have one of the most important historical sources by middle of Eight-eenth century; this is known as the Cadastre of Ensenada. We have been able to approach this type of job through analysis and study of the Cadastre, so we know who were those men who did this huge undertaking and what was his salary for performing their tasks. In addition, we proceeded to the consultation of doc-umentation kept in local files to have a more accurate understand-ing of the real situation of those officials.