Condition paysanne et marché du travail industriel. Un exemple au Brésil

Abstract

Peasant condition and industriel labour . Social changes in North-Eastern Brazilian big sugar plantations helped the simultaneous constitution of a rural proletariat, of a new peasantry and of drafts of workers entering the Central-South industrial labour market (Rio-de- Janeiro and Sao-Paulo). Migrations towards big towns contributed to speed up such changes. While helping the erosion of big owners authority (emigration being considered as an alternative to personal subjection to planters), migration has provided new opportunities of social courses : becoming an industry worker meant more thon changing one's occupation because new industrial relations were bound by objective rules stating wages, working time and mutual duties. Although some migrant workers tied down their social fate to the industrial labour market, several managed to save money, acquire new skills and settle back in their native land as farmers or tradesmen. The present record of migrants homecoming provides an evidence against the general statement that departure towards a town (especially towards the industrial labour market) is necessarily the way from a peasant condition to a worker one. As long as every condition - especially the peasant one - is not related to its relevant social field, the multifariousness of migratory effects - especially the emergence of a new peasantry linked to the temporary insertion of some of its members in the industrial labour market - might well be left out of consideration.