Flexibilization and Institutionalization of Labor Informality-Precariousness. The Case of La Rioja Province, in the North-west Region of Argentina

Abstract

In this article I argue that in Argentina the labor flexibilization, initiated in 1991, is informalizing employment in La Rioja, a provincce in the Northwest Region. This analysis focuses on the “atypical” employment programs that the provincial government implements since 1993. Labor flexibilization, impelled by the reform to the legislation, institutionalizes informal-precarious conditions of employment, thus challenging the theoretical duality formal-regulated-protected and informal-unregulated-unprotected work that articulates the conventional studies of informality. In Argentina, the reform has been conceived in the idea that the protection of workers represents a “cost” to the national economy, thus understanding flexibilization as the disarticulation of the protection or reduction of that cost, with the consequent precarization-informalization of labor.