Recovered Factories in Buenos Aires : a Citizen Strategy to Mitigate Unemployment and Poverty in Argentina.

Since the 90's, deep changes in labour relations in Argentina deteriorate the living conditions of many people. Whereas poverty, unemployment and exclusion are increasing, social movements such as fábricas recuperadas mitigate social crisis. The movement consists of 160 factories employing about 9.000 workers. When they are informed that the firm is bankrupt, the workers decide to nevertheless keep their jobs and manage their own production. Since this is illegal, they must negotiate a juridical framework with the police, the political authorities and the judges to thus legalize their action. My research aims at explaining how such a civil society organization can develop and survive with such limited resources. I believe it is important to learn from their strategy because, far from being an individualised answer to poverty, recuperated factories are a means of pro-active collective action. Opening a public space for the reconstitution of self-dignity, it offers a sustainable, innovative solution to poor workers and their families.

By this project, I could further develop the study of recovered factories together with our institutional partners, as well as with the social (stakeholders) and state's actors. Such collaboration intended to develop analytical tools to measure the contribution of such movements to the social reintegration of citizens, in order to conceive a "general model". As well, we are interested in sharing and comparing the actors' different points of views to achieve a better intervention of the State and the University on this phenomenon.

This project was implemented between April and July 2007 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Achieved objectives of the project

The objectives of the project were to contribute to scientific knowledge in the field of social conflicts governance; to strengthen the partnership with the CEIL-PIETTE; to create a scientific network North/South and to share the results of the research with the local partners.

We are pleased to say that we could achieve and go beyond our objectives thanks to the participation of more partners than we had expected. More specifically, the project improved South research capacity and trained more students than it had been planned. We have been able to start and to extend the scientific researchers network on recovered factories and to liaise new institutional relationships. Further more, we have been able to diffuse the results of this research as well as organise new activities.

Concerning the diffusion of the results, civil society (workers) was deeply involved in all the activities that were organised with the project funds. The governmental authorities were represented by the Ministry of Labour, as it was planned.

As a main achievement, we want to mention the public conference on recovered factories in the 2007 Pre-ALAS session in Buenos Aires. This led to the organization of two meetings on the same subject in the XXVI Latin American Sociology Association (ALAS) Conference which took place in Guadalajara, Mexico. We are pleased to have promoted the study of this phenomenon in such an important academic meeting, thanks to the KFPE project.

Project's coordination and Partners:

Sandra Cavaliere
Research Assistant
Graduate Institute of Development Studies (IUED),
Geneva, Switzerland.
NCCR-North-South (SNF, SDC), Bern, Switzerland.
www.iued.ch
www.nccr-north-south.unibe.ch
Contact: cavalie1@etu.unige.ch

Dr. Osvaldo Battistini
Researcher
Institution: Centro de Estudios e Investigaciones Laborales (CEIL-PIETTE, CONICET),
Buenos Aires, Argentina.
www.ceil-piette.gov.ar
Contact: obattistini@ceil-piette.gov.ar

Prof. Alberto Bialakowsky
Professor
Institution: Centro de Investigación Gino Germani, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, UBA, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Member of: Comité de dirección latinoamericano de la Asociación Latinoamericana de Sociología.
Contact: albiala@gmail.com

Professors, Workers and PhD students in the Conference on Recovered Factories, Pre-ALAS 24/05/2007, Buenos Aires, Argentina