Changes in the socio-occupational structure in Argentina in the period 2016-2020: between neoconservative restoration and the socio-health crisis

Abstract

The article proposes to address the recent changes in the socio-occupational structure of the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area (AMBA) in the national framework, from a class analysis perspective, exploring the relationship between such structure and accumulation models. The study establishes that the assumption of the national government by Juntos por el Cambio meant a break in the trend and a regressive process with respect to the previous period of relative recomposition of the formal segment of the working class. On the contrary, during this period, the positions of the self-employed with low qualifications and low levels of capitalization increased, locations which, in turn, would be particularly exposed, together with the informal proletariat as a whole, in the subsequent context of the socio-health crisis. Likewise, it is established that the COVID-19 situation resulted in a process that reinforced the lines of demarcation present within the workers underlined during Macrismo, and it is explored to what extent this process of inequality was not limited to the preventive and compulsory social isolation (ASPO), but continued in the beginning of the subsequent reactivation. This analysis is based on available secondary sources, particularly INDEC's Permanent Household Survey (Encuesta Permanente de Hogares, EPH).