Persistence and Emergencies of Inequalities in Latin America: A Multidimensional Approach (Latin American Societies) 3030904946, 9783030904944

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Latin American Societies Current Challenges in Social Sciences

Pablo Vommaro Pablo Baisotti   Editors

Persistence and Emergencies of Inequalities in Latin America A Multidimensional Approach

Latin American Societies Current Challenges in Social Sciences Series Editors Adrián Albala, Institute of Political Science (IPOL), University of Brasília, Brasilia, Brasília, Brazil María José Álvarez Rivadulla, School of Social Sciences, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia Alejandro Natal, Department of Social Processes, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Lerma de Villada, Estado de México, Mexico

This series aims at presenting to the international community original contributions by scholars working on Latin America. Such contributions will address the challenges that Latin American societies currently face as well as the ways they deal with these challenges. The series will be methodologically agnostic, that is: it welcomes case studies, small-N comparative studies or studies covering the whole region, as well as studies using qualitative or quantitative data (or a mix of both), as long as they are empirically rigorous and based on high-quality research. Besides exploring Latin American challenges, the series attempts to provide concepts, findings and theories that may shed light on other regions. The series will focus on seven axes of challenges: 1) Classes and inequalities The first set of challenges revolves around the creation and distribution of symbolic and material rewards across social groups and their crystallization in stratification systems. How have social classes changed in Latin America? Which are the causes and consequences of the growth of middle classes with considerable education levels which nonetheless remain vulnerable to falling into poverty due to economic crises? Why has poverty declined but inequality remained persistently high? Moving to other kinds of inequalities, have the gaps in rewards between men and women and between ethnic groups changed, and do they vary across countries? Which are the territorial expressions of inequality, and how do they affect access to housing and the formation of lower-class ghettoes? 2) Crime, security and violence The second set of challenges stem from the persistence of violence and insecurity among Latin Americans, which consistently rank crime and insecurity at the top of their biggest problems. Crime organizations – from youth gangs to drug cartels – have grown and became more professionalized, displacing state forces in considerable chunks of national territories and, in some cases, penetrating the political class through illegal campaign funding and bribes. To this we should add, in some countries of the region, the persistence of armed insurgents fighting against governmental forces and paramilitaries, therefore creating cross-fires that threaten the lives of civilians. This results in massive human rights violations  – most of which remain in impunity – and forced population displacements. 3) Environmental threats A third challenge is related to the sources and consequences of environmental change – especially human-related change. These consequences threaten not only Latin American’s material reproduction (e. g. by threatening water and food sources) but also deeply ingrained cultural practices and lifestyles. How do existing models of economic development affect the natural environment? What are their social consequences? How have governments and communities faced these challenges? Are there viable and desirable alternatives to economic extractivism? What are the environmental prospects of Latin America for the next few decades and which are their social implications?

4) Collective action A fourth theme has to do with how collective actors  – social movements, civil society organizations, and quasi-organized groups – deal with these challenges (and others). How have labor, indigenous, student, or women’s movements adapted to environmental, economic and political changes? To what extent have they been able to shape the contours of their issue areas? Have they been successful in fighting inequality, patriarchy, or racism? Have they improved the lives of their constituencies? Why under some circumstances does collective action radicalizes both in tactics and goals? We welcome studies on a wide array of collective actors working on different issues, with different tactics, and diverse ideological stances. 5) Cultural change and resistance Culture – the understandings, symbols, and rituals that shape our quotidian – has never been static in Latin America, but modernization processes have affected it in complex ways. How has religion, lifestyles and values changed under market reforms and democratization processes? How multicultural are Latin American societies, and how they deal with the potential tensions derived from multiculturalism? Which are the causes and consequences of the decline in influence of the Catholic church, the awakening of new religious identities, and the growing sector of non-­ religious Latin Americans? How are new digital technologies and global consumption patterns shaping Latin Americans’ norms and beliefs about race, gender, and social classes? Are Latin Americans becoming “post-materialist”, and if so, why? 6) Migrations Political, economic, and environmental crises, as well as promises of better opportunities in other lands, have encouraged Latin Americans to migrate within their national borders or beyond them. While during the 1970s Latin Americans often migrated to other regions, nowadays national crises encourage them to seek other destinations in more nearby countries. What causes migration patterns and how do they affect both expelling and receiving communities? How do migrants adapt to their new residence places and coexist with native populations? How does migration contribute to social capital, national identities and gang formation? 7) Political inclusion and representation Dealing with social and ethnic minorities constitutes one of the most recurrent and unresolved challenges for the Latin American democracies. This topic includes the representation of the minorities, but includes also the study of the socio-political elites. Hence, how women are represented in the Latin American democracies? How are indigenous and blacks included into the socio-political arena? Which policies are being adopted for increasing the inclusion of such minorities? How representative are Latin American political elites? Both solicited and unsolicited proposals will be considered for publication in the series. More information about this series at http://link.springer.com/series/16592

Pablo Vommaro • Pablo Baisotti Editors

Persistence and Emergencies of Inequalities in Latin America A Multidimensional Approach

Editors Pablo Vommaro University of Buenos Aires Buenos Aires, Capital Federal, Argentina National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) Buenos Aires, Argentina

Pablo Baisotti Department of Latin American Studies University of Brasília Brasilia, Brazil Institute of Iberian and Ibero-American Studies Warsaw University Buenos Aires, Argentina

ISSN 2730-5538     ISSN 2730-5546 (electronic) Latin American Societies ISBN 978-3-030-90494-4    ISBN 978-3-030-90495-1 (eBook) Current Challenges in Social Sciences https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90495-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

1 Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    1 Pablo Baisotti and Pablo Vommaro Part I Persistence of Generational and Intergenerational Inequalities 2 The Third Moment of Equalization in Latin America: Lights and Shadows of the Progressive Governments at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century��������������������������������������   15 Juan Pablo Pérez Sáinz 3 The Impact of the Pandemic on Latin America: Social Setbacks and Rising Inequalities������������������������������������������������������������   33 Gabriela Benza and Gabriel Kessler 4 Past and Present of Higher Education in Latin America and Europe: The Impact of Neoliberal Modernization������������������������   51 Pablo Baisotti and José Antonio Pineda-Alfonso 5 Types of Institutions and Youth School Experience: Dynamics of Inequality in Argentine Secondary Education����������������   75 Pedro Núñez Part II Gender Inequalities 6 Gendered Necropolitcs: Inequalities and Femicides in Central America����������������������������������������������������������������������������������   95 Montserrat Sagot 7 Care, Gender and Social Inequalities����������������������������������������������������  111 Karina Batthyány 8 Actions to Promote Gender Equality in the Context of COVID-19��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  123 Laura Flamand, Mónica Naime, and Juan C. Olmeda vii

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Part III Intertwined Social Inequalities: Race, Class and Social Structure 9 It All Happens (to Us) at Once: Youth, Precariousness and Policy in Argentina (A Multidimensional Approach to Inequality)����������������  149 Mariana Chaves 10 Racial Inequalities as a Structuring Axis of Social Inequality in Latin America and the Afro-Descendant Population ����������������������  167 Laís Abramo 11 The Most Unequal Region on the Planet? A Sociological Analysis of the Ideas, Evaluations and Attitudes Toward Inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean ����������������������������������������������������  185 Gonzalo Assusa Part IV Historical and Economic Dimension of Inequalities 12 Youths and Inequalities: Persistent and Emerging Trends, and Public Policies, in the Time of the Pandemic���������������������������������  205 Pablo Vommaro 13 Comparative Analysis of Social Inequalities in the Latin American Labour Market����������������������������������������������������������������������  225 Pedro López-Roldán and Sandra Fachelli 14 The Glyphosate Consensus: Rural Poverty Management and Agribusiness in South America During the Pink Tide (1998–2016) ����������������������������������������������������������������������  247 Fábio Luis Barbosa dos Santos and Joana Salém Vasconcelos Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  267

About the Authors

Laís Abramo  is a sociologist, hold a masters and Doctor in Sociology from the University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil. She is a specialist in gender, labor, inequalities, and social policies in Latin America. She was Director of the International Labor Organization (ILO) Office in Brazil from 2005 to 2015 and Director of the Social Development Division of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), from 2015 to 2019. She has also served as Regional Gender Specialist of the ILO, Coordinator of the Commission of Labor Movements of CLACSO, and Professor of Sociology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo, at the School of Sociology and Politics of Sao Paulo, and at the Academy of Christian Humanism and the Arcis University in Santiago, Chile. She is the author of several publications in her areas of specialization. José Antonio Pineda-Alfonso  has a degree in History, specializing in Modern and Contemporary History, and also in Philosophy and Educational Sciences, specializing in Psychology (1989). He also holds a PhD in History and Educational Sciences. Since the academic year 2009/2010, he is Associate Professor in the Department of Didactics of Experimental and Social Sciences at the University of Seville. As a researcher, he has participated in several national and international projects. He is a member of the Research Group “Didactics and School Research” (HUM319) of the Andalusian Research Plan funded by the Ministry of Economy, Innovation, Science, and Employment. His research fields are school coexistence, teacher training, social sciences didactics, and education for citizenship and participation. Gonzalo Assusa  has a degree in Sociology (UNVM) and a PhD in anthropological sciences (UNC). He’s a teacher and a researcher at Humanities Institute of the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research and at the National University of Córdoba. He’s part of the program named “Social reproduction in Great Córdoba: recent dynamics.” He investigates about social and symbolic inequalities around work, consumption and education, class boundaries and class identities, legitimacy and impugnation of inequalities and political attitudes towards ix

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redistribution. He has published books and book chapters in Palgrave Macmillan, CLACSO, BIblos, Miño y Dávila, Grupo Editor Universitario, and Noveduc. He has also published articles in academic journals from Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Spain in different languages (Spanish, English, and Portuguese). Pablo  Baisotti  received his PhD in Politics, Institutions, and History from the University of Bologna School of Political Science in 2015. Before that he received an MPhil in International Relations Europe-Latin America from the University of Bologna in 2008 and an MA in Law and Economic Integration from the Universidad Paris I Pantheon Sorbonne and the University of Salvador in 2007. He received his bachelor’s degree in History from the University of Salvador in 2004. He was a fellow researcher at University Sun Yat-sen University in China and a full-time research fellow at the Maria Sibylla Merian Center, University of Costa Rica. He is currently Associate External Researcher at the University of Brasilia (Department of Latin American Studies). He has published and edited more than 20 books. Fabio Luis Barbosa dos Santos  is Professor at the Department of International Relations at the Federal University of São Paulo, author of Power and Impotence. A history of South America under progressivism (1998–2016). Boston/Leiden: Brill, 2020, among other books that have been published in Portuguese, Spanish, English, and French. Karina Batthyány  has a PhD in Sociology. She is Executive Secretary of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO). She is Professor at the Department of Sociology of the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of the Republic (Uruguay). She is a member of the National Research System of Uruguay. She is the author of numerous publications on the topics of social welfare, gender, public policies, unpaid work, and care. Gabriela Benza  has a degree in Sociology (University of Buenos Aires) and a PhD in Social Sciences (El Colegio de México). She is a researcher at the National University of Tres de Febrero, and Professor at that university and at the National University of San Martin. Her research fields are inequalities, stratification, and social mobility. She has published, with G.  Kessler, Uneven Trajectories. Latin American Societies in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge University Press) and La ¿nueva? estructura social de América Latina (Siglo XXI). Mariana  Chaves  is an Anthropologist. She holds a Doctor in Natural Sciences with orientation in Anthropology, is a CEA-UNC post-doctorate, and is CONICET researcher at the Laboratory for Studies in Culture and Society (LECyS) of the Faculty of Social Work, National University of La Plata, of which she is also Director. She is Professor at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Museum, UNLP; Director of the Specialization in social intervention with children, adolescents, and youth, FTS, UNLP.  She is postgraduate professor at UNLP, UBA, UNC, UNR UNTREF, and Universidad Nacional de San Luis and a CLACSO member. She

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directs research, extension, volunteer, scholarship, and thesis projects. She is a member of the Social Organization Obra del Padre Cajade, Chicxs del Pueblo Organizations, and ADULP Secretary. Her latest book was Rausky, ME y Chaves, M. (eds.) (2019) Living and Working in Poverty in Latin America: Trajectories of Children, Youth and Adults. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. Sandra Fachelli  is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Pablo de Olavide University, Seville. She is a post-doctorate in Social Science from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). She holds a PhD in Sociology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), diploma in Advanced Studies in Sociology, masters in Introduction to Research in Sociology (UAB), and a masters in Design and Management of Policies and Social Programs (FLACSO Argentina). She has a BA degree in Sociology from the University of Argentina John F. Kennedy and is a researcher in the Education and Work Research Group (GRET, UAB). She is Teaching Coordinator and Professor of the master’s program in Applied Social Research Techniques (TISA). She is currently President of the Research Committee 06 “Inequality and Social Stratification” of the Spanish Federation of Sociology (FES). She is co-editor of the book Towards a Comparative Analysis of Social Inequalities between Europe and Latin America, Springer. Laura  Flamand  received a PhD in Political Science from the University of Rochester (NY) in 2004. She is Research Professor at the Center for International Studies at El Colegio de México (Colmex) and a member of the National System of Researchers (SNI-Conacyt). Flamand is also the Founding Director of the Network for the Study of Inequalities at Colmex. Her research focuses on social inequalities, intergovernmental social policy, and applied statistics. Laura Flamand is the coauthor of Seguro popular y federalismo en México. Un análisis de política pública (CIDE 2014) and has co-edited other two books. In addition, she has published numerous articles in refereed journals and book chapters in national and international edited volumes. Laura Flamand has led multidisciplinary research groups in more than 15 projects with funding from the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program, BBVA Research, and several government agencies in Mexico. Gabriel  Kessler  received a PhD in Sociology from the EHESS, Paris. He is a researcher at CONICET and professor at the National University of La Plata and the National University of San Martín. Some of his main publications are: La nueva pobreza en la Argentina (Planeta, with A. Minujin), Sociología del delito amateur (Paidós); Neoliberalism and National Imagination (Routledge, with A. Grimson), La Experiencia escolar fragmentada (IPE-Unesco), El sentimiento de Inseguridad. Sociology of Fear of Crime (twenty-first century), Individualization, Precarity and Risk (Paidós, with R. Castel and D. Merklen), Controversies over Inequality (FCE), Deaths that Matter (twenty-first century with S.  Gayol), with G.  Benza Uneven Trajectories: Latin American Society in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge University Press), and La Nueva? Social Structure of Latin America (Siglo XXI).

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Pedro  López-Roldán  is Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). He has a bachelor’s degree in Economics and Business Studies, UAB, a master’s degree in Mathematics, Computer Science and Applications to Human Sciences, option Statistics and Modeling in Social Sciences, and a PhD in Sociology, Department of Sociology, UAB. He is a researcher at the Sociological Research Center on Everyday Life and Work (QUIT, http://quit.uab.cat/), Institute for Labour Studies (IET, http://iet.uab. cat/), UAB. He is President of the Research Committee 41 Comparative Sociology between Europe and Latin America, Spanish Federation of Sociology. He is Coordinator of the Master’s Program in Applied Social Research Methods (TISA). He is co-editor of the book Towards a Comparative Analysis of Social Inequalities between Europe and Latin America, Springer. Personal web: http://pagines.uab.cat/ plopez/content/cv. Mónica Naime  received a PhD in Public Policy from CIDE in Mexico City. She holds a masters in International Law from the Graduate Institute in Geneva. Naime is currently researching on the implications and responsibility for the State that result from providing public services through governance networks at the Faculty of Law of the University of Bergen in Norway. Her research on the intersection between law, public policy, and organization theory has been published in international journals and was awarded the 2018 ASPA Founders’ Fellows grant. Pedro Núñez  received a PhD in Social Sciences (UNGS/IDES) and an assistant researcher of the National Council of Scientific and Technological Research (CONICET) based at IICSAL-FLACSO Argentina, where he coordinates the Program Citizenship and Educational System in the Contemporary World. He is the Academic Director of the Doctorate in Social Sciences at the same institution. His work themes are education, youth, inequalities, and participation. He is the author of the book La política en la escuela (La Crujía 2013) and coauthor, with Lucía Litichever of Radiografías de la experiencia escolar (GEU 2015). He recently participated as a compiler of the book Escuela secundaria, convivencia y participación (Eudeba/OEI 2019). Contact: [email protected] Juan C. Olmeda  is Associate Professor at El Colegio de México in Mexico City and a member of the National System of Researchers (SNI-Conacyt). Olmeda holds an MA and a PhD in Political Science (Northwestern University, USA) and an MA in Ethics, Politics and Public Policy (University of Essex, UK). His research agenda is focused on issues related to subnational politics and comparative federalism in Latin America. Since 2017, he has been editor-in-chief of the academic journal Foro Internacional. Juan  Pablo  Pérez  Sáinz  is a Sociologist. He holds a diploma from the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Sorbonne, Paris; a master's degree in Development Studies from the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague; and a PhD in Economics

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from the Université Libre, Brussels. He has been a researcher at FLACSO since 1981 and currently resides in Costa Rica. He has worked on labor market issues, local economic development, youth and violence and social exclusion, and inequalities. His most recent publications include: Markets and Barbarians. The Persistence of Surplus Inequalities in Latin America (San José, FLACSO 2015); A history of inequality in Latin America. The barbarity of the markets, from the 19th century to today (Bueno Aires, Siglo XXI 2016); as editor, Vidas sitiadas. Jóvenes, exclusión laboral y violencia urbana en Centroamérica (San José, FLACSO/IDRC 2018); La rebelión de los que nadie quiere ver. Respuestas para sobrevivir a las desigualdades extremas en América Latina (Buenos Aires, Siglo XXI/ FLACSO Costa Rica 2019). Montserrat Sagot  is Anthropologist and Sociologist. She holds a PhD in Sociology with specialties in political sociology and gender sociology, the American University, Washington, DC. She is Professor at the School of Sociology and Director of the Research Center for Women’s Studies (CIEM) at the University of Costa Rica. She was also Director of the Master’s Program in Women's Studies, Gender, and Sexualities at the University of Costa Rica and Co-coordinator of the CLACSO Working Group “Feminisms, Resistance and Emancipatory Processes.” She is the author of numerous publications, including several pioneering books in Central America on the problem of violence against women, including The Critical Path of Women Affected by Domestic Violence: Case Studies in 10 Latin American Countries (PAHO 2001) and Femicide in Costa Rica, 1990–1999 (2000). She has also published on social movements and the feminist movement, human rights, and the construction of knowledge. Joana Salém Vasconcelos  is a Historian from the University of São Paulo (USP), has a masters in Economic Development from the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), and a PhD in Economic History (USP). She was a visiting researcher at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). She is the author of the book História Agrária da Revolução Cubana: dilemas do socialismo na periferia (2016) and other publications. She has participated in the Centro de Estudios de Historia Agraria de América Latina, in Santiago (CEHAL - www.cehal.cl), and she is a member of the editorial collective of Latin American Perspectives (UC, Riverside). Pablo Vommaro  is Professor of History and holds a PhD in Social Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). He is a post-doctorate in Social Sciences, Children, and Youth. He is a researcher at the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) and Co-coordinator of the Group for the Study of Policies and Youth (GEPoJu) at the Gino Germani Research Institute (UBA). He is a member of the working group “Youth, children: policies, cultures and social institutions” of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO). He is the Director of the Book Collection “Las juventudes argentinas hoy” (Buenos Aires: GEU) which has 39 books published between 2015 and 2021.

Chapter 1

Introduction Pablo Baisotti and Pablo Vommaro

Most research and public and political agendas agree that inequalities are one of the main problems of contemporary societies. Martin Ravallion (2001: 1808) stated that in those countries where inequality increases with average per capita GDP growth, poverty is reduced at a much slower pace than in countries with more equitable forms of growth. This author (2007) argued that 75% of the developing world’s poor lived in rural areas, although the urban poor were increasing rapidly: between 1993 and 2002, 50 million people in urban areas joined the population subsisting on less than US$1 per day, but the aggregate number of poor people fell by about 100 million as the number of rural poor fell by 150 million (Ravallion 2007: 15–16). According to Oxfam, the world’s 2153 billionaires own more wealth than 4.6 billion people (60% of the world’s population). In Latin America and the Caribbean, 20% of the population concentrates 83% of the wealth. The number of billionaires in the region has increased from 27 to 104 between 2000 and 2020, showing that inequalities are on the rise.1 Latin America and the Caribbean are therefore the most unequal regions in the world, as shown, among others, by figures from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Seven of the 20 most unequal countries in the world are located in this subcontinent. In view of this situation, the region is experiencing an increase 1  Los milmillonarios del mundo poseen más riqueza que 4600 millones de personas 20 enero de 2020. Retrieved from https://www.oxfam.org/es/notas-prensa/los-milmillonarios-del-mundo -poseen-mas-riqueza-que-4600-millones-de-personas

P. Baisotti (*) Department of Latin American Studies, University of Brasília, Brasilia, Brazil Institute of Iberian and Ibero-American Studies, Warsaw University, Buenos Aires, Argentina P. Vommaro University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Capital Federal, Argentina National Council for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICET), Buenos Aires, Argentina © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Vommaro, P. Baisotti (eds.), Persistence and Emergencies of Inequalities in Latin America, Latin American Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90495-1_1

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in mobilizations and social protests, rejecting the postulate that argues that the most unequal societies tend to accept this situation and even legitimize it (Markowsky 1988; Chauvel 2006). Juan Pablo Pérez Sainz (2019) described four disempowerment processes that have led to an increase in social disparities in Latin America during the last decades: the precariousness of salaried work, the exclusion of small landowners from globalization, the fragility of individualization processes for subaltern sectors and the fact that the processing of differences (ethnic, gender) continues to produce inequalities. The author concluded that changes in the correlation of forces between the dominant classes and the subaltern sectors in the context of globalization have given rise to new inequalities and the persistence of old ones. According to Ragin, social inequality is related to merit and ascription. In the first concept, people are rewarded for their ability regardless of their background, orientation, origin or ethnicity. In contrast, where ascription takes precedence, people will succeed according to their status, origin or lineage, regardless of their talent. It should be noted that these “ideal” models are not fulfilled in their entirety (Ragin 2007: 218–219) and are even questioned, in part, by Bordieu who argued that merit also concealed social privileges, that it was a misleading concept that also served to hide inequality. Aníbal Quijano analyzed social inequality by highlighting the effects of colonialism and the coloniality of power that persists even in independent countries. The idea of race organizes social classification, labor and its resources to concentrate capital. The coloniality of power acts on subjectivities and on everyday relations and behaviors. For Quijano, modern colonial capitalism articulates labor and its products, as the control of authority and its instruments of coercion in particular, the State, which allows to ensure the reproduction of that pattern of social relations and regulate its changes (Quijano 2000, 2014). Pérez Sainz (2016) stressed that, since the 1980s, neoliberalism sought to elude the link between the wealth of a few and the misery of the majority by disassociating itself from the issue of inequality and thus, considering poverty only in numbers. Thus, the social issue in the region was depoliticized for several decades. Nevertheless, the exacerbation of inequalities, the persistence of poverty and the emergence of new inequities led to a new  – and acute – resurgence of the social question in the region. Pérez Sainz’s work Mercados y bárbaros. La persistencia de las desigualdades de excedente en América Latina is relevant to understand these situations in the continent, and also to analyze the power dynamics operating in land, capital and labor markets as the origin of inequalities from a view of social classes, groups and categorical pairs (gender, racial, ethnic, territorial, etc.) (Reygadas 2019: 50–51). Likewise, the role of the state is a fundamental part of the fight against inequality since it sets market rules, promotes spending policies and creates laws that favor (or not) greater equity (Stiglitz 2012). Unfortunately, the results of state economic policies were rather negative in Latin America. According to Reygadas (2008): “inequality is sustained in persistent structures that are reproduced in the long run. However, they are not immutable, but are constructed and transformed as a result of processes in which human action intervenes”. It follows that inequalities in the continent are

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framed in material and symbolic networks that produce asymmetrical distributions among citizens (Reygadas 2008). These are dynamic and heterogeneous, which introduces important differences between life trajectories (Fitoussi and Rosanvallon 2010; Tilly 2000), especially the economic differences produced by the market, since they become social inequalities of dependence, subjugation and domination, leading to greater economic differences to the extreme of the commodification of the person. Likewise, a paradox is produced in this market society where the population is relatively integrated into the market, but at the same time, excluded (or transformed into a latent threat) penetrating all social groups and sectors (Sánchez Pargo 2007: 65–66). For all these reasons, in Latin America and the Caribbean, poverty is intense, extensive and excluding, and growth rests on a particularly fragile and weak regime of accumulation in the creation of jobs, which leads (once again) to accentuate social inequalities (Salama 1999: 67). As Thomas Piketty (2014) argued, inequality in capitalism should be sought in the gap between the return on capital and economic growth. The real inequality, he pointed out, lies in the rentier society and in the weight of inheritance, transforming it into a structural phenomenon, i.e., inequality is given by the ownership of capital and the inequality of labor income. The author then deduces that capitalism has an intrinsic tendency to produce inequalities that can only be counteracted by external phenomena (wars or deep crises): “inequality implies that accumulated wealth (...) grows faster than product and wages [...] the entrepreneur tends to become a rentier, more and more dominant over those who own nothing but their labor” (516). Inequality, Piketty continues, has several aspects and components “first for normative and moral reasons [...] and second because the economic, social and political mechanisms capable of explaining the observed evolutions are totally different” (224). The extreme concentration of wealth could transform a democracy into a “plutocracy”, in which real decisions are made by a minority of millionaires based on their interests, which ultimately leads to institutional destabilization. The interest in these issues led many researchers to delve into issues of social stratification (Filgueira 2001), changes in socioeconomic composition (Franco et al. 2011) and social mobility processes (Espinoza and Núñez 2014; Espinoza et  al. 2013; Guzmán et al. 2017). Charles Tilly highlights that inequalities endure at the social and individual levels, some of them throughout a whole career, a lifetime or an organizational history and are marked, mainly, by certain categorical differences, such as skin color, gender, origin, professed religion, rather than merit or performance (Tilly 2000: 20–21). Relationships between groups based on appropriation, domination or “de-recognition” establish a relationship of inequality (economic, political and social) between them. David Harvey points out that recognizing the historical existence of inequalities from multiple approaches: economic, political, ethnic, cultural, gender, does not mean accepting as inevitable and necessary the submission, domination and exploitation of one group (or men) by another (Harvey 2014: 73). For their part, the works of Henry Phelps Brown (1977) and Amartya Sen (1999) study a current that tries to combine solidarity and egalitarian altruism with

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the reduction of inequalities or a combination of efficiency and distributionism and egalitarianism with solidarity (Gamel 2012; Fleurbaey 2005; Ythier et  al. 2000). According to the theory of justice elaborated by Rawls (1971, second principle) social and economic inequalities can be accepted as long as they produce benefits for the most disadvantaged people in society. For his part, Dubet (2015) postulates that there are three types of inequalities: by access (to a good, a service, health, leisure, recreation); by opportunities (related to the starting point of an individual or group); by positions (which would be more structural, because they are linked precisely to the socioeconomic situation of individuals and social groups). Social inequality has become increasingly multidimensional and collective and tends to converge and overlap (in the same classes and spaces). Over time, inequalities deepen in the economic living conditions of different social sectors, but also to marked processes of residential and spatial segregation in cities, to the segmentation of the educational system into unequal school circuits, to the stratified universalization of health systems with widely differentiated benefits and levels, to multiple fractures in the styles and spaces of consumption and entertainment, and even to sociodemographic patterns, avoidable ailments and life expectancies that differ substantially between sectors (Saraví 2019: 79). Thus, in order to think about the mechanisms of production and social reproduction of inequalities, rather than addressing the emerging visible in indicators and data, it is necessary to focus on the forms of perpetuation of inequalities (Reygadas 2004, 2008) and the various ways in which people experience them (Dubet 2015). Based on these proposals in this book, we start from conceiving inequalities from a multidimensional perspective (Reygadas 2004, 2008), intersectional and situated in the diverse Latin American and Caribbean temporal spatialities (Vommaro 2017a, b). Within this conception configured from the plot of the diverse existing inequalities, the different chapters will focus on the common and joint character of the social devices of production and reproduction of inequalities, which include diverse dimensions (Reygadas 2004; Kessler 2014; Pérez Sainz 2014; Saraví 2015; Dubet 2015; Therborn 2015). For Douglas Massey (2007) inequality is underpinned by two prior processes: the assignment of people to different social categories, and the institutionalization of practices that allocates resources unequally to those categories. Many of these dimensions operate in a routine and inadvertent manner in the processes of production and reproduction of social inequalities (Lamont et al. 2014; Saraví 2019: 81). The book we present is also based on the approach of multidimensional and interwoven inequalities in the key of paradoxes or opposing trends. Indeed, following authors such as Kessler (2014), Reygadas (2004, 2008) and Pérez Sainz (2014), inequalities are presented in the region as paradoxes or opposing trends. This means that, by thinking of them in a relational way, we propose to address them also in their ambivalences, tensions. Coinciding with these authors and supported by figures from or we argue that although in Latin America in recent decades there was a process of economic growth with diversities or inequalities between and within countries, social inequalities persisted and even worsened.

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This situation deepened and intensified with the Covid-19 pandemic, which amplified pre-existing social dynamics, especially that of multidimensional social inequalities. Thus, inequalities have increased since the pandemic, configuring a web of persistence and emergencies that poses new scientific and political challenges for the times to come. This is also what this book is about.

Chapters and Issues Juan Pablo Pérez Sáinz contributes to this book with Chap. 2, The third moment of equalization in Latin America: Lights and shadows of the progressive governments at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The author proposes to analyze the relations of the “progressive” governments of the continent in the first decades of the twenty-first century with the dominant sectors in terms of accumulation strategies and opportunities. On the other hand, he investigates the links with the subaltern sectors in three dimensions: labor relations, social citizenship and the processing of differences. In Latin America, we see a region where inequality increases with the emergence of new productive methods and new forms of economic organization that generate great wealth, but which are confronted with very traditional local economies with low levels of productivity. Coincidentally, the continent’s great fortunes have a racial-ethnic component: there is a minority of European origin with high levels of education, who participate in a dynamic sector of the economy, and a majority who do not. This, in part, explains the structural inequality (Roberti 2020). Charles Ragin (2007) stated that in those countries with greater income inequality, there was greater political turbulence (72). The state, in addition to its functions of capital accumulation and coercion is added the inclusive responsibility of diverse social groups as the condition of citizenship expanded “with respect to the activities of government and its personnel, and protects citizens against arbitrary actions of government agents” (McAdam et al. 2001; Guzmán et al. 2017). Gabriel Kessler and Gabriela Benza present us with Chap. 3, called The Impact of the Pandemic on Latin America: Social Setbacks and Rising Inequalities, analyzing the social impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in Latin America. The authors conducted a review of statistical data and empirical research, using questions related to health, labor market, income, poverty, care work, and education since the onset of the pandemic. They consider that it is too early to make definitive assessments as the pandemic continues its course, and emphasize that future scenarios will depend in part on the mitigation policies implemented. Chapter 4 is developed by Pablo Baisotti and José Antonio Pineda-Alfonso. It is called Past and present of Higher Education in Latin America and Europe: The impact of neoliberal modernization. A comparative study of the evolution of higher education in Latin America and Europe was carried out, taking Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Spain as cases of analysis, defining the extent to which these countries have advanced in the access to higher education to new population groups, as well as the present and future challenges to maintain and consolidate equal

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opportunities. There is, according to Pierre Bourdieu (1987), a social genesis “on the one hand of schemes of perception, thought and action [...] habitus, and on the other hand structures, and in particular [...] fields and groups, especially [...] social classes”. Hence, actions had to be directed towards an end, and symbolic systems were instruments of knowledge, of representation as well as of domination. Bourdieu replaced the individual and society dichotomy by the relationship between two modes of existence (and perception) of the social: the habitus and the social field (Bourdieu 2002). These are presented as “fields of forces but also fields of struggles to transform or conserve these fields of forces” where “the conservation of their structure or, under given conditions, their transformation” is sought (Bourdieu 2002). Each field possesses resources (economic, cultural, and social) in which concrete and symbolic struggles take place “associated with the fact of occupying a position [...] in the social structure” (Bourdieu 2007). The problem arises when, being – hypothetically – all people equal but with different thoughts, there is a tendency to legitimize the power of some over others through a public reflection in which not everyone participates. Pedro Núñez develops in Chap. 5, Types of Institutions and Youth School Experience: Dynamics of Inequality in Argentine Secondary Education, the main characteristics of the Argentine educational system in comparison with other Latin American countries. He also explains the ways in which inequality in secondary education was processed. It also examines the differences in the school experience according to the type of educational institution, in order to provide elements that analyze differences that later became inequalities. The construction of a more egalitarian society should be an obligation of governments. Jones et al. (2012) identified issues that leaders must prioritize, which are the intrinsic value of equity and the relationships between equity and other objectives of an economic, political, educational or social nature. This is paramount to comply with the social contract between the state and citizens. Otherwise, inequity translates into poor institutional quality and of distrust, violence and conflict (Bird 2009; Easterly 2007; Reygadas 2019: 49, 51–52). Montserrat Sagot in Chap. 6, Gendered Necropolitcs: Inequalities and Femicides in Central America, describes some gender issues in Central America, one of the most violent regions in the world with one of the highest femicide rates in the world. The author highlights that in the context of femicide, there are contexts generated by histories of colonial domination, exclusion, racism and sexist social norms in a situation of multiple expressions of inequality. She analyzes the multiple systems of inequality in Central America, exacerbated by the pandemic, which produced a lethal context for women, a “gender necropolis”. In this regard, Karina Batthyány, in Chap. 7 called Care, gender and social inequalities, provides some reflections on the emergence of care as an object of study and as a public issue in Latin America and the Caribbean, under the concept of gender inequalities. It presents an account of the construction of care, its relationship with the field of public policies and gender inequalities in times of health crisis. According to Gerhard Lenski (1969), inequality is inevitably a political issue which is linked to the analysis of dimensions such as gender, ethnicity and other

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social groups. Laura Flamand Gómez, Mónica Naime and Juan Olmeda in Chap. 8, Actions to promote gender equality in the context of COVID-19, develop a study on the growth of inequalities, especially for women, in the context of the pandemic in Mexico. They delve into the policies implemented by federal and state governments to address gender inequality before and after the pandemic, in order to identify changes and continuities, as well as to accurately characterize the instruments designed to achieve these objectives. Lamont (1992, 2014) analyzed the characterization of such differentiation processes by establishing the concept of symbolic boundaries, while Boltanski and Thévenot (1983) emphasized that people are trained to recognize and manipulate the social identity of actors as a consequence of the socialization process. Luis Reygadas (2008) advocates a transdisciplinary approach to understand inequalities, analyzing them as a social historical process plagued by appropriation and expropriation mechanisms that include the State, the market and civil society, involving a political, social and cultural process, that legitimizes symbolic and power relations. Reygadas studies, in order to understand inequality, the individual, symbolic and power interactions, and structural networks encompassing the relationship between groups, organizations and countries (Reygadas 2008). Following Reygadas (2019), it can be seen that the attempt at integration in the continent is still insufficient. For this author, inequalities have much to do with gender or social class, although also between old and young, and the labor market partly encourages these inequalities. People’s mentality is the other factor that prevents equality from being achieved, added to structural problems (resources, structures, etc.) that cause territorial and educational consequences (Roberti 2020). Having this in mind, Mariana Chaves presents Chap. 9, which is called It all happens (to us) at once: Youth, precariousness and policy in Argentina (A multidimensional approach to inequality), where she analyzes, from a multidimensional approach, the processes of (re)production of inequalities embodied in the youth sectors of Latin America, with special attention to Argentina. The author works on three dimensions: individual, interactional and structural, alongside three elements: environment, actors and public policies. Charles Tilly based his work on the study of the functioning of relational models of social life that begin with transactions or interpersonal ties. In his book Persistent Inequality, he delved into social structures as a product of the transactional actions and interactions of individuals, where inequity was constructed within and through them, and were framed in inequity-generating mechanisms such as exploitation, monopolization of opportunities, emulation and adaptation that cause permanent advantages for certain people but limit or exclude others. Tilly considered that the problem of inequalities is a social phenomenon, and although a functional solution is promoted, it is the starting point for a new systematic tension, and so on. For Tilly, it is necessary to modify the way society is organized, to question the interactions, naturalization and institutionalization of persistent inequalities (Sánchez Pargo 2007; Tilly 2000). Chapter 10 elaborated by Laís W.  Abramo is called Racial Inequalities as a structuring axis of social inequality in Latin America and the Afrodescendant

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Population. It highlights that racial inequalities constitute one of the structural axes of the matrix of social inequality in Latin America and racism is one of the central elements of the culture of privilege that continues to be reproduced to this day. The author discusses the concept of the matrix of social inequality to understand the dynamics of production, reproduction and persistence of the deep structural inequalities that characterize Latin America, particularly in relation to the Afro-descendant population of the continent. Chapter 11, by Gonzalo Assusa, is named The most unequal region on the planet? A sociological analysis of the ideas, evaluations and attitudes towards inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean. It raises the deep inequality of the continent, and seeks to explain some questions about economic inequality and distributive justice, subjective social class and images of social structure. Although, he points out, in recent decades the region has undergone profound transformations (reduction of inequality gaps in the different dimensions of social life and a sharp drop in poverty-related statistics), it is not said that inequalities have diminished, nor have the parameters of tolerance of inequality and redistributive consensus. Chapter 12 by Pablo Vommaro, Youths and Inequalities: Persistent and Emerging Trends, and Public Policies, In the Time of the Pandemic, presents the dynamics of production and reproduction of social inequalities from a generational and multidimensional point of view, including generational and territorial dimensions, intertwined with others such as education. It mainly addresses the situation of youth in the main cities of Latin America to unravel the dynamics of persistence and emergence of generational inequalities territorially configured in times of pandemic, as well as to identify the experiences of youth resistance and the public policies that were implemented at this juncture. As Pedro López-Roldán and Sandra Fachelli state in Chap. 13, Comparative Analysis of Social Inequalities in the Latin American Labor Market, the structuring of social inequalities in the Latin American labor market can be explained from a double perspective. Firstly, from the theory of labor market segmentation, where it is possible to differentiate mainly the hierarchical configuration of a primary segment. Also, it can be explained from the theory of structural heterogeneity that shows how capitalist economies, subjected to an unequal, combined and dependent development model, generate modern productive sectors of high productivity that coexist with others of very low productivity linked to informality and the social needs of subsistence. Finally, Chap. 14, by Fábio Luis Barbosa dos Santos, and Joana Salém Vasconcelos is called The Glyphosate Consensus: rural poverty management and agribusiness in South America during the Pink Tide (1998-2016). It analyzes agrarian policies in South America under the Pink Tide (1998–2016) in a comparative perspective, considering the following elements: the growth of agribusiness territory to describe the processes of land title regularization without change in land concentration; rural social programs aimed at reducing poverty and inequalities; and the relationship between the Pink Tide governments and landowners.

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Contributions to Be Made by the Book There is no doubt that in recent years, the problem of inequalities has been placed on the public agenda, both in the media and in the political and academic spheres. And from this emergence (as a public problem, as a public cause and as a militant cause. See Vázquez 2013), it is interesting to reflect on two issues. On the one hand, how a social problem is constructed and how it enters the public agenda through the media and through research and politics. The public agenda becomes a militant cause for collectives, movements and social organizations, hence investigating the ways in which social organizations assume inequalities as a political or militant cause produces at the same time practices to counteract them. The advance of the paradigm of social inequalities in recent years has generated studies that interpret current social processes linked to these dynamics, by thinking of them as dynamic, situated, relational and the expression of socio-historical processes that are configured in a spatiality, not self-centered or self-defined (Vommaro 2017a). The articles presented and articulated with each other revolve around the issue of inequalities based on four main axes: (a) persistence of generational and intergenerational inequalities; (b) structural gender inequality; (c) intertwined social inequalities: race, class and social structure; and (d) historical and economic dimension of inequality. These different sections dialogue with this concept from different spheres. We consider that each of the sections enriches the “global” concept of inequality, a concept that is the backbone of the book. We have proposed a multidimensional perspective situated in various issues that we consider relevant and urgent for the continent. Each of the sections expresses a position that has been worked on both the academic level and in the public agenda, finding the issue of inequalities in youth, public policies, institutions, education, gender and femicides, gender and the Covid-19 pandemic, gender and migrations, gender and care, politics, race and ethnicity, economics and the labor market as the main axis. Therefore, we highlight the multidimensional framework. While some articles have a national approach to the issue of inequality, others are regional and even continental in scope. Thus, the book tries to sustain regional diversity in its approaches and perspectives. There are some topics that have a stronger hold in some countries than in others, such as the issue of education or ethno-racial issues, but all of them seek to focus attention on the processes of production and reproduction of inequalities, interwoven in society, which hierarchize and separate social groups (by gender, sexuality, ethnicity, social class, education, origin, work, generation, territory, etc.). The consensus is that in 2020, inequalities took on greater prominence as the pandemic exacerbated social tensions and transformed them into an emergency, a public problem and even a political cause. The book also seeks to understand how this social problem is perceived by citizens and political groups, as well as to identify practices to counteract the mechanisms of production and social reproduction of inequalities. Therefore, we propose a study that can articulate the micro (relationships between meanings, experiences and decision-making) and macro (cultural assumptions of policies and institutions)

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levels, providing us with a broad and complex picture to unravel the social inequalities that often create culturally pernicious conditions of deprivation that are perpetuated (Lamont and Small 2008). Our proposal contributes to developing a more heterogeneous and complex picture of how cultural, social, economic and political factors produce and consolidate inequalities. We also seek to understand the particular ways (youth, gender, ethnicity, social class, etc.) in which these conditions are problematized and the possible, potential and necessary responses to inequalities that are socially and politically enacted. This book will be of academic interest, will serve as an input for public policies and, at the same time, will be of broad and general interest. It can be used in courses of sociology, political science, history, economics, anthropology, education and other areas of the social and human sciences, both by students and professors, but also by those interested in the issue of inequalities in Latin America and the Caribbean, both from the perspective of public policy and social intervention.

References Bird, K. 2009. Building a fair future: Why equity matters. Overseas Development Institution. http://www.odi.org/comment/4571-­building-­fair-­future-­equity-­matters Boltanski, L., and L. Thévenot. 1983. Finding one’s way in social space: A study based on games. Social Science Information 22 (4/5). Bourdieu, P. 1987. Choses dites. (Le Sens commun). Paris: Ed. de Minuit. ———. 2002. Lección sobre la lección. Barcelona: Anagrama. ———. 2007. El sentido práctico. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI. Chauvel, L. 2006. Tolérance et résistance aux inégalités. In L’épreuve des inégalités, ed. H. Lagrange. Francia: PUF. Dubet, F. 2015. ¿Por qué preferimos la desigualdad? (aunque digamos lo contrario). Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI. Easterly, W. 2007. Inequality does cause underdevelopment: Insights from a new instrument. Journal of Development Economics 84: 2. Espinoza, V., and J. Núñez. 2014. Movilidad ocupacional en Chile 2001–2009. ¿Desigualdad de ingresos con igualdad de oportunidades? Revista Internacional de Sociología (RIS) 72: 1. Espinoza, V., et al. 2013. Estratificación y movilidad social bajo un modelo neoliberal maduro: el caso de Chile. Revista Laboratorio 25: 14. Filgueira, C. 2001. La actualidad de viejas temáticas: sobre los estudios de clase, estratificación y movilidad social en América Latina. Chile: CEPAL. Fitoussi, J.P., and P. Rosanvallon. 2010. La nueva era de las desigualdades. Argentina: Manantial. Fleurbaey, M. 2005. Health, equity and social welfare. Annales d’économie et de Statistique 82: 83–84. Franco, R., et al., eds. 2011. Las clases medias en América Latina. Retrospectiva y nuevas tendencias. México: CEPAL-Siglo XXI. Gamel, C. 2012. Les Théories de la Justice Vues par un Économiste. De “l’Économie du Bien-Être” au “Post-Welfarisme”. Contemporain. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281047510_ Les_Theories_de_la_Justice_Vues_par_un_Economiste_De_l’Economie_du_Bien-­Etre_au_ Post-­Welfarisme_Contemporain Guzmán, V., E.  Barozet, and M.L.  Méndez. 2017. Legitimación y crítica a la desigualdad: una aproximación pragmática. Convergencia Revista de Ciencias Sociales 73.

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Harvey, D. 2014. Diecisiete contradicciones y el fin del capitalismo. Quito: Editorial Instituto de Altos Estudios Nacionales. Jones, A.M., N. Rice, and P. Rosa Dias. 2012. Quality of schooling and inequality of opportunity in health. Empirical Economics 42: 369. Kessler, G. 2014. Controversias sobre la desigualdad: Argentina, 2003–2013. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Lamont, M. 1992. Money, morals and manners: The culture of the French and American upper-­ middle class. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 2014. Reflections inspired by ethnic boundary making: Institutions, power, networks. Ethnic and Racial Studies 37: 5. Lamont, M., S. Beljean, and M. Clair. 2014. What is missing? cultural processes and causal pathways to inequality. Socio-Economic Review 12: 3. Lamont, M., and Small, M. (2008). How culture matters: Enriching our understandings of poverty. En The colors of poverty: Why ratial and ethnic disparities persist, ed. A.  Chih Lin, y D. R. Harris. Nueva York: Russel Sage. Lenski, G. 1969. Poder y privilegio. Teoría de la estratificación social. Buenos Aires: Paidós. Markowsky, B. 1988. Anchoring justice. Social Psychology Quarterly 63: 3. Sage. Massey, D. 2007. Categorically unequal. The American stratification system. Nueva York: Russell Sage Foundation. McAdam, D., S. Tarrow, and C. Tilly. 2001. The dynamics of contention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pérez Sainz, J.P. 2014. Mercados y bárbaros. La persistencia de las desigualdades de excedente en América Latina. San José, CR: Flacso. ———. 2016. Una historia de la desigualdad en América Latina. La barbarie de los mercados, desde el siglo XIX hasta hoy. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI. ———. 2019. Las desigualdades y la re-politización de lo social en América Latina. Encartes 2: 4. Phelps Brown, H. 1977. The inequality of pay. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Piketty, T. 2014. El capital En El Siglo XXI. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Quijano, A. 2000. Coloniality of power, ethnocentrism and Latin America. Neplanta 3: 1. ———. 2014. Colonialidad del poder y clasificación social. Clacso. http://biblioteca.clacso.edu.ar/gsdl/cgi-­b in/library.cgi?e=d-­1 1000-­0 0%2D%2D-­o ff-­0 clacso% 2 D % 2 D 0 0 -­1 % 2 D % 2 D % 2 D % 2 D 0 -­1 0 -­0 % 2 D % 2 D -­0 % 2 D % 2 D -­0 d i r e c t -­1 0 % 2 D %2D-­4%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D-­0-­0l%2D%2D11-­es-­Zz-­1%2D%2D-­20-­about%2D% 2D-­00-­3-­1-­00-­0%2D%2D4%2D%2D%2D%2D0-­0-­01-­00-­0utfZz-­8-­00&a=d&cl=CL3.2& d=D9642.2 Ragin, C. 2007. La construcción de la investigación social. Introducción a los métodos y su diversidad. Bogotá: Siglo del Hombre Editores/Universidad de los Andes. Ravallion, M. 2001. Growth, inequality and poverty: Looking beyond averages. World Development 29: 11. ———. 2007. Pobreza en la urbe. Finanzas & Desarrollo. Rawls, J. 1971. A theory of justice. Boston, MA: Harvard University Press. Reygadas, L. 2004. Las redes de la desigualdad: un enfoque multidimensional. México: UAM. ———. 2008. La apropiación. Destejiendo las redes de la desigualdad. Barcelona y México: Antropos. ———. 2019. La Desigualdad Siempre Es Política. Encartes 2: 4. Roberti, E. 2020. La persistencia de las desigualdades en América Latina: Desafíos para el siglo XXI. Entrevista al antropólogo Luis Reygadas. Sociohistórica 46. Salama, P. 1999. Las nuevas causas de la pobreza en América Latina. Ciclos 8: 16. Sánchez Pargo, J. (2007). Desigualdad y nuevas desigualdades: Economía política de un ocultamiento. Ecuador Debate 70. Saraví, G.A. 2015. Juventudes fragmentadas. Socialización, clase y cultura en la construcción de la desigualdad. México: FLACSO y CIESAS.

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———. 2019. La desigualdad social en América Latina. Explicaciones estructurales y experiencias cotidianas. Encartes 2: 4. Sen, A. 1999. Development as freedom. New York: First Anchor Books Edition. Stiglitz, J. 2012. The price of inequality: How today’s divided society endangers our future. Norton: Kindle Edition. Therborn, G. 2015. Los campos de exterminio de la desigualdad. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Tilly, C. 2000. Desigualdades persistentes. Argentina: Manantial. Vázquez, M. 2013. En torno a la construcción de la juventud como causa pública durante el kirchnerismo: Principios de adhesión, participación y reconocimiento. Revista Argentina de Estudios de Juventud 1 (7): 1–25. Vommaro, P. 2017a. Juventudes latinoamericanas: Diversidades y desigualdades, en Revista Temas. (87–88). La Habana. Pp. 4–11. ———. 2017b. Juventud y desigualdades en América Latina y el Caribe. Buenos Aires: Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales. Ythier, J.M., L.A. Gérard-Varet, and S.C. Kolm. 2000. The economics of reciprocity, giving and altruism. Economics Bulletin 28: 14.

Part I

Persistence of Generational and Intergenerational Inequalities

Chapter 2

The Third Moment of Equalization in Latin America: Lights and Shadows of the Progressive Governments at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century Juan Pablo Pérez Sáinz

Despite being one of the regions of the world characterized by deep and persistent inequalities, Latin America has experienced moments in which equalization was sought1. The first attempt was during the period of Independence, as Morse (1999) pointed out, taking Mexico as a referent, with the Rousseaunian leveling principle of the Catholic tradition of insurgent populism. This same author mentioned a second moment of flowering of this Rousseaunian impulse with the phenomenon of populism during the short twentieth century in Latin America between the two crises of the 1930s and the “lost decade” of the 1980s. In this same sense, a third moment can be identified at the beginning of this century with the emergence of progressive governments: the Bolivarian Revolution (since 1999) in Venezuela, the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) (2003–2016) in Brazil, Kirchnerism (2003–2015) in Argentina, the Frente Amplio (2004–2019) in Uruguay, the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) (2006–2019) in Bolivia, and the Revolución Ciudadana (2007–2017) in Ecuador. The present text approaches this third moment from the perspective of surplus inequalities that are not the result of capitalism, like income inequalities, but make its existence possible. They imply, in the first instance, class conflicts over the conditions of exploitation and hoarding of opportunities for accumulation. But they also include the incidence in these struggles of both individuals and categorical pairs, incorporating the issues of social citizenship and the processing of differences. From this approach, (in)equalities are understood, primarily, as processes of  For a further development of the arguments of this chapter, see Pérez Sáinz (2021).

1

J. P. Pérez Sáinz (*) Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO), San José, Costa Rica e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Vommaro, P. Baisotti (eds.), Persistence and Emergencies of Inequalities in Latin America, Latin American Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90495-1_2

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(dis)empowerment (Pérez Sáinz 2014, 2016). In this sense, the first section analyzes the main dynamics of equalization promoted by these governments and, in a second section, shows their limitations. We conclude by giving historical significance to these three moments of equalization in the region.

The Lights: The Dynamics of Equalization The 1990s were a time of celebration of the new (neo)liberal order in Latin America, with Chile as a main source of inspiration despite its dictatorial origins. However, this order began to show its contradictions through the vicissitudes of its hegemonic capital, finance. International crises of the financial system, the Mexican crisis (the “tequila effect” in 1994), the Asian crisis in 1997, and the Russian crisis (the “ruble crisis” in 1998), were the main manifestations that heralded the 2008 crisis. The 1998 crisis had an impact on the Brazilian and Argentinean economies, and collaterally on the Uruguayan economy, generating deep recessions, which led the PT, Kirchnerism and the Frente Amplio coming to power through the ballot box. Thus, a shift to the left began in Latin America, which already had an important precedent: that of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela with the electoral victory of Chavez at the end of 1998. In this case, it was not so much the external economic impact, but rather the exhaustion of the model and cycle imposed by the Punto Fijo Pact and the conflict generated by the attempt to impose a (neo)liberal structural adjustment. In Bolivia, internal factors are also the main reasons for the MAS coming to power. Some factors worth mentioning are the exhaustion of the (neo)liberal cycle and an important social mobilization and conflict, the most significant of all the cases considered. Finally, in Ecuador, with a tortuous and never-ending (neo) liberal structural adjustment and the crisis of the political system, the mobilization of citizens, especially the middle sectors of Quito, would bring Correa to power. This inaugurated a moment of equalization and as such has been expressed in three dynamics of empowerment of the subaltern sectors: the one based on the growth of the real minimum wage; the increase in consumption that has also led to the incorporation to consumerism; and the one of dignification overcoming the invisibility to which important marginalized sectors were subjected. Let us look at each of these separately. The regional weighted average of the real minimum wage index grew from 100 in 2000 to 158.1 in 2015. The increases in the cases considered were among the highest in the region, and ranged from 158.8 in Ecuador to 273.3 in Uruguay. The exception was Venezuela, which has decreased from 116.9 to 100.0 between 2014 and 2015 (OIT, 2016: Table 10). In the latter country, since 2013, with the death of Chávez and the end of the commodity boom, the political crisis that began in 2002 was reactivated and articulated to an intense economic crisis with a fall to negative GDP values and hyperinflation (Vera 2018). The result has been the configuration of a situation of “catastrophic standoff”, where the protagonism corresponds to extremist actors on

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both the government and opposition sides (Hirst et al. 2019; Chiasson-LeBel 2020). Thus, Venezuelan society is mired in a deep crisis resulting from multiple factors: the extremely belligerent opposition, both nationally and internationally, that the government has had and which has taken the form of international sanctions and threats of military intervention; the oil crisis and the inability to overcome the rentier model; the erroneous policies that have not served to encourage capital accumulation; and the poor performance of the Maduro government (Ellner 2019a). For the remaining five experiences, the importance of this first equalization dynamic varies in each case and has depended on the historical weight of wage labor in each society, which has also been expressed politically in the relevance of the union actor in the coalitions that supported these governments. Thus, it was less important for the Citizen Revolution and for the MAS government. In the latter case, the relationship of the historic Central Obrera Boliviana with the MAS government was ambivalent, with situations of coincidence, but also of conflict (Crabtree and Chaplin 2013). In the Ecuadorian case, there was confrontation with part of the union movement, which led to its fracture and to the persecution and criminalization of opposing unions. The reason refers to the policy of “desectorization”, one of the most negative aspects—in our opinion—of the Citizen Revolution.2 A similar situation occurred in Venezuela, where we cannot ignore the fact that the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers was part of the coup coalition of April 2002. Subsequently, the government insisted on the configuration of a new central, subordinated to its interests and without autonomy (Lucena 2015; Iranzo 2018; Vázquez Heredia 2018). In the background of these conflicting relations is the fact that the trade union actor did not play an important role in the access to power of these governments. In the Venezuelan case, that protagonism was played by the marginalized sectors. In the Bolivian case, by the indigenous people and the peasantry, and in the Ecuadorian case it was the electorate, especially the one referred to the middle sectors. That is to say, for these governments, the trade union movement has not represented a strategic ally. On the contrary, for Kirchnerism and the Frente Amplio they were fundamental; the Brazilian PT would be located in the middle, but slanted towards the latter two cases. In this regard, it is important to note that the effects of the minimum wage increase in Brazil transcend the remuneration of the labor force (Loureiro and Saad-­ Filho 2019). The 1988 constitution established that this remuneration would be a benchmark for calculating a whole series of social benefits such as pensions,

2  The Citizen Revolution has been an enemy of protest and social conflict and has approached its relations with social actors in terms of “desectorization”, a term that seeks to ignore all types of social ascription (class, ethnic, gender, etc.) that entails organization in order to consider all individuals as mere citizens. It is an approach that has liberal roots and has stigmatized social organizations as corporatist. The counterpart is that the government was freed from negotiating with organizations and this political behavior became the norm for Alianza PAIS (Lalander and Ospina Peralta 2012). It should be noted that the indigenous movement was also affected by this policy, suffering persecution and criminalization.

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unemployment insurance, and welfare benefits. In other words, the minimum wage was constituted as a reference floor for social benefits and, in this sense, it has been argued that it has approached a redistributive policy of a universalist cut (Kerstenetzky 2017). In Argentina and Uruguay, this equalization dynamic meant the recovery of the centrality of wage labor in society, which (neo)liberalism and its crisis at the beginning of the century had disfigured. This suggested not only a material dimension, recovering working and living conditions, but also a symbolic one that implied recovering its importance as an actor in society. It is not surprising, therefore, that these were the two cases where there was greater regulation of labor relations and strengthening of the trade union movement. Thus, the regulatory attempt was more arduous in Argentina due to the deregulation inherited from the (neo)liberal period, and the measures adopted by Kirchnerism were more radical. Therefore a labor regime change took place, expressed, especially, in the National Labor Regularization Plan (Palomino 2007; Danani 2012; Anigstein 2013; Trujillo and Retamozo 2017). In Uruguay, numerous laws were enacted in favor of workers, but the most significant action to highlight was the revitalization of the Wage Councils. In this way, a new system of labor relations of a regulated and participatory nature was configured where there has been strengthening of the actors, especially the union (Notaro 2009; Pucci et al. 2014; Quiñones and Supervielle 2014). This instance has a double importance. On the one hand, in historical terms, in Uruguay it implies a bridge between the Frente Amplio government and neo-Batllismo and, therefore, with Batllismo.3 On the other hand, the Wage Councils must have been the most favorable labor negotiation instance for workers, not only in the six cases considered, but also in all Latin America during these years. Kirchnerism had proximity with the union movement in its first stage, but, later on, there was distancing and even conflicts due to its opposition to the “resyndicalization” of Peronism (Natalucci 2015). It has been the Uruguayan case where the links between the Frente Amplio and the Plenario Intersindical de Trabajadores-­ Convención Nacional de Trabajadores have been more harmonious, which does not deny the existence of tensions. Two factors have contributed to this: union unity and the duration of the alliance of these two actors that was forged in the opposition. Undoubtedly, if we take into account the six cases, this relationship was the least conflictive and the most profitable for both parties. Wage increases led to greater consumption capacity for the labor force, activating the domestic market.4 But this activation was also reinforced by conditional cash 3  Batllismo refers to the governments of José Batlle y Ordoñez in 1903–1907 and 1911–1915, which were characterized, above all, by their social policies, constituting the first experience of a welfare state in Latin America. In 1947, Luis Batlle Berres, nephew of Batlle y Ordoñez, became president. His government revitalized social policies in a new context known as “neo-Batlleism”. 4  A market inserted within globalization and not protected from it as a national market. In this sense, with these governments, an attempt was made to grow not “inward”, as was done in the short twentieth century, but “from within” (Thwaites Rey and Ouviña 2018: 38).

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transfers directed to subaltern sectors outside the salaried world. In this regard, three situations can be identified that implied different ways of approaching the issue of social citizenship. The first was the continuity with this (neo)liberal social transfer policy. This occurred in both Ecuador and Bolivia. In the first case, the Bono de Desarrollo Humano was retained, but with increases in amounts and purging of beneficiaries to improve targeting (Ponce 2013; Palacio Ludeña 2019). In Bolivia, new vouchers were created, Juancito Pinto and Juana Azurduy, which had almost universal coverage with respect to the populations to be benefited (Wanderley and Mokrani 2011; Marco Navarro 2012; Monterrey Arce 2013). To this group we must also add Brazil with its Bolsa Família program, of which two key features should be highlighted. The first one is its coverage: a quarter of the population of the country with the largest demographic weight in the region. This means that it was not just any intervention, but the star social program of the PT governments. The second one was the access it allowed to consumption through its credit component. In this way, that program was part of the financialization of social welfare, along with other government initiatives (Lavinas 2016; Ivo 2018). The significance of this program must be interpreted in terms of the utopia of social mobility that Lulismo assumed and whose antecedents must be traced in Varguismo. An intermediate situation was that of Uruguay under the Frente Amplio. The first government implemented universal plans, in addition to reforming the family allowance system, which provided social protection to the most vulnerable population. In this way, it tended towards the universalization of universal social citizenship, although its stratification was not overcome (Midaglia and Antía 2011; Midaglia and Silveira 2011; Rossel 2016). The meaning is that of continuity, not with (neo) liberalism but rather with the Batllista welfare tradition dating back to the beginning of the twentieth century. Therefore, in terms of social citizenship, it could be said that the Frente Amplio governments have represented the third moment of Batllismo. The other two cases involved a break with the (neo)liberal legacy. Thus, in the Argentine case, although there were conditional cash transfers, the main program (the Universal Child Allowance) was defined from a labor perspective, and the “transfer” was not conceived as a mere temporary benefit but rather as a labor right. This proposal harmonized with labor policies, both those referring to registered salaried work and to unregulated work, for which a set of programs was proposed for their inclusion within the solidarity economy perspective. In other words, an attempt was made for this dimension of social citizenship to be inscribed within the labor world, moving from “decent” to “dignified” work to overcome marginalization (Grassi 2012; Lijterman 2016; Messina 2017). In this sense, the meaning of this experience must be deciphered in terms of the recovery of the centrality of work in Argentine society, which was one of the fundamental efforts of Kirchnerism to repair the perverse effects of Menemism on the labor world. In Venezuela, after a first phase of social policy of a transitory and ambiguous nature and having overcome the 2002–2004 crisis, state action for the development of social citizenship was based on a model different from the (neo)liberal one: the Missions. These were proposed as interventions with universalizing pretensions,

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with a decommodified character and based on popular participation. However, in practice, these purposes were relativized. Universalization privileged historically marginalized sectors. Decommodification was maintained based on the financing provided by oil revenues. And participation was conditioned by the direct relationship with the Presidency and, specifically, with the figure of Chávez, because the Missions were based on an extra-institutional strategy resulting from the 2002–2004 crisis (D’Elia 2006; González and Lacruz 2008; Buxton 2014; Vázquez Heredia 2018). In 2011, a break occurred and the policy was oriented towards the Great Missions that aimed to articulate this first model with the old institutionality. In all cases, there were monetary transfers that, together with wage policies, meant access to consumption by broad subaltern sectors, which became the second equalization dynamic.5 But this phenomenon has a double face: the legitimate right of these sectors to access consumer goods and the symbolic connotation of this consumption in terms of consumerism. The former has been emphasized by Benza and Kessler (2020a), when they have argued that it is appropriate to speak of a “consumer debt” referring to the hardships of broad subaltern sectors with (neo)liberalism and that these governments have tried to settle. The second, consumerism as a symbolic dimension of this consumption, has been highlighted by Thwaites Rey and Ouviña (2018) who, while admitting the legitimacy of such consumption, emphasize its incidence in the construction of the materiality of everyday life that makes it operate as ideological and cultural “cement” of the capitalist order. In this sense, we must agree with these last two authors that these governments did not accompany the legitimate access to consumer goods with a critique of consumerism beyond the invocation of Buen Vivir/ Vivir Bien which, moreover, are ideas in dispute to which multiple meanings can be granted (Schavelzon 2015). This has been a dynamic equalization that has also shown differences among the cases considered. In the Argentine and Uruguayan experiences, it has represented, fundamentally, recovering for salaried workers their standard of living and lifestyle. For the Bolivarian Revolution, the MAS government, and—to a lesser extent—the Citizen Revolution, access to a new level of consumption for sectors that were historically marginalized. The Brazilian case combines both meanings. This increase in income, translated into higher consumption that induced changes in the lifestyles of subaltern sectors, has raised the issue of social mobility during these experiences, which has had two interpretations. The one that has tended to prevail has been to emphasize the growth of the “middle class”, a phenomenon that is not limited to these countries. This analytical perspective, with respect to the cases considered, was relevant in Brazil and Bolivia, but what it reflected was the growth of middle-income strata. Villanueva Rance (2020: 136–137) has pointed out for Bolivia, but applicable to other countries in the region, that this “middle class” has expressed “an expansive agglutination” 5  The Bolivarian Revolution was an exception, but it made popular consumption possible through the cheapening of imports, due to the overvaluation of the bolivar, one of the main expressions of persistent rentierism.

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associated with an “increasingly empty signifier”. It would be difficult to find a confluence of interests in the aggregation of groups as diverse as public employees, transport workers, professionals, smugglers, etc. Therefore, this “agglutination” has blurred the heterogeneity of its composition and this has been due—to a large extent—to the confluence in consumption patterns. In other words, consumerism has tended to standardize, with its democratizing pretensions, hiding class differences. We are faced with the fetishization that being is through consumption rather than through work. The end of the commodity boom began to dilute this illusion and the current pandemic has deepened it with the crisis in the world of work. But there is another interpretation of the dynamics of social mobility which is more appropriate. Thus, Benza and Kessler (2020b) have argued that what happened was not class mobility because there were no significant structural processes of occupational order. The change was not the growth of the “middle class”, but rather the process of inclusion of marginalized sectors. This would be the third dynamic of equalization which, although it has a material dimension expressed in the improvement of living conditions, also offers a symbolic edge of greater importance. This is the appropriation of the sense of dignity that has made these historically marginalized sectors feel that they are full members of society. This appropriation has led to recognition because they are no longer invisibilized, which used to be the form of inferiorization from which they suffered. However, this visibilization generated adverse reactions in some middle and upper sectors of society that felt threatened by the empowerment of “those from below”. This happened in Venezuela in 2002–2004, when the opposition, led by middle and high sectors, defined itself as “civil society” against the “Chavista hordes”,6 reediting the nineteenth century opposition, but always in force, between civilization versus barbarism. In this way, the class conflict incorporated an important racial component that would remain in the following years (Lacabana 2006). It also happened in Argentina as a result of Resolution 125 and its subsequent consequences because the conflict acquired a key symbolic dimension by reissuing an old dichotomy: “republican civilization” versus “populist barbarism” (Pucciarelli 2017). In Brazil, when the so-called “emergents” (that is, the supposed “new middle class”) began to have a presence in spaces such as airports, shopping malls, recreational places, etc. The reaction of the “established” (i.e., the already existing middle class) was to feel threatened and deployed discriminatory actions against the subaltern sectors and, as a corollary, belligerent against the PT and its government. This would unleash the crisis that would lead to the “soft coup” against Dilma Roussef (Costa 2020). And in Bolivia, with the coup d’état against the MAS government, this nineteenth century racism based on the opposition: “citizens” (them) versus “savages” (the “others”, indigenous peasants) was shown without any concealment. This was one of the multiple reasons why the Bolivian right wing lost, in such a resounding way, the October 2020 elections (Mayorga 2020).

6  Chávez, throughout these years, has ended up being placed in a preferential place in the pantheon of demonization of the right wing in the region and even outside of it.

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This does not seem to have been the case in Ecuador, where the “pact for consumption” mainly favored the middle sectors with imports, and especially in Uruguay, where the hyper-integrating citizenship of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries would still have inertia. However, the reaction has varied according to the country: in Brazil, it has been due to its greater social proximity and the invasion of spaces of the middle sectors; in Argentina, stigmatization has been directed at the beneficiaries of social programs considered members of political clientele networks or suspected of not wanting to work (Benza and Kessler 2020b). By reversing their invisibilization, these marginalized sectors pose to society the need to process their difference. In fact, from the very world of marginalization in the region, there have been two types of responses seeking visibility: violence and collective action. The rejection they have generated has translated into territorial stigmatization and criminalization of social protest (Pérez Sáinz 2019). This type of aftershocks is sustained by a feeling of moral superiority, but it is also accompanied by fear. These two elements are not new and were already present in the opposition—of oligarchic origin—between civilization versus barbarism, an antagonism that would have been reformulated today. In this regard, we would hypothesize that a new modality of inferiorization of the subaltern sectors has taken place, on the part of certain upper and middle sectors, which we would call: “plebephobia”. The dispute is centered on the dignity of the marginalized sectors in terms of human beings and, therefore, as full members of society.

The Shadows: The Limits of Equalization Although these three dynamics of equalization have been important, they have encountered limits because the empowerment of subaltern sectors has not been matched by the disempowerment of dominant sectors. This inability is not unrelated to the context of globalization. It is evident that none of the experiences analyzed sought to disassociate themselves from this process and the result was that the main dynamics of globalizing accumulation were maintained and even—in some cases— deepened, but this did not imply a mere re-edition of (neo)liberal globalization. Thus, neo-extractivism was strengthened, especially in the Venezuelan, Bolivian, and Ecuadorian cases, where hydrocarbon rents have played a key role. This has been patent in the Venezuelan case and would represent the most continuist feature of the government of the Bolivarian Revolution that also goes back beyond the (neo) liberal period because it has been a constant in the contemporary history of that country (Arenas 2010; Hellinger 2017; Mora Contreras et al. 2017).7 However, two characteristics of Chavista rentierism can be highlighted. On the one hand, it has had a geopolitical use as an instrument of a new regional Boliviarianism. On the 7  In view of the growing difficulties in oil production, the Maduro government has opted for a new neo-extractivist strategy located in the so-called Orinoco Mining Arc, in which the military plays an important role.

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other hand, it has also had a social purpose through the aforementioned Missions. In this respect, it can be said that, with the Bolivarian Revolution, the oil rent reached for the first time the deepest Venezuela, the one excluded from the Punto Fijo Pact. This is not a trivial achievement. In the Bolivian case, the importance of the Direct Tax on Hydrocarbons has been highlighted because one of its main destinations has been the financing of pensions through the Renta Dignidad program with universal coverage (Escobar Loza et  al. 2013). It should be noted that, with the growth of imports that made possible the higher foreign exchange thanks to the increase in international hydrocarbon prices, accumulation opportunities were generated for small traders who, with a solid economic culture and tradition, have been able to take advantage of them (Tassi et  al. 2012; Arbona et  al. 2014). In Ecuador, the middle sectors, through the increase in imports, were one of the groups that benefited the most from oil rentierism (Dávalos 2013). In these three cases, there was a redefinition of neo-extractivism insofar as the intensification of reprimarization has been accompanied by other features: strengthening of the State in the extraction and appropriation of rents from primary goods; a reorientation of the destination of that rent that also favored subaltern sectors, historically marginalized from such redistribution; and important legitimizing effects at the political level of the model (Peters 2019). Agribusiness was also strengthened in these governments with the increase in soybean cultivation as the spearhead of this process.8 In the Brazilian case—in 2006—a neo-developmentalist turn took place when the State was strengthened by resuming its planning and investment role in infrastructure and energy, creating new public companies, increasing public employment, and acquiring a major role in credit. A new coalition was configured, where the internal bourgeoisie converged with subaltern sectors (Boito Jr. 2016; Sauer and Mészáros 2018). This alliance was made viable thanks to the commodities boom, where agribusiness played a fundamental role and made this business sector the cornerstone of the neo-­developmentalist architecture. In the Argentine case, the relationship with agriculture is marked by Resolution 125 of June 2008, by means of which the government increased the tax burden on agricultural exports in order to appropriate more income generated in this sector. It was the most conflictive moment of the Kirchnerist period and represented a watershed (Basualdo 2011; Porta et al. 2017). But this conflict was a struggle over the appropriation of agrarian income, but not over its generation. In Uruguay, at the beginning of this century, this sector has undergone significant changes: concentration of ownership facilitated by legal changes in the purchase and sale of land; new crops in which soybean and forestry production stand out; and strong presence of foreign capital. The Frente Amplio governments did not modify these transformations but even promoted them by attracting foreign investment and consolidating agribusiness (Piñeiro and Cardeillac 2018). In Bolivia, it should be noted that the 2006–2009 triennium represented a “revolutionary moment” in terms of agrarian

8  Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Bolivia, together with Paraguay, make up what has been called the “Soy Republic”.

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reform, but it was reversed by the subsequent understanding between the MAS government and the large producers in the East linked to agribusiness (Crabtree and Chaplin 2013; Colque et al. 2016; Ormachea Saavedra 2018). Financialization had its greatest expression in the Brazilian case because in the Argentine case, the end of the convertibility regime weakened this accumulation dynamic. Thus, with the PT governments, the (neo)liberal “tripod” (inflationary control, generation of primary fiscal surplus, and floating exchange rate) was maintained, so that the hegemony of financial capital was not questioned. There was a substantial growth of the capital market, which increased to five times its size, and the internal public debt became the central axis of rentier and patrimonial accumulation. In addition to this, public institutions acquired great prominence as lending entities and were largely responsible for the “bankarization” of broad low-income sectors with consequences in terms of increased consumption and the consolidation of consumerism (Medialdea García and Borges 2013; Palermo and Melamed de Menezes 2013; Mercadante and Zero 2018). In other words, the hegemony of the financial capital of the (neo)liberal period and the dynamics of accumulation based on its valorization were maintained. Finally, it should also be mentioned that the main dimension of precariousness of wage-earning relations (corporate strategies of outsourcing and subcontracting to reduce labor costs) was also not questioned despite the enactment of legislation in this regard. Only in the Uruguayan case did it have some effect (Notaro 2009). The Argentine case should be mentioned because there were different types of responses from the workers themselves; that is, there was resistance from the labor world (Ynoub 2012; Basualdo 2018). Therefore, there was continuity of the accumulation dynamics of the preceding period, but this did not imply that these governments reissued a (neo)liberal globalization with the undisputed protagonism of capital. Several points should be made in this regard. First, in all the cases considered, the State recovered vitality and emerged as the other major actor balancing the market. The bet of these governments was on an alliance between State and capital to confront globalization. However, given the political orientations of these governments, such an alliance proposal was always under suspicion by businessmen.9 In other words, the relationship between these two actors did not materialize in any of the six cases in strategic alliances, but was marked by tactical pragmatism and there was always a substratum of conflict that had disparate expressions among the cases considered. In this sense, the spectrum ranges from the Uruguayan to the Venezuelan case. Consequently, the impossibility of establishing strategic alliances implied, as Ellner (2019b) has rightly pointed out, 9  A key element underpinning this permanent suspicion was the redefinition of insertion in globalization, in regional terms, attempted by these governments: from the opposition to the strategy of the Free Trade Area of the Americas to the creation of new regional instances, such as the Union of South American Nations or the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States as a counterweight to the OAS, and the constitution of ALBA-TCP. These were actions that the dominant sectors did not celebrate, but rather opposed.

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that the relations of these governments with the dominant sectors would have been characterized by pragmatism. Second, although they ended up reproducing the prevailing dynamics of accumulation, this does not imply that there were no strategies of these governments to achieve a different insertion in globalization. The clearest example in this regard was the Strategy for the Change of the Productive Matrix of the Citizen Revolution that sought to displace exports originating in extractive processes for goods with higher value added to achieve an insertion in globalization based on bio-knowledge services along with tourism (Cypher and Alfaro 2016).10 The proposal of twentyfirst century Socialism in Venezuela could also be mentioned, but we believe that we are dealing with the formulation of principles and not so much of a strategy. In any case, if it existed, its application has proved disastrous in Venezuela. Third, there was an attempt to consolidate an alternative accumulation dynamic. In Argentina, with the weakening of financialization due to the termination of the convertibility regime, a great impulse was given to industry, which recovered. But such recovery was expressed only as reactivation and not as restructuring, which was the bet of Kirchnerism (Basualdo 2011; Porta et al. 2017). This process ended up with the emergence of the so-called “external restriction”, that is, the lack of foreign currency to maintain the pace of growth, which showed the inability of a business sector to develop accumulation strategies based on labor productivity and that accommodated, in different ways, to the prevalence of such “restriction” (Pucciarelli and Castellani 2017, Schorr and Wainer 2017; Wainer 2018). This is not a new problem because, in the region, there is an abundance of bourgeoisies with a voracity for profit, but there is a shortage of entrepreneurs with strategies to increase labor productivity. This would be one of the key features of Latin American capitalism.11 In the absence of this, they have resorted to land rent, external indebtedness, or remuneration of the labor force below its value (Jaccoud et  al. 2015). In this way, neo-extractivism, agribusiness, financialization, and the precarization of salaried relations are promoted; in other words, the dynamics of accumulation that sustain (neo)liberalism are consolidated. Accumulation opportunities tend to concentrate in what Castellani (2006) has called “privileged spheres of accumulation”.12 Thus, access to accumulation opportunities is restricted and limited to the capitals that maintain these privileged nexuses.13  However, this ambitious bet encountered two limits. On the one hand, local industrial companies, given their lack of capacity and productive scales, together with the advantages provided by state subsidies, opted for easy forms of import substitution without technological innovation. On the other hand, the bet on bio-knowledge was naïve because it is a central activity of global accumulation for which Ecuador did not present favorable conditions to attract firms of this nature (Purcell et al. 2016). 11  This assertion does not imply any praise for productivism or growth. 12  These are configured as a network made up of practices, actors, economic activities and normative regulations, which allow the generation and maintenance of various mechanisms for obtaining privileged quasi-rents that are appropriated by the private firms involved. 13  These areas did not disappear with these governments There is not the slightest doubt that cases of flagrant corruption can be pointed out (for each country names come to mind) that are neither 10

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Finally, it is necessary to take into account the proposal to open up opportunities for accumulation that was put forward in the Venezuelan, Bolivian, and Ecuadorian constitutional texts, in terms of a plural economy. The proposal was to structure the economy by overcoming the dichotomy between private enterprise and the State and incorporating the social and solidarity economy and the community economy. Unfortunately, in none of the three cases, this strategy was consolidated (Azzellini 2012; Vega Ugalde 2016; Wanderley 2016).14 However, in the Bolivian case, that limited accumulation opportunities did open up for smallholders in agriculture, mining, and import trade (Arbona et al. 2014; Poveda Ávila 2014; Colque et al. 2016). This is one of the most disappointing results, especially of the governments of the Bolivarian Revolution, MAS, and the Citizen Revolution, because this was the most unequivocal proposal to open opportunities for accumulation, democratizing property, and enabling the resignification of the generation and appropriation of surplus in a post-capitalist sense, prioritizing the reproduction of life, not only human life. These relations between dominant sectors and the State, marked by tactical pragmatism, were possible, while the globalization scenario was determined by the commodity boom. But once the bonanza was over, this tension had to be faced, and the response was particular in each case, but in all cases the asymmetry in favor of the elites prevailed. Thus, in Brazil, the PT government was unable to neutralize the (neo)liberal offensive and marginalized the neo-developmentalist strategy, confirming the hegemony of financial capital; in any case, this turnaround did not prevent the “soft” coup against Dilma Roussef. In Argentina, the famous Resolution 125 revived old conflicts, relocating Kirchnerism to positions more akin to the populist tradition of Peronism, which had electoral consequences. In Ecuador, the government of the Citizen Revolution had to take measures against middle sectors and elites; it won the elections in a narrow way, but the new president aligned himself with (neo)liberalism. The MAS turned towards an alliance with the Santa Cruz bourgeoisie, distancing itself from part of its social allies; however, this turn did not shield it against the coup d’état. In the Uruguayan case, the loss of dynamism of the economy was limiting the capacity of the Frente Amplio government, which was reflected in the electoral defeat of November 2019. And in Venezuela, the only current case, we must remember the 2002–2004 situation in which an attempt was made to remove new nor, unfortunately, will be the last. However, this does not imply that we are dealing with kleptocratic and corrupt governments given their “populist nature”, which is, in essence, the argument that supports such a judgment. It is not difficult to identify that behind this stigmatization lies the politicization of part of the judicial apparatus which, together with political sectors and big media, are part of this new right-wing coalition. The judicial persecution against Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the trial and imprisonment of Lula, the recent trial against Rafael Correa and the accusations of terrorism against Evo Morales are examples of this politicized justice that seeks to politically deactivate these leaders. Moreover, the followers of (neo)liberalism, with their double standards, have no authority to moralize. 14  In Argentina, it was subordinated to the centrality given to regulated salaried work because it represented only the bridge to access it.

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Chávez from power by all possible means: coup d’état, oil strike, and recall referendum. From that moment on, a situation of extreme antagonism was generated. Precisely, the commodities boom lowered the tension due to the great maneuvering capacity it gave the government, especially in terms of social actions. But once the oil bonanza was over, the country was plunged into a deep crisis fueled by a catastrophic standoff that confronted the hardliners of both the government and the opposition. History will eventually assign responsibilities in this regard.

Conclusions As mentioned in the introduction, an attempt will be made to give historical meanings to the three moments of equalization in Latin America. The term utopia would be the one that confers historical meaning to the first moment of attempts at equalization. The historical context, that of the wars of independence, was open, where the old colonial order was collapsing, and the new republican order was still in the making. This meant the irruption of subaltern actors in this conflict, and in this regard, the participation of the slave population must be highlighted. In fact, their progressive manumission is explained, to a large extent, by this protagonism. The emancipation of this population would be the greatest equalizing achievement of this first moment. Subsequently, with the establishment of an oligarchic order with the new republics, the Afro-descendant population, in most cases, was relegated to the margins of society and would have to begin a long march for recognition, as would the indigenous population. The opening of this historical context also allowed the presence of egalitarian ideas, of a radical nature, which competed with the conservative ones that expressed the persistence of the colonial vision, and with the liberal ones of the Creole elites who conceived freedom in a restricted way in order to ignore equality. Nevertheless, egalitarian ideas tried to be translated into action. In the Banda Oriental del Río de la Plata, Artigas carried out a land distribution that has been considered the first experience of agrarian reform in the region. It was not until the beginning of the twentieth century, with the Mexican Revolution of an agrarian nature, that this key issue in terms of equality was taken up again. Egalitarian ideas, influenced by the aspirations of the European revolutions of 1848, were also projected into the region’s political arena. In this regard, two examples stand out: that of the Equality Society in Chile and that of the artisans in New Granada. The latter achieved, through an alliance with a military sector, access to power for a few months in 1854. It is the only time that those from “below”, those contemptuously called “guaches”, were represented in a government of that country. As for the second moment, the one referred to what we have called the short Latin American twentieth century, the construction of the Nation would express—in our opinion—its historical significance, which had its antecedent in Uruguay with Batllismo. The project of national modernization required a certain horizon of equality, which was expressed in three ways.

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The first was to redefine the extreme inferiorization of the subaltern sectors, based on “scientific” racism, prevalent in the oligarchic order. Mestizaje projects, such as the paradigmatic cases of indigenism in Mexico and racial democracy in Brazil, did not imply recognition, but proposed assimilation in the processing of cultural and phenotypical differences. This assimilation was integration into the Nation under a homogenizing cultural logic. Second, there is no Nation without a certain type of citizenship. The latter was proposed through regulated employment, which in the literature of the region was described as formal, and which allowed access to social citizenship, materialized in health services and pension schemes. In this sense, the region followed a different route to citizenship than the classic Marshallian one, inspired by the British experience, and it was the social aspect that conferred citizenship on part of the subaltern sectors. And the third expression of the horizon of equality, which was articulated with the national, was state protagonism in terms of nationalization and agrarian reforms. In this way, on the one hand, the power of foreign capital was limited, especially in primary activities, in order to dispose of the surplus generated and redirect the income towards internal development; and, on the other hand, the peasantry was included in the Nation through its access to land, retaking the artiguist claim of the previous century. The agrarian reforms have probably represented the most radical attempt at equalization in the history of the region. Their results, with the exception of the Cuban case, speak of the difficulties of approaching the horizon of equality. And the third moment, the one analyzed in this text, unlike the previous one, did not take place in a situation of collapse of the existing social order. Although (neo) liberalism had already faced financial crises, its context of gestation—globalization—was still intact and expanding. In this sense, these governments did not consider a different option to globalization, but rather redefined their mode of insertion. They brought back the State to neutralize the most perverse effects of the market, especially in social terms. In this sense, the meaning we would give to this third moment would be that of globalization with (re)distribution. This is the meaning we have tried to specify in the preceding sections. The balance of the results of this third moment of equalization could be summarized as follows: these governments sought to empower subordinate sectors, but without disempowering the dominant sectors. What has been observed is that in each of these three moments there have been important attempts to reach the egalitarian horizon, but the achievements have been limited. Therefore, the real challenge should not be to make the next horizon as close as possible, but to consider changing the landscape. In other words, it is necessary to imagine a post-capitalist panorama so that the dynamics of egalitarianism become constituent processes of the social order.

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Chapter 3

The Impact of the Pandemic on Latin America: Social Setbacks and Rising Inequalities Gabriela Benza and Gabriel Kessler

Introduction Over the course of the twenty-first century thus far, Latin America has undergone a series of divergent processes. During the century’s first fifteen years, framed by persistent economic growth and the so-called “progressive cycle” in politics, the region tended towards the reduction of social exclusion: income levels rose for the most disadvantaged groups, poverty fell, State subsidization of health care and education expanded, and there were improvements in environmental and housing policies. While those trends certainly had their limits, this was a period where the overall quality of life improved for Latin Americans. In 2015, that process came to an end. Economic growth slowed considerably, and social indicators, especially poverty and income inequality, stopped improving in some countries, while, in others, they downright worsened. It was in this context that the Covid-19 pandemic reached Latin America in 2020. The region is one of the epicenters of this public health crisis and one of the hardest hit by the ensuing economic crisis. Against this backdrop, we also see significant social deterioration. In this paper, we analyze the social impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in Latin America. Based on a review of statistical data and empirical research, we examine

G. Benza National University of Tres de Febrero (UNTREF), Buenos Aires, Argentina e-mail: [email protected] G. Kessler (*) National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Buenos Aires, Argentina National University of La Plata (UNLP), La Plata, Argentina National University of San Martín (UNSAM), San Martín, Argentina e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Vommaro, P. Baisotti (eds.), Persistence and Emergencies of Inequalities in Latin America, Latin American Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90495-1_3

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what has happened in terms of health, the labor market, income, poverty, care work, and education since the beginning of the pandemic. The crisis is still underway and it is early for final balance sheets. Future scenarios will partially depend on the mitigation policies applied. What we do know, however, is that there has been a regression in many of the social indicators that had been gradually improving for decades. That raises the question of whether this short period has reversed the social gains achieved during the first fifteen years of the century, to which we might have to answer in the affirmative.

Setbacks in Health Care Since the pandemic’s beginning, regional institutions warned about the particular vulnerability of Latin America and the Caribbean to Covid-19. Structural discrimination, that is, service deficits caused by a lack of social investments over time in the territories populated by the most marginalized groups, like indigenous people, and the most peripheral areas of each country, have deprived their inhabitants of a fair access to health care. More generally, the growth of informal work, the inescapable need to commute to work—even when public transport does not meet adequate safety conditions—ongoing and existing health conditions and barriers to access to health care services have resulted in higher rates of infection and fatalities amongst marginalized, poor, and vulnerable people. Covid-19 has once more shone a light on the structural weaknesses of our health care systems. A study by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) PAHOECLAC (2020) provides an overview of the situation in the early days of the pandemic: public spending on health care, despite having increased during the first decade of the century, was still insufficient—an average of 3.7% of the GDP, well below the recommended threshold of 6%. Similarly, health care services were underfunded, segmented, and fragmented, and featured significant barriers to access for the poorest groups. Moreover, out-of-­pocket costs were high (34%), and for the most disadvantaged communities, they took up a relatively larger share of the budget. Almost 95,000,000 people had to face catastrophic health care-related expenses, that is, pay to treat conditions that could potentially unravel individual or family budgets, and in fact, 12,000,000 people became poorer by these expenses. The scarcity of qualified staff compounded that: across the region, there were 20 physicians for every 10,000 inhabitants and two hospital beds for every 1000 inhabitants, well below the rates in OECD countries (35 for every 10,000 and 4.8 for every 1000, respectively). Only a few months into the pandemic, it became evident that the concerns expressed in its early days had been well-founded. In an analysis of the first 90 days of the Covid-19 pandemic across 20 countries in the region, Acosta (2020) found the highest transmission velocity in Brazil, while the largest increase in crude death rates took place in Mexico. The study showed a link between case-fatality rates and

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a country’s population numbers, the fewer number of measures adopted, the higher levels of urban development, the quantity of inhabitants living on less than a dollar per day, the high prevalence of diabetes, and the comparatively low amount of hospital beds. For some countries, the historical deficiencies of their health care systems became manifest in the inability to treat every person affected by the virus: thus, these systems were quickly overwhelmed, as they lacked sufficient medical equipment and medications. The figures available document the havoc wreaked by the pandemic in Latin America and the Caribbean: according to data by the World Health Organization (WHO), by late May 2021, the number of deaths surpassed 1,000,000. The region showed excess mortality in numerical terms: though it makes up only 8.4% of the global population, it accounted for 31% of all deaths. What is the specific relevance of inequality and exclusion in connection with Covid-19? Firstly, they result in higher mortality rates for young and middle-aged adults compared with their peers from developed nations (PAHO/WHO 2020). In developing countries, people aged 20 to 39 (young adults) account for a percentage of Covid-related deaths, which is five points above that of their counterparts in high-­ income countries; for people between 40 and 50 (middle-aged adults), this difference reaches 23 points. A worldwide study (Chauvin et al. 2020), which includes some countries in the region, shows that these differences stem from housing conditions, such as overcrowding and deficient sanitation, as well as from serious health complications caused by Covid-19 and by limited access to intensive care services. Indeed, infection rates appear to be higher than in developed countries, and recovery rates are lower; therefore, the higher likelihood of complications might account for the difference between young adults in developing and developed countries, as well for half of that difference in the case of middle-aged people. However, inequality and exclusion also impact children in the region. Several studies have warned that, despite the low prevalence of the disease amongst minors, the current crisis could have a devastating effect in the short, medium, and long terms (Hincapié et  al. 2020). Roberton et  al. (2020) predict that, globally, child mortality might grow for the first time in 60 years, due to indirect consequences of the pandemic, in particular the status of children’s nutrition and the lack of access to basic health care services. This increase could range between 10% and 50% due to the rise of acute malnutrition (low weight for height), the dwindling availability of antibiotics—for pneumonia and neonatal sepsis—and oral rehydration solution—for diarrhea—and the failure to comply with vaccination calendars stipulated in several countries. We can expect these effects to be particularly severe in our region, given the considerable proportion of children living in poverty. Certain groups are particularly vulnerable to the disease. Some of them because of their occupation, namely, so-called “essential workers” and, most especially, health care workers, whose infection rates are very high in all countries. At the same time, historically marginalized groups in Latin America are also particularly vulnerable to infection (ECLAC, 2020a) and high case-fatality rates, as shown by research conducted in Mexico about districts with high numbers of indigenous population. There have also been warnings about the extreme vulnerability of the region’s prison population (Alvarado et  al. 2020). One and a half million people are

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incarcerated in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the region’s imprisonment rate has doubled since 2000: it rose 200%, compared with 24% in the rest of the world. Overpopulation has reached tragic levels, and living conditions in prisons are abysmal: 58% of inmates have no bed to sleep in, 20% lack access to safe water, only 37% have access to soap, and 29% receive no medical attention whatsoever. To make matters worse, prison populations are rife with infectious diseases: for example, the number of people living with HIV in Brazilian prisons is 138 times higher than outside of them, while for tuberculosis, the rate is 81 times higher. For this reason, during the pandemic, decongestion policies were applied to correctional facilities in Chile, Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico, among other countries. Covid-19 has damaged women’s health as well as their sexual and reproductive rights, with short- and medium-term effects. Indeed, lockdown measures and disruptions to the availability of contraceptive methods and family planning resources could result, in the medium term, in 2,200,000 pregnancies (especially teenage pregnancies), 1,000,000 abortions, and 3900 maternal deaths, which would amount to a 30-year regression in terms of sexual and reproductive rights (UNFPA 2020). In turn, Covid-19 deaths and social-spatial segregation are strongly correlated, as shown by Canales (2020) in the case of Santiago de Chile, one of the most segregated cities in the world. Specifically, he argues that if lower income neighborhoods had the same living conditions as median- or higher-income areas, they would have had 52% or 41% fewer deaths, respectively. Evidence unearthed by a national study about Mexico supports this conclusion (Hernández Bringas 2020). This research revealed that the districts with the highest infection and case-fatality rates were highly urbanized, indigenous, and poor. The same study demonstrated that municipalities with high concentration of citizens of indigenous descent showed the highest rates of infection and mortality across the board, even in areas of low population density. Another study about Mexico (Ortega Díaz et al. 2020) found that the districts most affected by housing vulnerabilities had higher infection rates; in the same vein, Ortiz-Hernández and Pérez-Sastré (2020) demonstrated that the most marginalized districts also have higher rates of severe complications: hospitalization, pneumonia, intubation, ICU admissions, and death. To put it plainly, Covid-19 has prompted a brutal reckoning with the inadequacies of our health care systems and how exclusion and inequalities inform the likelihood of becoming ill and dying across all age groups. Also, with the particularly vicious impact of those factors on historically marginalized groups such as the indigenous population and those who endure multiple disadvantages in their living spaces and bodies and have no choice but to work, even when it means putting their own lives at risk. Will there be a comprehensive questioning of health care institutions in the region? Tobar (2020) points out that these systems’ attempts to augment the availability of their resources—especially intensive care units (the majority of which are not used by Covid-19 patients)—increases running costs without questioning the prevailing procedures. Nevertheless, the same author claims that the crisis of our systems constitutes “an unprecedented opportunity to change the way we produce health.”

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Labor Degradation and Poverty The public health crisis unleashed a particularly intense economic crisis in the region. It is estimated that in 2020 the regional Gross Domestic Product (GDP) shrank by 8%, well above the projected global GDP decrease (an average of 4.4%) and that of developed nations as a whole (5.8%) (United Nations 2021). In this context, we have witnessed an erosion of the social gains achieved by Latin American nations during the first few years of the twenty-first century: the labor market deeply deteriorated, poverty and inequality increased, and the middle classes shrank. The International Labour Organization (ILO) (2020) estimates that, in 2020, the region regressed at least ten years in terms of the main labor indicators. The economic downturn resulted in an abrupt loss of jobs, which at the worst of the crisis— the second quarter of 2020—caused employment rates to drop by over ten points. These difficulties have also translated into suspensions, often without pay, and cuts to working hours, the latter phenomenon being particularly pronounced in Latin America. Given the restrictive context of the pandemic, many of those who lost their jobs did not actively search for new ones, but instead left the labor force, which was reflected, in public statistics, as a major drop in activity levels. For this reason, regional unemployment rates increased less than expected. Data by ECLAC-ILO (2020), which offers an average of figures from 14 countries, shows that in the second quarter of 2020, the peak of the crisis, employment rates and activity levels fell by an unprecedented 10.2 and 9.6 percentage points, respectively, compared with the same quarter of 2019. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate grew 2.7 points in the same period, and while it is comparatively low, this figure remains significant. It is estimated that the average unemployment rate for the whole of 2020 was 10.6%, the most significant leap observed since 2008 (ILO 2020). Job losses have been massive, but they have not affected all Latin Americans equally. The pandemic has intensified labor inequalities. As in other regions, the biggest losses have affected those activities which require intensive contact and which faced more restrictions due to preventive measures, such as commerce, hotels and restaurants, domestic work, and personal services in general. In contrast, the least-affected occupations have been those economic activities considered essential, especially those carried out through telecommuting. Nevertheless, although telecommuting has become quite widespread, it is not a viable alternative for most workers in the region. Indeed, due to the necessity of maintaining social distancing, the number of people who telecommute rose substantially, especially in countries like Chile (around 25%) or Uruguay (19%) (ILO 2020). In this way, we have witnessed the acceleration of processes of technological transformation which were already ongoing. Yet the odds of telecommuting in Latin American countries are lower than in developed nations. In occupational structures across the region, fewer jobs can be fulfilled virtually (i.e., professional, technical, and administrative roles). The relative importance of sectors where telecommuting is more viable, such as finance, business

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services, or professional services, is also lower. According to the most optimistic estimates, the percentage of occupations that might be fulfilled through telecommuting in Latin America is no higher than 31% to 33%, as in Argentina and Costa Rica, while in Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, it does not exceed 14% to 16% (Delaporte and Peña 2020). The negative impact of the crisis has also been quite strong amongst informal workers: unlike during previous economic crises, following the shock caused by Covid-19, the informal sector could not absorb those who lost their jobs. The odds of expanding telecommuting to this group are low due to the prevalence of activities that require close contact and, simultaneously, the widespread nature of occupational categories which shrank considerably, such as freelance work, domestic work, and unpaid family work. Additionally, while labor contracts allowed many formal workers and companies to preserve their working relationships, such resources were scarce in the informal sector (ILO 2020). Moreover, this is where disadvantages multiply: historically disadvantaged workers, those with lower education levels, indigenous workers, and those of African descent were the hardest hit by the crisis due to their high concentration in contact-intensive activities and within the informal sector. Women have also been especially affected by the crisis. Most of the women currently employed in the region work in the economic sectors that experienced the most significant downturns, making them more vulnerable to losing their jobs. We are witnessing a historic regression in women’s economic participation: it is estimated that approximately 12,000,000 Latin American women lost their jobs in 2020. The pandemic has also affected them more keenly as they amount to more than 70% of health care workers (ECLAC, 2020b), which has placed them in situations marked by higher levels of stress and more considerable health risks. Labor difficulties have resulted in the degradation of living conditions for large swathes of the population. ECLAC (2021) estimates that the percentage of people living in poverty went from 30.5% in 2019 to 33.7% in 2020. That is to say, 22,000,000 more people are considered poor compared to the previous year, which entails a 12-year regression in this respect. Extreme poverty, in turn, may have increased from 11.3% to 12.5%, which would mean 8,000,000 more people living in these conditions. Those projections consider the effects of the measures adopted by Latin American governments to mitigate the crisis, particularly cash transfers for families. It is estimated that, without these financial aid programs, poverty and extreme poverty would have been substantially higher in 2020, reaching 37.2% and 15.8% of Latin Americans, respectively. The other side of this increase in poverty is the contraction of the population with median income levels (Acevedo et  al. 2020a). If large swathes of the population joined the ranks of the so-called “new middle classes” during the post-neoliberal economic cycle, thanks to improvements in income levels and consumption, the pandemic might have triggered the opposite process, one of downward economic mobility. As in other crises, the accelerated nature of the impoverishment of the middle classes is linked to the marked vulnerability of many of their members, as their income barely surpasses the poverty line, and they work in the informal sector.

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Unlike in other crises, however, the biggest losses affected those working in the sectors which shrank the most during the pandemic, namely, contact-intensive activities. Given that the economic effects of the pandemic have not been homogeneous across the population, income inequality has also increased. ECLAC (2021) calculates a 2.9% increase in the Gini ratio between 2019 and 2020. Yet, if not for the cash transfers implemented by regional governments, that increase would have reached 5.9%. Relatedly, a central question revolves around the status of the most privileged social segments in the region. A study by Oxfam (2020) suggests that at least part of this social segment grew richer: according to that estimate between January and June 2020, the wealth of those with fortunes over 1000 million USD increased by 48,200 million USD (that is, 17%). Though they focus on a brief period and the crisis is still ongoing, these are remarkable findings. We still do not know the extent of heterogeneous trajectories within this social segment and whether or not we will observe internal reconfigurations.

Social Support Policies As mentioned by Blofield et  al. (2020), in the context of the pandemic, Latin American governments faced the challenge of compensating the losses experienced by very different groups: on the one hand, workers covered by social security systems; on the other hand, people included in non-contributory pension schemes and State-run financial aid programs; and finally, those who do not belong to either of those groups, self-employed workers in the informal sector and their dependents. To that end, governments broadened or reinforced existing policies, as well as implementing new responses. The ILO (2020) divides the policies deployed in the region into three groups. The first two are aimed at workers in the formal sector: measures meant to support formal working relationships (such as payroll subsidies) and provide economic security for those laid off in the formal sector (by extending unemployment insurance, whose coverage was previously scant or null in the region). The third set of policies involves measures meant to provide economic security to households and individuals with meager income or in the informal economy, especially through cash transfers and meal programs. Regarding that last set of policies, the transfer of income to the affected population was pervasive: according to data by ECLAC (2020c), by late April 2020, 25 out of 29 countries in the region had committed to deploying such measures. These financial aid strategies were built on existing cash transfer policies which were consolidated during the post-neoliberal period. For existing programs, payment dates were moved forward in hopes of guaranteeing greater liquidity in the short term, and the programs themselves were strengthened through an expansion of their monetary value and demographic coverage. Further, in some cases, new programs were created to reach groups previously excluded from welfare.

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The existence of a support network of directed cash transfers before the pandemic seems to have enabled the implementation of financial aid measures during the crisis at least in two ways. Firstly, because it meant that the necessary expertise and State capacities were already developed when the pandemic hit, despite notable differences between countries. Welfare policies were able to build on existing State-­ intervention devices, making it easier to reach the most disadvantaged social groups, already enrolled in social programs (World Bank 2020; ILO 2020). Secondly, these policies, which have been active for several years, are no longer a novelty in societal terms. Therefore, it was not necessary to launch a debate, both for the public agenda and political negotiations, about whether or not it was appropriate for governments to help those in dire circumstances through cash transfers, a policy for which a basic social consensus was reached at the beginning of the century. Nevertheless, relief policies had their limits. At least three major issues have been identified. Firstly, broadly speaking, there was a delay between public health decisions, activity restrictions, and social support measures. Through an analysis of data collected by the University of Oxford, Filgueira et al. (2020) found that the launch of financial aid policies in Latin American countries always (or almost always) followed the implementation of epidemiological measures. That reflects the limitations of the region’s support systems, in contrast to what was observed in European countries, whose social security systems have automatic stabilizers, which were activated as soon as the epidemiological disruption appeared. Secondly, the implementation of these policies was flawed. When it came to executing them, obstacles arose from mobility restrictions and the need for social distancing, and it was challenging to expand these measures to other groups affected by the crisis beyond those already addressed by State-intervention devices. To varying degrees, governments in the region showed limitations in their technological and logistical capabilities to provide these economic benefits and found it difficult to identify new beneficiaries due to deficient record-keeping. Moreover, in some countries, the population’s limited access to banking services hampered the delivery of these cash transfers and increased public health risks. In Latin America, only 40% of the population has a bank account (compared to over 90% in OECD countries), and amongst those with lower income levels, that percentage is even smaller (Busso and Messina 2020). Consequently, in many cases, these allocated payments took a long time to reach their targets, especially those aimed at groups outside the formal sector, which were not already included in State programs (Blofield et al. 2020). Additionally, there have been warnings that the measures implemented were fragmentary and insufficient. On the one hand, the monetary value and coverage of these additional financial aid strategies varied significantly between countries. The number of payments involved differed as well: most countries stipulated one-time transfers, while a select few chose to add more as the pandemic stretched. In the latter group, we can highlight Brazil, Chile, and Colombia, each committed to making four or more payments (Rubio et al. 2020). These differences from country to country appear to not correlate with the political orientation of their national governments. On the subject of income transfers, Mexico made early payments to

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people already receiving non-contributory pensions, but did not increase their amounts or coverage, nor were new programs created. Brazil, whose national government was fiercely reluctant to acknowledge the gravity of the pandemic, implemented an emergency welfare program with an inclusive threshold, targeting both beneficiaries of the existing cash transfer program (Bolsa Familia, or Family Bursary) and new beneficiaries from informally employed households. A central question is whether or not State aid has reached those who bore the brunt of the crisis. Evidence shows that, overall, some groups may have received deficient coverage. For example, this is the case of newly arrived migrants or those with irregular status, a very vulnerable group excluded from official financial aid programs. Additionally, State funding seems to have been limited for self-employed and informal salaried workers with medium income levels, who, before the pandemic, were not considered poor enough to merit welfare, but who have also been hit hard by the crisis. According to Busso et al.’s (2020) estimates for ten Latin American countries, welfare policies effectively targeted the poorest households—the first income quintile—but its impact on households contained in the second and third quintiles may have been much smaller. In the first quintile, potential coverage spanned 88% of households on average, while in some cases, such as Brazil and Peru, it reached 100%. Lustig et al. (2020) also warned about the limitations of support networks in aiding middle-class households whose income has decreased. According to this view, social policies have had a significant compensatory effect in some countries, though restricted to the most vulnerable groups: the communities with the lowest income, women, and in Brazil’s case, also people of indigenous or African descent. The sharp focus of State aid on the most disadvantaged social groups is a welcome insight, given the circumstances. These sectors are lacking not just in economic terms but because they experience deprivation in various ways. In particular, their ability to face and recover from the pandemic’s costs is limited compared to other groups (Lustig and Tommasi 2020). Furthermore, they have fewer resources to meet their basic needs during a crisis, such as savings or access to formal credit. According to an Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) survey conducted in 17 countries in the region during the pandemic, only one in every five people with low income reported having enough food or resources to meet their needs for one week (Bottan et al. 2020). In this context, there is a very significant risk of resorting to actions that prove highly costly in the medium and long terms, such as taking out loans from informal moneylenders at extremely high interest rates or even cutting back on food intake. Thus, even though aid strategies adequately targeted the most disadvantaged groups, their lack of regularity, framed by a drawn-out crisis, generates uncertainty and threatens to intensify the already stark deficits in their quality of life. Furthermore, while the affected segments of the middle classes have more resources to face the crisis, they are at risk of both losing their current social status and being unable to recover in the medium and long terms, given the magnitude of the economic shock and the limited or non-existent nature of State aid in their case.

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Increasingly Familiarized Care Work The pandemic intensified the high familiarization of care work that already characterized the region. The suspension of on-site school lessons, the need to support at-­ risk individuals, and the limited ability to resort to paid domestic workers or get help from relatives living elsewhere increased the amount of care work performed by families and transformed the family home into the main physical space where those activities occur (Arza 2020). However, the additional workload and the conditions needed to face these new circumstances adequately are not the same for everyone. These difficulties are felt more keenly in low-income households, whose care demands are higher due to the presence of numerous children, insufficient physical space, and the inability to meet the conditions required to guarantee basic levels of well-being (Batthyány and Sánchez 2020). That is also the case for single-parent households, headed mainly by women who must fulfill the role of economic provider as well as caring for the children, and households with older adults, due to the support they require to perform even the most basic tasks and the need to minimize the risk of infection. Insofar as women generally perform care work, a key question arises: how is the growing familiarization of care work impacting the division of labor along gender lines within households? On average, before the pandemic, Latin American women spent approximately three times more time than men working in the home (37.9 h/ week versus 12.7 h/week, respectively). Is the additional care work generated by the pandemic distributed equally among men and women, or are we witnessing a reinforcement of inequality? Evidence is still scarce, but a survey conducted in Argentina shows that women disproportionately took on this extra workload (Unicef 2020a). Data from Uruguay, however, suggests that these effects may vary according to class: highly educated men increased their participation in care work by more than proportional levels, which diminished the gender gap, whereas in communities with low education levels, the gender gap grew because women absorbed all the new demands for care work (UN Women-UNICEF 2020). Beyond the short term, it is unclear what will happen to the labor division along gender lines once the pandemic ends. Some specialists believe that having spent more time with their sons and daughters might encourage many fathers to become more involved in care work in the future, which may, in turn, accelerate the transformation of traditional gender roles. Nonetheless, others have warned that the increase in care work performed by women is overlapping with the expulsion of many women from the labor market as a result of the economic crisis, which might lead to a regression due to the reinforcement of traditional gender roles (Hill and Narayan 2020). In all likelihood, results will differ from country to country and among social segments, and the overall balance for the region remains to be seen. Another question revolves around care policies. The debate about care work and its public revaluing, whose relevance has been growing in Latin America since the beginning of this century, became even more central during the pandemic. In this context, some countries took steps linked to social care. Transit restrictions were

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updated with exceptions for care work, governments campaigned for an equal division of unpaid work between men and women, and in some cases, new types of leave and furlough were adopted so that both mothers and fathers could look after their children (UN Women-ECLAC, 2020). Still, measures across the region have been limited. The question remains: does the greater relevance of care today herald a future where public policies will adjust to respond to these issues?

Rising Educational Inequalities Unicef (2020b) estimates that 97% of Latin American and Caribbean students were deprived of their usual education by Covid-19. By November 2020, approximately 137,000,000 students were still unable to attend lessons in person. Indeed, shortly after the pandemic officially began, many countries in the region decreed the closure of educational institutions and initiated remote-learning programs: data shows that by July 2020, 32 countries had already suspended on-site lessons, and 29 had done so at the national level (ECLAC-UNESCO, 2020). Organizing the swift transition to remote learning was far from simple. As expected, there were differences from the get-go between countries and social groups, linked to the policies adopted, the circumstances of each household, connectivity and previous educational investment in digital learning platforms, and policies to allot computers to students and train teachers, among other factors. According to the projections, the impact on education will stem from at least four causes. Firstly, the rise in school dropout rates and the regression in terms of educational inclusion; secondly, increasing fragmentation and uneven educational quality; thirdly, the failure to attend lessons in person, which could have a “scarring” effect on the educational performance and future job opportunities of children and adolescents from the most vulnerable sectors; and finally, the intellectual, organizational, and financial challenges of launching a mode of instruction suited to the epidemiological environment triggered by Covid-19, which will presumably last for a considerable amount of time. Reports by UNICEF and other organizations show that the groups most affected by educational disruptions are people living in poverty, migrants, refugees, people living with physical or cognitive disabilities, and young girls. Previous inequalities have conditioned the ability to access remote instruction. According to UNICEF’s (2020b) calculations, while three-quarters of children and adolescents attending private institutions had access to online learning, this ratio dropped to 50% for students enrolled in public institutions. Connectivity thus proved to be an “intermediary right” needed to access education. Based on data from the ten countries in the region which participated in the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests, Rieble-Aubourg and Viteri (2020) showed that in the most vulnerable households (contained within the bottom income quintile), only 29% of students had access to a computer with which to complete their schoolwork, while in the households of the highest quintile that percentage rose to 94%. However, those

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figures varied widely between countries. In contrast, the percentages ranged from 99% to 89% for OECD countries between the wealthiest and poorest, respectively. Very young children are particularly affected by low connectivity: based on data collected in ten countries, ECLAC (2020d) estimates that 46% of children aged 5–12 live in households with no Internet access, a ratio which climbs to almost 90% in Bolivia, Peru, and El Salvador. Moreover, for low-income families, the larger number of children living in the same home necessitates the existence of more than one device so that they can all study simultaneously. To this, we can add overcrowding, which hampers homeschooling; the fact that parents from working-class backgrounds are less qualified to assist their children with remote learning; and the concentration of the best-trained teachers in the wealthiest areas of each country (Messina and García 2020). To summarize, given the accumulation of previous disadvantages, we can foresee a highly negative fallout and future repercussions for the most marginalized children. At this unexpected juncture, education systems had to contend with three major challenges. Firstly, the curricula and course contents had to be adapted to remote learning and the specific circumstances experienced in the home. Secondly, assessment methods had to be adjusted; and thirdly, teachers’ ability to undertake remote instruction had to be standardized, since, according to Rieble-Aubourg and Viteri (2020), only 60% of them were prepared for online teaching, with profound differences between and within countries in this respect. With regards to the consequences of partial or total school closures for children and adolescents, there are concerns about the damage caused by the lack of peer interaction and its effects on mental health and communication skills, as well as schools’ inability to monitor children for symptoms of abuse or violence. Prior to the pandemic, it was estimated that in the region, 100,000,000 children and adolescents aged 2–17 had either witnessed or been exposed to various forms of violence, and previous evidence suggests that these rates increase in a context of confinement (ECLAC-UNICEF, 2020; UNICEF 2020c). Furthermore, young girls and women have taken on an overwhelming amount of domestic work, and there are fears that their continued stay in the home may translate into higher teenage pregnancy rates. As for the repercussions of the pandemic, there are projections about the impact on educational exclusion and students’ future employment. Regarding the first aspect, Acevedo et al. (2020b) estimate that at least 1,200,000 children and young people could be left out of education systems due to the pandemic, adding to the 7,700,000 who already failed to attend school regularly. Exclusion might be particularly harsh in Central American countries, for the most impoverished communities and young people of secondary-school age: it is calculated that 811,000 adolescents aged 15 to 17, 280,000 pre-teens aged 12 to 14, and 100,000 children aged 6–11 will drop out of school. In relative terms, the most significant increase will occur in the 15-to-17 age group (17%). If these predictions prove true, some of the most significant educational achievements of our times will be undone. This study estimates that the pandemic will entail a 67% regression concerning the gains made in mitigating educational exclusion in the twenty-first century. According to data by the Education Division of the Inter-American Development Bank in 2010, 24% of

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young people between the ages of 15 and 17 did not go to school; by 2019, that percentage had dropped to 19%, and it was projected to reach 18% in 2020. Due to the pandemic, that rate is expected to rise to 22%; the figure for 2012 is equivalent to having lost a whole decade in terms of educational inclusion. Similarly, Neidhöfer et  al. (2020) attempted to project the long-term consequences of school closures for 18 Latin American countries and exposed the negative impact of this phenomenon on students’ likelihood of completing secondary school, which may fall by 20% for low-income households. Without measures aimed at lessening the impact, there would be a regression in intergenerational educational mobility, which had been increasing for decades, particularly in Bolivia, Peru, and Mexico. The negative influence of absenteeism extends beyond the learning outcomes of a particular school year to future academic terms. Projections are based on previous evidence from research about educational losses caused by regular holidays, school closures (due to hurricanes, teachers’ strikes, and other factors), and prolonged absenteeism. Based on data from the 2018 PISA test regarding the correlation between scores obtained and absences in previous weeks, it is estimated that missing 5 days of school during the 2 weeks leading up to the test was equivalent to losing 1 year of schooling (Psacharopoulos et al. 2020). Furthermore, Acevedo et al. (2020a, b) point out that, due to the economic and educational crisis in Latin America and the Caribbean, 2,700,000 young people aged 18–23 might join the 12,900,000 people already left out of education and employment before the pandemic (a 21% rise); some of the worst affected countries in this scenario would be Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru. In what has been termed a “scarring” effect, it is also expected that, on average, young people excluded from education and employment as a result of the crisis could lose approximately 6.1% of their salaried income over the next twenty years. Azevedo et al. (2020) have calculated that school closures in the region could cost these countries 1,200,000,000,000 USD due to the revenue lost as a result of educational disruptions, which amounts to 20% of total investment in elementary education.

Conclusions The consequences of Covid-19 for the future lives of Latin Americans remain unknown. To a large degree, the pandemic’s impact will depend on its duration and the extenuating policies put in place. However, as we have pointed out in this article, Latin American societies have already been affected to such an extent that we can foresee social regressions in several aspects and an increase in inequalities. Indeed, living conditions have generally deteriorated, and previous progress in health, income, employment quality, and education has been reversed. The severity of the pandemic in our region is primarily due to its structural inequalities, which are being simultaneously reinforced. The setbacks observed in the fight against exclusion and inequality and indicators of health, education, and sexual and reproductive

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rights, among others, underscore how difficult it is for Latin American countries to improve their population’s well-being and how fast these gains can be lost. Incidentally, the first few months of the pandemic were a time of almost worldwide intellectual effervescence, in which Latin America participated. In the region, the weight of inequalities not foregrounded in normal times, such as connectivity, gained plenty of visibility. Moreover, multiple conversations arose about the correlation between economy and health, recognizing the value of essential workers, care, old age, and intergenerational relationships. We saw the governments in the region embody a clear mandate that no citizen should be left without income. Also, the suitability of creating a universal income, establishing extraordinary taxes for the wealthiest individuals, and visualizing healthier and more sustainable forms of urban life were discussed, at least for a time. It remains to be seen which of these issues will be translated into new goals and which will be forgotten, at least for some time, until their potential reactivation. History teaches that, once epidemics come to an end, societies tend to quickly turn over a new leaf in an attempt to restore normality. However, we also know that each historical event is unique and can never be repeated. Contemporary societies on a global scale are much more insightful and politically active than they were in the past, which doubtless breeds a time of uncertainty and a new opportunity to act with courage and political imagination.

References Acevedo, I., F. Castellani, I. Flores, G. Lotti, and M. Székely. 2020a. Implicaciones sociales del Covid-19: Estimaciones y alternativas para América Latina y el Caribe. In Documento para la discusión N° IDB-DP-820. Washington: IADB.  Retrieved from https://publications.iadb. org/es/implicaciones-­sociales-­del-­covid-­19-­estimaciones-­y-­alternativas-­para-­america-­latina-­ y-­el-­caribe. Acevedo, I., E. Castro, R. Fernández, I. Flores, M. Pérez-Alfaro, M. Székely, P. Zoido, 2020b. Una década perdida? Los costos educativos de la crisis sanitaria en América Latina y el Caribe. In Hablemos de Política Educativa. Washington: IADB. Retrieved from https://publications. iadb.org/publications/spanish/document/Hablemos-­de-­Politica-­Educativa-­3-­Una-­decada-­ perdida%2D%2DLos-­costos-­educativos-­de-­la-­crisis-­sanitaria-­en-­America-­Latina-­y-­el-­Caribe.pdf Acosta, L.D. 2020. Capacidad de respuesta frente a la pandemia de COVID-19 en América Latina y el Caribe. Revista Panamericana de Salud Pública 44: e109. https://doi.org/10.26633/ RPSP.2020.109. Alvarado, N., K. Villa Mar, M.J. Jarquin, B. Cedillo, and D. Forero. 2020. Las cárceles en América Latina y el Caribe ante la crisis sanitaria del COVID-19. Washington: IADB. Arza, C. 2020. Familias, cuidado y desigualdad. In Cuidados y mujeres en tiempos de COVID-19: la experiencia en la Argentina. Santiago de Chile: ECLAC. Azevedo, J.I., A. Hasan, D. Goldemberg, S.A. Iqbal, and K. Geven. 2020. Simulating the potential impacts of Covid-19 school closures on schooling and learning outcomes: A set of global estimates. Washington: World Bank. Retrieved from http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/ en/798061592482682799/covid-­and-­education-­June17-­r6.pdf. Batthyány, K., and A. Sánchez. 2020. Profundización de las brechas de desigualdad por razones de género: el impacto de la pandemia en los cuidados, el mercado de trabajo y la violencia en América Latina y el Caribe. Astrolabio 25: 1–21.

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Blofield, M., C. Giambruno and F. Filgueira, 2020. Policy expansion in compressed time: assessing the speed, breadth and sufficiency of post-COVID-19 social protection measures in 10 Latin American countries. Social Policy series, 235. Bottan, N., B. Hoffmann, and D. Vera-Cossío. 2020. La desigual carga de la pandemia. Por qué las consecuencias de la COVID-19 afectan más a los pobres. Washington: IADB. Busso, M., J.  Camacho, J.  Messina, G.  Montenegro, 2020. Social Protection and Informality in Latin America during the COVID-19 Pandemic. In IDB Working Paper, Series 1171. Retrieved from https://publications.iadb.org/en/ social-­protection-­and-­informality-­latin-­america-­during-­covid-­19-­pandemic Busso, M., and J. Messina, eds. 2020. La crisis de la desigualdad: América Latina y el Caribe en la encrucijada. Washington: IADB. Canales, A. 2020. La desigualdad social frente al COVID-19 en el Área Metropolitana de Santiago (Chile). Notas de Población 111: 13–42. ECLAC. 2020a. El impacto del COVID-19 en los pueblos indígenas de América Latina-Abya Yala: entre la invisibilización y la resistencia colectiva. In Documentos de Proyectos. Santiago de Chile: ECLAC. ECLAC. 2020b. Balance Preliminar de las Economías de América Latina y el Caribe, 2020. Santiago de Chile: ECLAC. ECLAC 2020c. El desafío social en tiempos del COVID-19. Informe especial Covid-19 No.:3. Retrieved from https://repositorio.CEPAL.org/bitstream/handle/11362/45527/5/ S2000325_es.pdf ECLAC 2020d. Universalizar el acceso a tecnologías digitales para enfrentar los efectos del COVID-19. Informe Especial COVID19. Retrieved from https://www.CEPAL.org/es/ ECLAC. 2021. Panorama social de América Latina. Santiago de Chile: ECLAC. ECLAC-ILO 2020. Coyuntura laboral en América Latina y el Caribe. In La dinámica laboral en una crisis de características inéditas: desafíos de política. Santiago de Chile: ECLAC. ECLAC-UNESCO 2020. Sistematización de respuestas de los sistemas educativos de América Latina a la crisis de la Covid-19. Retrieved from https://www.siteal.iiep.unesco.org/ respuestas_educativas_covid_19 ECLAC-UNICEF 2020. Violencia contra niñas, niños y adolescentes en tiempos del covid-19. Retrieved from https://www.unicef.org/lac/informes/ violencia-contra-ninas-ninos-y-adolescentes-en-tiempos-de-covid-19 Chauvin, J. P., A. Fowler, N.L. Herrera, 2020. The younger age profile of COVID-19 deaths in developing countries. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.18235/0002879. Delaporte, I., and W. Peña. 2020. Working from home under COVID-19: Who is affected? Evidence from Latin American and Caribbean countries. CEPR COVID Economics 14. Retrieved from https://ssrn.com/abstract=3610885. Filgueira, F., L.M. Galindo, C. Giambruno, and M. Blofield. 2020. América Latina ante la crisis del COVID-19: vulnerabilidad socioeconómica y respuesta social. Serie Políticas Sociales 238. Hernández Bringas, H. 2020. COVID-19 en México: un perfil sociodemográfico. Notas de Población 111: 105–132. Hill, R., and A. Narayan. 2020. Covid-19 and inequality: A review of the evidence on likely impact and policy options. In Documento de trabajo. London: Centre for Disaster Protection. Hincapié, D., F. López Boo, and M. Rubio-Codina. 2020. El alto costo del COVID-19 para los niños. Estrategias para mitigar su impacto en América Latina y el Caribe. In Documento para la Discusión N° IDB-DP-00782. Washington: IADB. ILO. 2020. Panorama Laboral 2020. América Latina y el Caribe. Lima: ILO (Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean). Lustig, N., V.  Martinez Pabon, F.  Sanz and S.  Younger, 2020. The impact of COVID-19 lockdowns and expanded social assistance on inequality, poverty and mobility in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. CEQ Working Paper, 92. Lustig, N. and M. Tommasi, 2020. El COVID-19 y la protección social de los grupos pobres y vulnerables en América Latina.

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Messina, D. and L.  García, 2020. Estudio diagnóstico sobre docentes en América Latina y el Caribe. Neidhöfer, G., N.  Lustig, and M.  Tommasi. 2020. Intergenerational transmission of lockdown consequences: Prognosis of the longer-run persistence of covid-19  in Latin America. CEQ Documento de trabajo 99. Retrieved from http://repec.tulane.edu/RePEc/ceq/ceq99.pdf. Ortega Díaz, A., C. Armenta Menchaca, H. García López, and J. García Viera. 2020. Índice de vulnerabilidad en la infraestructura de la vivienda ante el COVID-19 en México. Notas de Población 111: 155–188. Ortiz-Hernández, L., and M.A.  Pérez-Sastré. 2020. Inequidades sociales en la progresión de la COVID-19 en población mexicana. Revista Panamericana de Salud Pública 44. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.26633/RPSP.2020.106. Oxfam 2020. ¿Quién paga la cuenta? Gravar la riqueza para enfrentar la crisis de la COVID-19 en América Latina y el Caribe. Retrieved from https://www.oxfam.org/es/informes/ quien-­paga-­la-­cuenta-­gravar-­la-­riqueza-­para-­enfrentar-­la-­crisis-­de-­la-­covid-­19-­en-­america PAHO/WHO. 2020. ¿Por qué los adultos jóvenes y de mediana edad representan una mayor proporción de muertes por COVID-19 en los países en desarrollo? Perspectivas de investigación, 26. Washington: PAHO. PAHO-ECLAC. 2020. Salud y Economía. Una convergencia necesaria para enfrentar el COVID-19 y retomar la senda hacia el desarrollo sostenible en América Latina y el Caribe. Washington/Santiago: PAHO-ECLAC. Psacharopoulos, G., V. Collis, H.A. Patrinos, and E. Vegas, 2020. Lost Wages: The COVID-19 Cost of School Closures. Social Science Research Network (SSRN Scholarly Paper ID 3601422). Retrieved from https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=3601422 Rieble-Aubourg, S., and A. Viteri. 2020. Educación más allá del covid19. In Hablemos de política educativa. Washington: IADB. Retrieved from https://publications.iadb.org/publications/spanish/document/Hablemos-­de-­politica-­educativa-­en-­America-­Latina-­y-­el-­Caribe-­1-­Educacion-­ mas-­alla-­del-­COVID-­19.pdf. Roberton, T., Carter, E.D., Chou, V.B., Stegmuller, A.R., Jackson, B.D., Tam, Y., Sawadogo-Lewis, T., Walker, N., 2020. Early estimates of the indirect effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on maternal and child mortality in low-income and middle-income countries: A modelling study. The Lancet, 8, (7), pp. 901–908. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-­109X(20)30229-­1 Rubio, M., G.  Escaroz, A.  Machado, N.  Palomo, L.  Vargas, and M.  Cuervo. 2020. Protección social y respuesta al COVID-19 en América Latina y el Caribe. Nota técnica III: Seguridad Social y mercado laboral. Tobar, F. 2020. Por un New Deal sanitario. Propuestas para la pospandemia. Nueva Sociedad.. Retrieved from https://nuso.org/articulo/new-­deal-­salud/. UN Women-ECLAC. 2020. Cuidados en América Latina y el Caribe en tiempos de COVID-19. Hacia sistemas integrales para fortalecer la respuesta y la recuperación. Santiago de Chile: UN Women-ECLAC.  Retrieved from https://repositorio.CEPAL.org/bitstream/ handle/11362/45916/190829_es.pdf. UN Women-UNICEF. 2020. Principales resultados de la Encuesta sobre niñez, género y uso del tiempo en el marco de la emergencia sanitaria. Uruguay. Montevideo: UN Women-­ UNICEF.  Retrieved from https://lac.unwomen.org/es/digiteca/publicaciones/2020/06/ encuesta-ninez-genero-y-uso-de-tiempo-uruguay#view. UNFPA. 2020. El impacto de COVID-19 en el acceso a los anticonceptivos en América Latina y el Caribe. Informe Técnico. New York: UNFPA. UNICEF. 2020a. Encuesta de Percepción y Actitudes de la Población. Impacto de la pandemia COVID-19 y las medidas adoptadas por el gobierno sobre la vida cotidiana. Informe de resultados. Buenos Aires: UNICEF. ———. 2020b. La educación en pausa. Una generación de niñas y niños en América Latina y el Caribe está perdiendo la escolarización debido al Covid19. Panama: UNICEF. Retrieved from https://www.unicef.org/lac/educacionenpausa.

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———. 2020c. Protecting children from violence in the time of Covid19. New  York: UNICEF.  Retrieved from https://www.unicef.org/media/74146/file/Protecting-­children-­from-­ violence-­in-­the-­time-­of-­covid-­19.pdf. United Nations. 2021. World economic situation prospects. New York: United Nations. World Bank. 2020. Poverty and shared prosperity 2020: Reversals of fortune. Washington: World Bank.

Chapter 4

Past and Present of Higher Education in Latin America and Europe: The Impact of Neoliberal Modernization Pablo Baisotti and José Antonio Pineda-Alfonso

Introduction From the 1950s onwards, Latin American education systems entered a process of massification accompanied by a process of differentiation through specialization of functions that has been extended to the present day. Between 1950 and 1970, the number of universities in Latin America grew from 75 to 139, reaching 500 in the 1990s with six million students (17% school enrolment rate) (Krotsch and Suasnábar 2002: 9; Alexander and Davis 1993; García Guadilla 1996). Despite this growth, during the 1980s and 1990s, and as a result of structural economic adjustment programs that operated in many underdeveloped countries, education in Latin America remained on the periphery of the most advanced international research centers (Levy 1986; Albornoz 1993; Courard 1993; Altbach 1996; Brunner 1999; Neave and van Vught 1994; Espinoza 2002; Schwartzman 1993). At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the pro-market discourse weakened and this allowed civil society organizations to influence the regional educational debate with greater emphasis (Trow 1996; Torres and Schugurensky 2002). Some authors identified factors that explain the growing interest in higher education, such as the fight against social injustices and inequalities and the phenomenon of globalization and post-­ globalization (Osler and Starskey 2006; Bolívar 2016; Dill 2005; Duderstadt 2005; Marginson 2004; Scott 1998). At least two factors could be associated with the expansion of higher education systems: (a) the increasing complexity of P. Baisotti (*) Department of Latin American Studies, University of Brasília, Brasilia, Brazil Institute of Iberian and Ibero-American Studies, Warsaw University, Buenos Aires, Argentina J. A. Pineda-Alfonso University of Seville, Seville, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Vommaro, P. Baisotti (eds.), Persistence and Emergencies of Inequalities in Latin America, Latin American Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90495-1_4

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contemporary societies and economies that have been continuously demanding highly qualified personnel (Espinoza 2000; World Bank 2002); (b) the efforts made by elite groups linked to the state apparatus, through initiatives such as the strengthening of student aid programs, to absorb young people who might otherwise be on the streets (Espinoza and González Fiegehen 2007). This research will carry out a comparative study of the evolution of higher education in Latin America and Europe, taking Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Spain as cases of analysis. The objective of this comparative analysis is to define to what extent these countries have advanced in access to higher education for new population groups, and what challenges are posed in the present and in the future to maintain and consolidate equal opportunities.

 ducational Policy Developments in Argentina, Brazil E and Chile During the years of the national organization in the late nineteenth century, the government of Argentina enacted in 1884 the law 1420 of common education that established the secular, free and compulsory character of basic education. By then, only two universities existed at that time, Buenos Aires and Córdoba. In 1886, the project was sanctioned in the Argentine Congress to regulate universities. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the profile and characteristics of the education system generated dissatisfaction in society that considered it elitist and exclusionary. Students in Córdoba questioned the legitimacy of obsolete authorities and regulations. Finally, a new statute came into force, democratizing the university government. The tensions that this situation generated in the Cordoba University would give rise to one of the most relevant movements of university transformation in the history of higher education institutions in Latin America: the University Reform of 1918. This had an influence on the other four Argentine universities and was decisive even in the nationalization of Santa Fe University (converted in 1919 into the University Nacional del Litoral) and Tucumán University (1921). Reforms advanced in internal democratization by incorporating student participation. During the first and second governments of Juan Perón (1946–1955) university policy defined as a priority that the university should be placed at the service of political, social and economic transformations in the country. It facilitated the incorporation of the popular and working-class sectors into the university, technical training and the orientation of the university to social issues and attention to national problems. The decree law 6403 of 1955 enabled the creation of private universities, regulated during the democratic government of Arturo Frondizi (1958–1962). One of the reasons for this was the interest of the university leadership and the Catholic Church

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(Buchbinder and Marquina 2008: 48).1 During the dictatorships of 1966–1973 a plan was devised and implemented for the creation of new universities “Plan Taquini”. The universities proposed for creation had to be located in the different regions of the country, in medium-sized cities or provincial capitals where there was no other national university. One of the plan’s objectives was to decentralize the concentration of student population in the large universities. With the democratic recovery from 1983 onwards, autonomy and university co-government were once again obtained, while at the same time there was a significant increase in enrolment (Buchbinder and Marquina 2008: 14–15; Perez Lindo 1985).2 Law No. 23,068 of 1984 established the standardization of national universities and the implementation of existing university statutes until 1966 (Buchbinder and Marquina 2008: 24). In the 1990s, two fundamental milestones took place: the creation of the Secretariat of University Policies3 in 1993 and the adoption of Law 24,521 on Higher Education in 1995. The latter was a legal device that regulated the entire educational system (Buchbinder and Marquina 2008: 31, 37–38; Pérez Rasetti 2014: 10; Buchbinder 2005; Fanelli 2000; Marquina et al. 2009). In the case of Brazil, President Getúlio Vargas (1930–1945) created the Ministry of Education and Health, which approved the statute of Brazilian universities that prevailed until 1961 and which provided that the University could be public (federal, state or municipal) or private and had to include at least three of the following courses: law, medicine, engineering, education, science and literature. These universities maintained their legal autonomy. Twenty-two federal public universities and nine religious universities emerged in the period 1945–1964 (Sampaio 2000: 70–71; Durham 2005). With the transfer of the national capital from Rio de Janeiro to Brasilia, the University of Brasilia was created in 1961. Its main objectives were the development of a national culture and technology linked to the development project. That year, law 4024 was enacted, the first law with guidelines that laid the foundations of Brazilian education by strengthening the traditional model of higher education institutions. With the arrival of the military in power in 1964, universities became the object of direct interference from the federal government, and four years later there was an expansion of the private sector (Campos Oliven 2002; Texeira 1989: 3–6; Pereira Dos Santos and Cerqueira 2009: 4; Saviani 2010: 9). The university reform law 5540 of 1968 tried to respond to two contradictory demands: on the one hand, university autonomy and more resources to develop research, creating a postgraduate system similar to that used in the United States. Many faculties and

1  In the 1960s, an important group of institutions emerged, organized by private individuals, corporate corporations or foundations of a different nature. In 1960, the University of Morón was created; in 1962, the University Argentina de la Empresa; in 1964, the University John F. Kennedy and the University of Belgrano; in 1967, the University of the Merchant Navy. 2  In 1945: 47,000 university students; 1955: 138,000; during the 1960s: 159,000 to 235,000; 1973: 333,000; 1976: 518,000. At that time, 90% of them were concentrated in the public system. 3  Until then, the government’s treatment of the university issue had been carried out organically through a National Directorate of University Affairs, responsible for the official recognition and approval of degrees.

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departments were also introduced, course credits were allocated and teaching and research were combined. On the other hand, there is the desire of groups linked to the regime to introduce market logic and a political project of modernization into education. In the 1970s, due to the country’s great economic development, demand for higher education increased as did federal resources. In recent years, both the public and private sectors of higher education have benefited from the results of the military regime’s economic policy. Unlike some Latin American countries, political repression promoted higher education, both public and private. The number of people registered rose from 95,961  in 1960 to 134,500  in 1980 (Saviani 2010: 10; Pereira Martins 2002: 6; Pereira Dos Santos and Cerqueira 2009: 5). With the return of democracy in 1985, educational changes were promoted, one of which was set out in the 1988 Constitution. The duty of the State to education and development was defined, as was the duty of the State to development, and free public higher education was also guaranteed (Eckert Baeta Neves 2012: 3; Benedito Martins 2000: 58; Cunha 2003; Amaral 2003). In the 1990s, both the public and private higher education sectors were hit by economic stagnation. The government’s multi-­ year plan, 1996–1999, highlighted two actions: I) industry’s contribution to improving the quality of education and II) training of qualified human resources for the modernization of the country (Corbucci 2004: 682; Scheinvar 2007). In 2003, the program of support for university extension was approved, which promoted social inclusion with the objective of supporting public institutions of higher education in the development of programs or projects that contribute to the implementation of public policies. Two years later, the university-wide program was designed to grant vacancies to low-income students in private institutions of higher education. Other programs were aimed at supporting the restructuring and expansion plans of federal universities in 2007 and 2010 (Eckert Baeta Neves 2012: 23–26; Saviani 2010; Pereira Dos Santos and Cerqueira 2009: 9–12; Catani et al. 2006; Mancebo 2004; Neves et al. 2007). Finally, in the case of Chile, there was an education reform in the 1965–1970 period, which raised problems of the education system, especially the expansion of coverage and of human, material and financial resources and their geographical and social distribution. Until the late 1960s, Chilean higher education was made up of a small and homogeneous system, composed of two public universities with a presence in much of the country and six private universities, three of which were Catholic and the other three were secular entities.4 The reform brought about an unprecedented transformation of the Chilean university, and public funding nearly 4  The University of Concepción founded in 1919; the Federico Santa María Technical University (1926) and the Catholic University of Valparaíso (1928); the Universidad Austral de Chile (1954) in Valdivia; the University in Antofagasta in 1956. Meanwhile, the government had merged in 1947 several technical schools of mining, engineering and arts and crafts, with the School of Industrial Engineers of Santiago, and with the Technical Pedagogical Institute, to form the new Technical University of the State. The University of Chile, for its part, extended its reach throughout the country during the 1950s and 1960s, through a network of regional university colleges, a model that was later implemented by the Technical University of the State, and then by the Catholic University of Chile, each with its own regional campus systems.

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doubled between 1969 and 1974, to meet the increase in enrollment and to incorporate a larger number of academics (Bernasconi and Rojas 2003: 18–20). The government of President Salvador Allende (1970–1973) allocated large amounts of financial resources to education during the period, advanced educational expansion and advanced the policy of equal opportunities. It also deepened the concentration of the state education apparatus through the Regional Coordinating Bodies of Education in order to make it more participatory. However, their management was interrupted by a military coup that changed significantly in the management of higher education. The universities that existed until 1973 were intervened in order to reduce and control the potential for political activism (Bernasconi and Rojas 2003: 22; Muñoz 2012: 22–23; Garretón 1985).5 The fundamental principles of the Chilean education system were basically enshrined in the Political Constitution of the Republic6 approved in 1980 and in the Constitutional Organic Law of Education (number 18,962) approved in 1990 (Lemaitre 1990; Allard Neumann 1999). The Constitution had three basic elements for higher education: first, it reorganized the existing university system at that time with the possibility of creating new private universities without state subsidies; second, it incorporated non-­ university institutions into higher education; and third, it established a system-wide funding model. Scholarships and state credit systems were created for public and private entities (González 2005: 10; Cox 1996). The Constitutional Organic Law on Education7 regulated the birth of higher education institutions and their dissolution,8 established the types of officially recognized higher education institutions (Universities, Professional Institutes, Technical Training Centers, Higher Education Institutions of the Armed Forces and Order) and established the rules for their official recognition (Bernasconi and Rojas 2003: 35–36; World Bank 2005). In the 1980s, the guiding principle of higher education was a deregulated system in which the state contribution decreased by 40%, transferring the cost of university studies to students. In the next two decades, the role of state regulation in achieving autonomy and accountability was emphasized. Institutions were required to charge tuition fees and a demand-side financing policy was favored. In 2003, the legislation of the education system was amended by Law 19,876 and in 2009 the General Education Law 20,370 was passed, repealing the Constitutional Organic Law of Education (Salazar and Leihy 2013; Brunner 2008; Espinoza and González Fiegehen 2007:

5  During the military government, educational research continued to evolve in three areas: in the Ministry of Education, in the universities and in private centers. This organization remains substantive to the present day. See: http://www.oei.es/historico/quipu/chile/index.html 6  It also includes various general provisions that affect the organization and management of the educational system, such as those relating to State administration, decentralization and private property and the free management of companies. 7  It was modified in 1991, 1998, 2001, 2003 and 2004. 8  It partially replaced Decree-Laws 1 of 1980 and 5 and 24 of 1981 of the Ministry of Education, which established the first legal framework for the development of private universities, professional institutes and technical training centers.

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47; Campbell et  al. 2005; Espinoza 2005; Brunner and Tillett 2006; Allard Neumann 1999).9

ABC: Types of University The higher education system in Argentina, Brazil (Stallivieri 2007: 50)10 and Chile11 is largely made up of national public universities and private universities (see Table 4.1). In addition, there are University Institutes, Professional Institutes and Technical Training Centers in the three countries studied. In general, public universities are autonomous and free of charge and are organized into equivalent faculties, departments or academic units. Unlike Argentina and Chile, Brazil invested a lot of resources in public higher education. In Argentina, the Taquini plan began to be implemented in 1971, but the creation of the new universities continued after the assumption of democratic government in May 1973. In total, 16 new universities were created in this process and a large part of the Argentine provinces have had their own university since this stage. The universities of Río Cuarto (1971), Comahue Table 4.1  Number of public and private universities in Argentina, Brazil and Chile Country

Number of universities Public Private 60 49

Argentina (2015) (See: Síntesis de Información Estadísticas Universitarias Argentina (2014–2015)) Brazil (2015) (See: http://portal.inep.gov.br/web/guest/sinopses-­estatisticas-­ 107 da-­educacao-­superior;http://convergenciacom.net/pdf/mapa_ensino_ superior_2016.pdf) Chile (2017) (See: http://www.mifuturo.cl/index.php/donde-­y-­que-­estudiar/ 16 Universityes)

88

43

Source: own elaboration

9  Article 3 states that the education system is inspired by: universality and lifelong learning; the quality of education and the education system; autonomy; diversity; responsibility; participation; flexibility; transparency; integration; sustainability; interculturality. 10  The Ministry of Education of Brazil defines, for statistical purposes, that higher education institutions are classified as follows: Public (federal, state and municipal); Private (community, confessional, philanthropic and private). 11  The Chilean higher education system includes public institutions and private institutions that are dependent and independent, according to the international classification of educational institutions (OECD 2007). Chilean universities have three types of institutions, according to their dependency and functioning: (a) State universities, which can be created only by a specific law. There are 16 of them and they receive direct public financial support for their operation. (b) Non-state universities established before 1980. In spite of being private property, they receive financing from the State. There are currently nine. (c) Private universities born after 1980. They do not receive direct support from the State. They are 34 and are mainly concentrated in Santiago.

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(1971), Lomas de Zamora (1972), Catamarca (1972), Salta (1972), Luján (1973), Jujuy (1973), Misiones (1973) correspond to this period, Entre Ríos (1973), San Luis (1973), San Juan (1973), Santiago del Estero (1973), La Pampa (1973), Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires (1974), Mar del Plata (1975) and Patagonia (1980). La Rioja (1971) was created as a provincial university and nationalized in 1993. Decree 2230, which prohibited the founding of private universities, was abolished, allowing 22 private universities to be created between 1989 and the end of 1995. At the end of 2007, the private university structure consisted of 55 institutions: 41 private universities and 14 university institutes (Buchbinder and Marquina 2008: 47–48, 52; Del Bello et al. 2007; Sánchez Martínez 1999).12 In 1981, Brazil had 65 universities, seven of them with more than 20,000 students. In the same year, the number of higher education institutions surpassed 800, of which 250 had fewer than 300 students. The public sector was responsible for the development of postgraduate and research activities and modernized an important segment of the Brazilian university system (Campos Oliven 2002; Texeira 1989; McCowan 2007). In 1986, 76.5% of those enrolled in higher education concentrated in the private sector. Between 1985 and 1990, the number of private institutions increased by 145%, from 20 to 49 (Pereira Dos Santos and Cerqueira 2009: 6–7; Colossi et al. 2001: 52). In 1996, 922 higher education institutions were reached, with 211 public (23%) and 711 private institutions (77%). In 2005, the total number of institutions rose to 2165 with 231 public (10.7%) and 1934 private institutions (89.3%). In 2007, public universities represented 25.42% and private universities 74.58% (Saviani 2010; Sguissardi 2008; Guimarães 2000; Sampaio 2009). In Chile, the university system was transformed into a closed and virtually monopolistic scheme of 8 universities (Bernasconi and Rojas 2003: 21). Then there were 14 secular regional public universities, 3 Catholic public universities, 41 private universities, 66 professional institutes and 120 technical colleges. Total: 252 institutions which received direct subsidies from the State. Student enrolment had almost tripled, from approximately 20,000 in 1957 to over 55,000 in 1967 (Brunner 1999). Since 1975 there has been a drop in enrolment, the Chilean government has attempted to diversify the higher education system and stimulate competition among institutions (Urzúa 2012; Brunner 1997). According to the Higher Education Information Service (SIES), the number of institutions registered its maximum in 1991, with 302 higher education institutions, decreasing to 157 in 2015. In 1990, there were 60 universities; in 1995, there were 70 universities; in 1995, the figure fell to 62 in 2002 and 60 in 2010, which remained the same until 2015. Public universities covered more than 60% of the total enrolment in undergraduate degrees, the largest being University de Chile (Campbell et al. 2005). In 2002 there were 16 public universities, 9 old private universities (the six created before 1981, plus three  Other universities founded during the 1980s and 1990s were: the University of Formosa in 1988, the University of Quilmes in 1989, the University of Matanza, General Sarmiento and San Martín in 1992, the National University of Southern Patagonia in 1994, the University of Villa María, Tres de Febrero and Lanús in 1995, the University of Chilecito and the University of Northwestern Buenos Aires Province in 2002.

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regional headquarters of the Pontificia University Católica de Chile that became independent in 1991), and 37 private universities created after 1981. Five higher-­ education institutions of the armed forces with 532 headquarters throughout the country are added to the above-mentioned higher education system (González 2003). According to the Síntesis de Información Estadísticas Universitarias Argentina (2014–2015), Argentina’s public universities are mostly medium sized (48%) between 10,001 and 50,000 students, followed by small ones (39%), up to 10,000 students and large ones, which have more than 50,000 students, represent 13%. The private ones, at 98%, are small or medium sized. This means that medium-sized universities are predominant in Argentina (Delich 1986). In Brazil, 88.4% of the higher education system is made up of private institutions and this does not only include universities but also higher education centers and non-university institutes (Leher 2003; Guimarães 2000; Sampaio 2009). The remaining 11.6% are public higher education institutions. This disparity is reflected in the number of courses held by private institutions (68.7%) as well as the number of students enrolled in private institutions, almost 75%. The note is that 83.5% of postgraduate students choose to take courses in public institutions, mostly universities. This is due to two main reasons: public universities enjoy greater prestige and postgraduate degrees in private institutions are much more expensive (Schwartman and Brock 2005; Neves et al. 2007; Sguissardi 2008; McCowan 2007). In Chile, there is a particular situation: private universities with autonomous status grew faster (7.01%) than public universities (3.98%) and traditional private universities (−2.34%). This is due to the growing demand for courses, or new (shorter and easier) careers offered to attract students (Urzúa 2012; Brunner 1997; Krauskopf 1993). In 2012, the best ranked University was University de Chile, by a tiny margin, compared to the Pontificia University Católica de Chile. Although on average among all universities, the traditional private universities are ahead, while the autonomous private ones are lagging far behind the previous two. The decisive advantage of the University de Chile was the high rate of research by quantity and by the weight it represents for the evaluation averages. The Higher Education Barometer developed by the consultancy firm Mori, ranked University de Chile first among the preferences of high school students in the period 2009–2013. This indicates that the first choice of most Chilean high school students is the public university. Many of them, because they can’t enter, opt for a private one. This election has a solid basis: in the period 2003–2007, among the universities of the Council of Rectors,13 the la University de Chile represented 32% of international publications ISI (International Scientific Indexing), the Pontificia University Católica 21%, and the University de Concepción 13%. In the Fondecyt 2009 contest, the University de Chile obtained 128 projects (31.6%), the Pontificia University Católica 67 and the University de Concepción 33 projects, that is, the University de Chile obtained more projects than both universities combined. In the period 2002–2006, the University de Chile graduated 36% of doctorates in

13

 See: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consejo_de_Rectores_de_las_Universityes_Chilenas

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the country, the Pontificia University Católica 25% and the University de Concepción 19%.14

Prestige and Rankings In this section, the perceptions of universities will be analyzed in different international rankings, comparing them to see differences and similarities between the chosen cases. It will begin by analyzing the ranking of the best Latin American universities provided by the Webometrics website (http://www.webometrics.info/es/ Americas/Latin_America). The University of Sao Paulo is the best university in the region, followed by the University Nacional Autónoma de México. In the top ten, it is worth noting that Brazilian universities occupy seven places (70%), while the remaining 30% is distributed among a Mexican, a Chilean and an Argentine university. The distance from the University of Sao Paulo is also perceived in the position of excellence (76), followed by the University of Campinas (336) and the University Nacional Autónoma de México (338). Continuing with Brazilian universities, the Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) ranked eighteen Brazilian universities among the thousand best in the world. The University of Sao Paulo continues to be the region’s best ranked: 145th in 2017. After this university, the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and the University of Campinas are ranked 340 and 425, followed by: University Federal de Minas Gerais (521); University Federal de Rio Grande do Sul (570); University Federal de Sao Paulo (610); University Estado Paulista (623); University do Estado de Rio de Janeiro (709); University Federal de ABC (861); University Federal de Santa Catarina (909); University Federal de Paraná (938); University Federal de Sao Carlos (960); University Federal de Fluminense (962); University do Brasília (973); University Federal da Bahia (982); University Federal de Pernambuco (992); University Federal de Santa María (993); and University Federal de Ceará (998).15 The prestigious Shanghai Ranking (http://www.shanghairanking.com/World-­ University-­Rankings-­2013/Brazil.html) published since 2003 includes the top 500 universities in the world. From 2013 to 2017 there are five Brazilian universities that integrate it, led again by the University of Sao Paulo, then those of Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, Campinas and Rio Grande do Sul. Again, the ranking of Webometrics (2017) with the list of Brazilian universities is analyzed (http://www.webometrics.info/es/latin_america_es/brasil). The distance between the University of Sao Paulo and the University of Rio de Janeiro (239) is impressive, as is the presence, impact and openness of the university. A 2018 ranking produced by Times Higher Education (https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/best-­universities/best-­universities-­brazil) shows the national

14 15

 See: http://www.uchile.cl/noticias/49785/financiamiento-de-Universityes-estatales  See: http://cwur.org/2017/brazil.php

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and global position of Brazilian universities. The University of Sao Paulo leads the ranking among Brazilian universities although its global positioning is much further from the top positions compared to other rankings. Unlike the previous international rankings, the Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo (San Pablo Sheet Newspaper) published an updated ranking of 2017 in which it can be seen that the first position is not occupied by the University of Sao Paulo, which has the third place, but by the University of Rio de Janeiro. However, in research, market and innovation, the primacy belongs to the University of Sao Paulo. The similarity in all rankings is the overwhelming majority of public universities leading the country’s top positions.16 The best Chilean universities, such as the University of Chile or the Pontificia University Católica de Chile, have a quality far superior to the rest of the country’s universities and are also the two universities with the largest number of students and highly prestigious professors. This can be seen in the following ranking prepared by América Economía.17 It measures teaching quality at 25% (full time, average and hourly, and academic grades achieved: Doctorate, Master’s degree, graduates and medical and health specialties); student quality at 25%; research at 15% (quarterly production and the productivity of full-time teaching staff, of papers indexed in the ISI and Scielo bases. It also included obtaining competitive funds, according to quantity and amount); accreditation in 10%; infrastructure in 5%; internationalization in 5% (measures the international agreements of exchange of students and professors, the levels of use of these agreements and the contributions in scholarships and supports for exchange students); inclusion in 5%; connection with the community in 5%; university life in 5%. The distribution according to the ranking shows that there are 33.3% of state universities, 41.7% of private universities and 25% of autonomous private universities. Although the University de Chile holds its first place, the Pontificia University Católica de Chile is narrowing its distance to less than one point, the closest distance in the top of the ranking since 2011. The first two places invariably include the University of Chile and the Pontificia University Católica de Chile. Although the former surpasses the latter in almost all points, it has a perfect internationalization score which means that in recent years it has expanded its educational offer and its connections beyond national and Latin American borders. Among the top two universities on the Webometrics webpage (http://webometrics.info/es/Latin_America_es/Chile), there is a considerable difference in the world ranking (188 positions) growing in the item Impact of these universities. According to this webpage; the distance is extended to 564. On the other hand, in the item Excellence, the Pontificia University Católica de Chile surpasses the University de Chile by 25 positions. A survey of high school students in 2013 was asked the question: Which are the five best universities in Chile? The University de Chile was the preferred university

16 17

 See the ranking: http://ruf.folha.uol.com.br/2017/ranking-de-Universityes/  See: https://rankings.americaeconomia.com/2016/Universityes-chile/ranking

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for most students with 82% of votes, while the Pontificia University Católica de Chile obtained 78%. This result only confirms the rest of the rankings presented: the University de Chile and the Pontificia University Católica de Chile occupy the first and second place, respectively, and are considered by students to be the two most prestigious universities in Chile: one public and the other private.18 Finally, the situation of universities in Argentina. In 2014, Latin American University Rankings, one of the continent’s most prestigious, highlighted the reputation of nine Argentine universities among the 50 best Latin American study centers. The University de Buenos Aires, the best Argentinean, was placed 12th. The scoring was based on the following indicators: reputation according to surveys of academics (30%), employer survey results (20%), number of students per teacher (10%), academics with doctoral degrees (10%), publications per academic (10%), citations per paper (10%) and impact on the web (10%). In addition to the University de Buenos Aires, four other Argentine universities were ranked among the top 25: University Católica Argentina (19th), University Nacional de Córdoba (22nd), University Nacional de la Plata (24th), University Austral Argentina (25th). The list is completed with the University de San Andrés (position 41), University Torcuato Di Tella (position 44), University Nacional de Rosario (position 45) and the Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires (position 49).19 In 2016, another ranking carried out by the consulting firm QS20 ranked seven Argentine universities among the 50 best in Latin America. The University de Buenos Aires continued to be the most important Argentine university and was ranked 11th (in 2015 it ranked 15th), the University de La Plata ranked 20th, same location as in 2015, University Austral ranked 24th, University de Córdoba ranked 26th, University Católica Argentina ranked 33rd, University Torcuato di Tella 42nd, University Nacional de Rosario ranked 49th (in 2015 ranked 67th). The score was based on the following indicators: academic reputation (30%); employer reputation (20%); student/teacher ratio (10%); citations per article (10%); articles per teacher (5%); international research network (10%); staff ratio with a doctorate (10%); impact on the web (5%).21 In 2017, the ranking of Shanghai (http://www.shanghairanking.com/World-­ University-­Rankings/University-­of-­Buenos-­Aires.html) made a detailed presentation in which the first Argentine University, the University of Buenos Aires, was positioned between 201 and300 places. It also presents an evolution of the same

 See the survey: http://www.uchile.cl/noticias/96936/barometro-de-la-educacion-uchile-n1-entre -escolares-del-pais 19  See: http://noticias.universia.com.ar/en-portada/noticia/2014/03/11/1087020/9-­ Universityes-­argentinas-mejores-50-america-latina.html 20  The Latin American top five is made up of three Brazilian universities, such as the University of Sao Paulo in first place, the University Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp) in second place and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in fifth place. Third place is for the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and fourth for the National Autonomous University of Mexico. 21  See: http://noticias.universia.com.ar/educacion/noticia/2016/06/16/1140868/7-Universityes-­ argentinas-50-mejores-latinoamerica.html 18

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since 2003. According to the ranking, the University of Buenos Aires in 2003 was ranked among the 301–350 positions in the world ranking, in 2004–2005 rose to 201–300 positions; from 2006 to 2015 it increased its position again, reaching 151–200 to fall in 2016 and 2017 to 201–300 positions. Finally, the ranking provided by Webometrics (http://webometrics.info/es/Latin_America_es/Argentina) updated in January 2018, which presents the list of the best Argentine universities in the country and its position worldwide. The public universities dominate the first 21 places with the University of Buenos Aires, La Plata, Córdoba, Rosario, del Litoral being the first five. Although it can be appreciated that in the world ranking, the first three ranks are maintained in the first thousand positions: Buenos Aires (396), La Plata (521) and Córdoba (869). In 2011, a study entitled: “Labor demand in Argentina: Most demanded professions and mismatches between supply and demand for labor” by the Mediterranean Foundation in Argentina concluded that careers linked to production and engineering, followed by administrative and finance-related careers were the most required by companies. On the other hand, the Adecco consulting firm carried out a similar study in which it was found that civil, chemical, mechanical and electrical engineers were the most chosen by companies in the automotive, metal-mechanic and chemical industries. In most cases, to fill positions in the production, process and commercial areas.22 A survey conducted by Kennedy University (Argentina) in 2016 revealed that the areas perceived by students as the most important were: public accountant, business administration, systems and engineering, medicine, economics, human resources and marketing. These careers accounted for 78% of the labor demand. On the other hand, the study showed that the careers most in demand on the market did not coincide entirely with those chosen by young people. Law, administration, accounting topped the ranking of the most popular. The professions with the highest graduation and highest labor demand are public accountant, administration, engineering (all orientations except systems), nursing and medicine.23

 eoliberal University Modernization in Europe. N The Spanish Case The Spanish university system was regulated by late-Francoist legislation as one more part of the general education system (LGE 1970). Later, the University Reform Law (LRU 1983) and the Organic Law of Universities (LOU 2001) endowed the institution with broad autonomy to approve its curricula and to select and promote its teaching and research staff. Finally, in 2007, the Organic Law Amending the Law

 See: http://noticias.universia.com.ar/en-portada/noticia/2012/05/28/937290/carreras-mas-­ demandadas.html 23  Sólo 8 carreras concentran el 80% de la demanda laboral, Clarín, 25 de febrero de 2016. 22

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on Universities (LOMLOU 2007) attempted to incorporate the guidelines and teachings of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) framework into Spanish regulations (Jiménez Sánchez 2007). This process began in 1998 with the Sorbonne Declaration and was ratified in 1999 with the Bologna Declaration, which culminated in 2010. The Bologna process has meant a boost in the updating of the educational offer and teaching methodologies of Spanish universities (Ion and Cano 2012). In terms of the educational offer, it has meant greater flexibility and a real reformulation of the curriculum through the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS). The aim was to promote student-centered training models aimed at the acquisition of competencies and self-learning. In addition, this reform called for a change in the roles of teachers and students, tending towards a relearning of teaching on the part of teachers and the development of learning to learn competence on the part of students. All this has led to a new conception of education as lifelong learning for the knowledge society (Ion and Cano 2012). Within the framework of university autonomy, study plans are drawn up, in which the objectives, contents and resources foreseen are contemplated. Degrees, whether Bachelor’s, Master’s or Doctoral, undergo a process of prior quality assessment and, every 6 years, they are subject to an evaluation (MECES 2011). Once they have been positively evaluated by the National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation (ANECA), an autonomous body attached to the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, the Council of Universities must verify the plans. As for the Doctorate, the EHEA, the European Research Area (ERA) and Royal Decree 99/2011, of January 28, are the fundamental regulatory pillars. The importance of improving Research, Development and Innovation (R + D + i) and university teaching in the training of future researchers is emphasized. The collaboration of the University with other organizations, both national and international, and for both public and private, is also considered important (Pétriz Calvo and Rubiralta Alcañiz 2017). One of the most notable characteristics of the university professor is his or her double task of teaching and research (PDI). In Spain, more than 115,000 university professors teach 1.5 million students. Most of them are professors at one of the 50 public universities; specifically, nine out of every ten professors teach and do research at the Spanish Public University, and one out of every ten does so at one of the thirty-three private universities that have proliferated in recent years. This indicates a path of privatization and commercialization of higher education that coincides with the same trend in our neighboring countries (Jiménez Sánchez 2007). Together with teaching and research, the third mission that the regulations grant to the university is social responsibility (Pétriz Calvo and Rubiralta Alcañiz 2017). This has been highlighted by both European and Spanish institutions and by international organizations. In this sense, UNESCO has pointed out the importance of access, equity and quality of university education, as well as its regionalization, internationalization and globalization.

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Now, university social responsibility has given rise to different interpretations; from the point of view of entrepreneurship, it is understood as the transfer of knowledge and innovation with a utilitarian and economicist sense (Pétriz Calvo and Rubiralta Alcañiz 2017). In different European directives (OEE 2020; EACEA/ Eurydice 2015; REC 2013; RE 2017), education is considered a strategic asset and insists on a technocratic conception of education based on the development of competences to achieve better socioeconomic results (CCPE 2012). Thus, EHEA documents frequently refer to the acquisition and measurement of knowledge, but hardly refer to more ambitious educational goals and purposes, such as the promotion of the values of democratic coexistence or integral personal development (Huber 2008). However, the Spanish University Strategy 2015 establishes that university social responsibility, as a public good, is the mission of governments and should be understood in a broad sense as the contribution to regional socioeconomic development and social, economic and environmental sustainability. Previously, the World Conference on Higher Education (2009) stated that global higher education programs should, among other objectives, aim to eradicate poverty through research and sustainable development. And that the public good nature of university education places governments with the responsibility to support it as a way of contributing to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals and Education for All.

Research on University Teacher Training Given that one of the peculiarities of university teaching, not only in Spain but also in the rest of Europe, is the absence of any pedagogical training, the incorporation into the EHEA has not only meant its insertion into a regulatory framework with new study plans but has also opened up an opportunity for innovation and improvement in university teaching. However, although the discourse of modernization and internationalization, which has come hand in hand with the Bologna Plan, has insisted on the teaching role of the university professor, it has been underestimated in practice in favor of the research role, since teaching dedication is not usually valued and hardly represents a merit in the teaching career and in the accreditation for the body (Jiménez Sánchez 2007), which is evaluated merely by seniority in the teaching institution. All in all, European directives have insisted on improving the teaching training of university faculty and on the necessary methodological change (GANUE 2013; RE 2017). In the Spanish University, teaching is still mostly based on the master class and on the approach based on the teaching of contents with a memoristic character. So, in order to comply with these directives, training programs have proliferated with the aim of overcoming the teaching profile based on the simple transmission of knowledge and to update the methodologies and teaching strategies of university teachers. Thus, since the entry into force of the EHEA, Spanish public universities have implemented training plans for university teachers. In parallel, research on training needs has been promoted to identify the competency profiles that enable the professional development of teachers (Jato Seijas et al. 2014). Although traditionally what

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has characterized university teachers has been their mastery of their own discipline, in recent years, the idea that this is not enough and that it is therefore necessary to improve pedagogical skills has gained ground (Postareff et al. 2007). Within the studies on university teacher education, a series of conceptualizations have been reported that help to guide the competency profile of the good professional. Among others, collaborative studies, the search for congruence between the results of teaching research and practice, the importance of the mission that the university has in teaching, research and public service to society, and finally the concept of educational models that informs and directs professional change have been highlighted. Attention has also been paid to what teachers think about what good teaching is, as well as to their conceptions of what content deserves to be taught and the criteria for selecting it. These studies have concluded by identifying two models of teaching in higher education, one centered on the teacher and the teaching of the contents of his or her discipline and the other centered on the student and his or her learning (Parpala and Lindblom-Ylänne 2007). Another line of research that has been explored is that which tries to define the competency profile of teachers, i.e., what it means to be a good teacher or what we mean when we talk about excellence of university teachers. In this field, it is worth highlighting the research coordinated by Bain, which identifies a series of characteristics that define the best university professors, such as the conceptions they have about learning and teaching, how they relate to students and how they promote research and the professional advancement of their students (Monereo and Domínguez 2014). The concept of professional competence is perhaps the prevalent element in the current context of teacher training, along with good practices and their transfer. Thus, training programs have been oriented towards training in competencies (Yániz 2008), among which those related to the use of pedagogical and educational technology, to teaching and learning and to competencies in professional learning stand out (Uerz et al. 2018). The study of identifying good teaching practices, in terms of “what good teachers do” has become one of the main focuses of research, even UNESCO and the Bureau International d’Education (BIE) echoed this idea as a way to promote professional change based on innovation (Zabalza Beraza 2012). This has involved comparing stated practices with observed practices, as often even the “good practices” observed fall within the traditional approach to teaching (Espinosa Martín 2014).

Training Strategies With the growing awareness of the importance of teacher quality for student learning, the EHEA has raised the need to promote university teacher training, both in the initial training of new teachers and in continuing education. This has led to a veritable explosion of training programs, although some authors have pointed out that

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the problem now is not the absence of innovations, but rather the presence of too many isolated, eventual and excessively fragmented projects (Fullan 2002: 31). In initial training, some formative programs have been proposed as an objective to contribute to the construction of a professional identity of the novice teacher, since the emotional dimension seems to deeply mark the professional becoming of the university teacher (Lincove et al. 2015). The didactic strategies for the training of university teachers implemented by the different courses and programs developed by Spanish universities cover a wide range of possibilities. The formation of teaching teams and shared planning has proven to be effective in generating spaces for the analysis of the problems of each context. This is intended to improve teaching, and therefore student learning, and to be a factor in changing the professional culture of university teaching (Martínez Martín and Viader Junyent 2008). Collaborative work among teaching teams seems to contribute to the professional development of university teachers (Zabalza Beraza 2012). In some training programs, together with the introduction of improvements in the teaching performance itself, the exchange of experiences among participants is encouraged (Almajano and Valero-García 2000). This implies that good practices connect planning and collaboration with innovation, establishing shared procedures, collaborative work and dialogue between teachers and students (Álvarez et al. 2012). In this context, within the framework of the Institutes of Educational Sciences (ICE), dependent on universities, collaborative networks have been created between different universities in order to share experiences (Albert and Madrid Izquierdo 2007). Mentoring and expert accompaniment has also been revealed as an effective training strategy for new teachers, integrated into a broader training proposal (Sánchez et al. 2015). The positive impact on pedagogical training of the use of the portfolio, as well as training courses and video-analysis, has also been highlighted. In the latter case, workshops have been developed in which the classes of teachers in training are recorded to be analyzed in a shared learning community. The aim would be to identify the elements of classroom situations and connect them with the theoretical principles of teaching and learning (Johannes et al. 2012). As far as the portfolio is concerned, different experiences have reported positive results in terms of an improved vision of one’s own teaching, a better reflection on practice and on teaching contents, a rethinking of one’s own educational skills and an updating of teaching materials and resources (De Rijdt et al. 2006). Another training practice that has been receiving interest in recent years is service-­learning, as it connects with one of the most neglected missions of the university institution, community social responsibility (Álvarez Castillo et al. 2017). Successful experiences have also been reported for teaching professional development related to the use of collaborative learning using resources such as the edublog, which favors the active participation of students in the collaborative construction of the curriculum (Martín Montilla and Montilla Coronado 2016). In this line, one of the most frequent teacher training strategies has been that related to the use of new technologies. In fact, the European Convergence in Higher Education has insisted on this strategy as a way of improving professional teaching

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practice and achieving more effective student learning (Nieto and Rodríguez Conde 2007). Within the field of the application of new information and communication technologies to teaching, there has also been a proliferation of programs that promote the use of web tools such as wikis (Mancho Barés et al. 2009). In order to evaluate the impact of these training programs on the quality of university teaching, the Program to Support the Evaluation of the Teaching Activity of University Teaching Staff (DOCENTIA), developed by ANECA and the various regional evaluation agencies, has been implemented in Spain. Competency-based assessment is one of the challenges that the Bologna Declaration poses for Spanish university teaching staff. This change in teaching methodologies requires a permanent training activity on the part of the teaching staff (Ion and Cano 2012). For the evaluation of good teaching practices, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards is still a reference document, which, although originally published in 1989, has been updated in a document entitled “What teachers should know and be able to do”. This text lists five key issues for teaching that all teachers at any level should be aware of in order to achieve learning gains for their students (Shulman 2016). In this concern to evaluate good practices, and to guide and define formative programs, research on what the best university teachers do has proliferated. Although most of the quality assessment programs that are being carried out in universities do so from the perspective of teaching competencies as a substantial element (Villa and García 2014), from more critical and less technological visions, a genuine reformulation of the culture of teachers is proposed that goes beyond the mere psycho-pedagogical issue and addresses the work of university teachers from a relational and human dimension, a dimension that, as is to be expected, also has an impact on student learning and development (Esteban Bara, F.). This critical approach to the technocratic model conceives the mission of the university in terms of training citizens capable of facing the problems of their time (Morín 1998: 27). From this alternative vision, teaching activity is not conceived as a mechanical routine, but as a space for reflection and creation that facilitates professional development. In this conception, planning plays a fundamental role, since development is achieved fundamentally through the investigation of problematic situations of the teaching practice itself and the planning of interventions for their solution.

Conclusions After analyzing the information presented, it is highlighted that although Latin American universities have some similar characteristics, such as the massive student population being the most important, the differences are more noticeable among Brazilian, Argentinean and Chilean universities. The three countries suffered dictatorships, but in Brazil the university actually grew during that period (1964–1985), unlike Argentina (1966–1972; 1976–1983)

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and Chile (1973–1990), where the dictatorships intervened with universities and took away valuable resources for research and development. This has had a longterm impact on the quality of education and has encouraged decentralization. In recent decades, private institutions of higher education have expanded, especially in Brazil and Chile. However, the perception of citizens of university age is that public universities are the most important and prestigious in these countries, especially when it comes to graduate studies. Unlike Argentina and Brazil, in Chile, the distance between the University de Chile, the most important and public university, is not too wide between the Pontificia University Católica, a traditional private university that occupies second place. In contrast, in Argentina, the University de Buenos Aires occupies the first place in all international rankings with a huge distance from the rest, as happens with the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil. Another important fact is that in Argentina and Brazil, public universities outnumber private ones, unlike Chile, but public enrolments are only the majority in Argentina. In other words, Argentina has a majority of students in public universities; Brazil, on the other hand, has a majority of enrollment in private universities; and Chile has the primacy in both private universities and private tuition. The logical perception is that the new private universities, in the three countries studied, occupy the educational places that public universities cannot or do not have the resources to do so. This has some consequences: on the one hand, the monopoly of traditional public and private universities is broken; on the other, the need for the market and labor insertion creates a diversification of courses although, in some cases, without sufficient educational quality. In short, the perception continues to be that the most important universities in the countries studied (University of Sao Paulo, University of Buenos Aires, and University of Chile) are the best and most prestigious despite the budgetary and research difficulties they have shown in recent years. However, an increasing number of students are entering the private education system due to the growing diversity, the increased supply of specializations and internationalization that new private universities are demonstrating. With regard to the Spanish University, in the face of the neoliberal trend, marked by a series of discourses that revolve around quality and competitiveness, and which coexist with a de-skilling and precarization of the teaching staff, a current has emerged that claims as the university’s mission not only teaching and research but also social commitment, citizenship and the contribution to sustainable socioeconomic development (Jiménez Sánchez 2007). This alternative discourse can even be traced in official European and Spanish documents, which speak of the fact that, together with professional fulfillment and employability, sustainable development and democratic values, social cohesion, active citizenship and intercultural dialogue should be promoted (OEE 2020, 2011). In these critical positions, the main concern is the restructuring of higher education institutions being operated by the market, with the complacency and inaction of public decision-makers (Gregorutti 2007). Faced with this discourse, one of the lines of action proposed is the training of reflective professionals who contribute to

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the social commitment of the university in the sense of solving social, political, cultural and scientific problems, and who work in the integral formation of citizens with a humanistic approach (Gómez Bayona 2009). In this line, the use of collaborative strategies versus competitive ones is also highlighted, together with the development of reflective skills. Some authors have postulated that the ability to reflect is a precondition for teachers’ professional development (Karm 2010), since reflective professionals help students to learn (Welkener 2008). Therefore, the University’s commitment to the training of reflective professionals is an alternative to the neoliberal discourse and a condition of possibility for the maintenance of higher education institutions at the service of the construction of a new society (Gómez Bayona 2009).

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Chapter 5

Types of Institutions and Youth School Experience: Dynamics of Inequality in Argentine Secondary Education Pedro Núñez

This chapter has a double objective. First, it presents the main characteristics of the Argentine system concerning the type of educational offering and trajectories compared to other Latin American countries. In that section, the main trends and challenges for secondary education are discussed and characterized. Secondly, it investigates the differences in school experience according to the type of educational institution, the reasons behind school selection, and their association with the dynamics of inequality. In this way, we explore how inequality is processed in Argentina, emphasizing its interrelation and multidimensionality when considering the type of educational offering and the reasons for choosing the institutions where they study. The chapter thus provides elements for the more subtle forms of construction of differences that become inequalities. For the presentation of the analysis, we retrieved data from a research project carried out during the context of the pandemic that involved a data triangulation strategy with the application of a survey, focus groups, and interviews carried out with students from secondary schools in the City of Buenos Aires.

P. Núñez (*) Institute of Social Research of Latin America, National Scientific and Technical Research Council (IICSAL-CONICET), Buenos Aires, Argentina Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO), Buenos Aires, Argentina e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Vommaro, P. Baisotti (eds.), Persistence and Emergencies of Inequalities in Latin America, Latin American Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90495-1_5

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Introduction In a very short period, Latin American educational systems experienced various changes. In the past two decades, a brief time despite the speed of transformation, clear advances have occurred in at least three directions: the enactment of laws to extend compulsory schooling, the growth of enrollment—especially in sectors traditionally excluded from secondary and higher education—and modifications in the demands of teacher training and the type of educational offering. Those changes, which occurred at different times and manners in the region’s countries, were conditioned by the capacities of each national state and the increase in financing for the development of educational policies. In the case of countries organized on a federal basis, inequalities between provinces grew. Provinces with taxation capability stood out due to the possibility of implementing specific policies and the presence of technical teams (Morduchowicz 2019). Likewise, in several countries, including Argentina—which this chapter will focus on—the massification and fragmentation of secondary education increased the diversity of institutional offerings, generating new dynamics of differentiation and inequality. Those characteristics, pre-existing to the COVID-19 pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, have become tangible and central to the public agenda since 2020. Although it is still early to have a clear understanding of the impact of these processes, several studies account for the increase in inequality. Based on a compilation of recent research, Benza and Kessler (2021) state that the impact on education will be felt as a consequence of the growth in dropouts, fragmentation, and inequality in educational quality, due to the challenges of designing a school model adapted to the new situation and by the “‘scarring effect’ in the educational performance and future employment opportunities of the most vulnerable children and teenagers” (Benza and Kessler 2021: 166). Some recent studies estimate that about 1.5 million students will be disengaged from schooling in Argentina, considering all levels of schooling.1 This chapter has a double objective. First, it presents the main characteristics of the Argentine system concerning the type of educational offering and trajectories compared to other Latin American countries. In that section, the main trends and challenges for secondary education are discussed and characterized. Secondly, it investigates the differences in school experience according to the type of educational institution, the reasons behind school selection, and their association with the dynamics of inequality. The chapter thus provides elements to analyze the more subtle forms of construction of differences that turn into inequalities in the educational system, emphasizing their interrelation and multidimensionality. For our 1  Source: https://abrohilo.org/cuantos-estudiantes-dejarian-la-escuela-en-argentina-a-causa-delcovid-­19/. The author considers three indicators to make this projection: the total number of students in school in April 2019, the latest data available, the 2017–2018 year-on-year dropout rate, and the frequency of communication between schools and families and students. The percentage considered as “loss of students” arises from the categorization “once a month or less frequently” and “two or three times a month”.

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analysis, we have retrieved data from two research projects carried out in the context of the pandemic.2

 rgentina in Latin America: Further from or Closer A to the Southern Cone? Beyond locating the emergence of new dynamics at a significant time or event, there is little doubt that inequality in the educational system today forms a new cartography. Argentina, which historically had distinguished itself in the region by the early development of its educational system, the capacity for inclusion of its middle classes, and an egalitarian bias, currently presents new axes of differentiation. In the same way as Uruguay and Chile, with their vicissitudes and differences in public policies, Argentina shows the deployment of inclusion processes but also difficulties to guarantee equitable access for the different social sectors and throughout the country. In the past years, an unavoidable aspect in the agenda was the need to reflect on the processes of unfavorable inclusion (Saraví 2015), the opposing trends concerning inequality (Kessler 2014), and the endogenous factors that make schooling difficult (Mayer and Núñez 2016). At present, the map of the region acquires a physiognomy that calls for new approaches, new perspectives, and new ways of analyzing its transformations. However, although the issue was raised some time ago, we still lack a density of studies that can specify the different dimensions of inequality (Reygadas 2004). That is, how to study the paradoxical movement of a trend towards democratization in access that is combined with the perception of inequality in the quality of educational goods—both in tangible resources such as infrastructure or study materials and those intangible ones related to the forms of circulation of knowledge, teaching positions, or schooling time—the interactions that take place, and the characteristics of each institution. Before starting on our journey, we should consider the history of the educational system and the traditions of each level of education. The establishment of the educational system in Latin America and the Caribbean shows, as suggested by the I Regional Report produced by the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) system (2020), the divergence of paths for the primary and secondary education levels. The historical progress of primary education shows a convergent pattern from its origins towards its progressive universalization, although particular aspects of each country have influenced those processes. Compared with other 2  We refer to the PICT Project “Tiempo de definiciones. Experiencia educativa, ciudadanía y cultura digital en la escuela secundaria y la educación superior” (ANCyT) based in the Education Division of FLACSO Argentina and to “Diversificación de la estructura de la escuela secundaria y segmentación educativa en América Latina” by ECLAC-IIPE UNESCO Buenos Aires and UNICEF-LACRO. In the latter study, focus groups were formed with secondary school students from all regions, grouped according to the type of institutions they attend.

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countries in the region, the Southern Cone—plus Costa Rica—distinguished itself for the rapid development of primary education and a relatively early educational modernization. Therefore, beyond appealing to a record that tends to conceive the region in its unity, perhaps the Latin American specificity is expressed instead in the particular temporalities where the coexistence of different times, mixed and truncated, occurs (Ansaldi 2000). In this way, towards the middle of the twentieth century, when Latin America experienced urbanization and industrialization and the expansion of education with significant effects on the restructuring of inequalities (Perez Sainz 2016), the starting points were very different for each country. The trajectory of secondary education, characterized by an inverse pattern as an instance of selection of the elites and incorporation of the middle-income households and successive waves of inclusion of the historically excluded sectors, thus forms a diverse map, in terms of coverage, at the end of the twentieth century (Pinkasz and Núñez 2020). Currently, secondary education is one of the levels of education that concentrates the highest demands and condenses multiple debates. The enactment of laws to make it compulsory and the sustained increase in enrollment modified expectations about its social functions and posed new challenges for educational policies (Pinkasz and Núñez 2020). Its massification implies, in short, a resignification of what has historically been understood as secondary education. There is a relative consensus in the literature about the impact of the economic growth cycle that encompassed most of the countries of the region due to the commodities boom in the first decade of the 2000s and the possibility of mobilizing resources towards the development of social inclusion programs (Pinkasz and Núñez 2020). The process, which combined chance and political commitment, had a significant impact on education, increasing attendance rates and the population’s educational level.3 The policies of conditioning payment, often to school attendance—such as the Bono Juancito Pinto in Bolivia, the Plan Equidad in Uruguay, Chile Solidario, and the Asignación Universal por Hijo (AUH) in Argentina—and the deployment of educational policies reduced inequality gaps (Benza and Kessler 2021). Previously, we mentioned changes in the secondary education level in three directions: the enactment of new educational laws, mutations in the students’ enrollment profile, and teacher training and educational offering. Starting with the first aspect, the regulatory structure, most countries in the region established the compulsory nature of lower and upper secondary education levels (ISCED 2 and ISCED 3), although the panorama is diverse. Uruguay, a country with a long tradition of developing its educational system, had already established the compulsory nature of the 3  For example, in Argentina, when considering the educational level of the population aged 18–24 years, an increase of five points is observed between 2011 and 2019 since 63% of the age group had completed secondary school (Secondary Education Evolution Report, MEN 2020). However, inequality gaps persist: 91% of young people from the highest-income households (quintile 5) had completed the level, and only 43% had done so in the lowest-income group (quintile 1).

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first level in 1973, but only in 2008 extended it to both levels. In 2003, Chile made primary and secondary education compulsory, while in 2009, the new Ley General de Educación established the universality of the educational offer and the progressive gratuity of subsidized establishments. In 1993, Argentina promoted a comprehensive educational reform and changes that impacted the organization of the educational system and extended the years of compulsory schooling.4 In 2006, the Ley de Educación proposed a return to the previous scheme, with two cycles (primary and secondary) ranging from 6 and 6 years to 7 and 5 years according to each jurisdiction. In the case of technical schools, a year must be added to the scheme. The law established the compulsory nature of the entire secondary education level. Mexico followed a similar process: it established the compulsory nature of the first level in the same year that Argentina did, and in 2012, the upper secondary education level was also made compulsory. The second aspect is linked to the changes in the student profile. A vital dimension of the transformations is connected to enrollment and its volume and changes in the students’ social composition and origin. Undoubtedly, in recent times, there has been a notable expansion in secondary education coverage in Latin America that managed to incorporate young people from different social sectors. However, incorporation seems to have a staggered character in Argentina and other countries in the region as the first level shows a much broader coverage than the second (see Fig. 5.1). In turn, the trajectories within the system are becoming more divergent, which has increased since the COVID-19 pandemic. Figure 5.1 does not describe anything new: secondary education has high percentages of coverage but faces a process of attrition. Regardless of the different denominations in each country, the first years (ISCED2) have greater coverage than the last years (ISCED3).5 That occurs even when laws establish the compulsory nature of the entire level and in countries such as Argentina and Mexico, which have the highest attendance rate in lower secondary education. The difference is reflected in unequal access to the last part of the level. According to the same source, the attendance rate in upper secondary education is considerably affected by the upper and lower quintiles—reaching an average of about 20 points6—and by the home

4  The Ley Federal de Educación modified the structure of primary and secondary schools, establishing a 9-year Educación General Básica scheme (EGB, Basic General Education) and a 3-year Polimodal level. In addition, the Ley Federal was complemented with another law that involved the transfer of secondary education and higher teacher training schools. In other words, from a compulsory 7 years of schooling to 9 years. 5  We considered the data processing carried out by Verónica Crescini (UNR). * According to the availability of the source, the immediately previous value was taken for Mexico, corresponding to 2016. The situation in Chile is quite enigmatic and may be due to a combination of factors: possible larger overage at the primary level, re-entry in upper secondary through acceleration programs, or, fundamentally, the data source used (in this case, the CASEN survey). 6  In 2017, the Adjusted Net Attendance Rate in Upper Secondary Education was as follows, according to the per capita family income: Argentina: 47.6 (bottom quintile) 69.9 (top quintile); Brazil: 56.6 (bottom quintile) 79.4 (top quintile); Chile: 71.1 (bottom quintile) 80.6 (top quintile);

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100 90

86.8

84.3

80

84.7

74.2

70 60

88.2

82

56.4

62.4

66.3

65.5

60.6

58.7 51.4

51.2

50 40 30 20 10 0

Argenna

Brasil

Chile

Paraguay

Uruguay

México*

Colombia

País Lower Secondary Educaon

Upper Secondary Educaon

Fig. 5.1  Adjusted net attendance rates in lower and upper secondary education in some Latin American countries. 2017. Source: own elaboration based on SITEAL UNESCO.  Consultation carried out at siteal.iiep.unesco.org/indicadores, on June 20, 2021

literacy environment (that is, the average schooling years of household members over 25 years of age).7 An aspect of these issues is linked to specific questions related to secondary education tradition. Most of the countries in the region present difficulties in their retention rates which, of course, impact graduation rates. Trajectories are far from linear and assume rhythms and forms that exceed the planned duration. It is precisely in that organizational sequence that the most significant difficulties are concentrated. According to the latest data available (at the time of writing of this chapter), the coverage rate shows that the difference between lower secondary and upper secondary education in Argentina is 92% and decreases to 66.3%, respectively (Secondary Education Evolution Report, MEN 2020). The repetition rate does not vary significantly from 2011 to 2018. It stood at 10.9% in 2011 and 10% in 2018, while the dropout rate shows a constant decrease from 11.6% in 2011 to 8.7% in 2018 (Secondary Education Evolution Report, MEN 2020). According to the same report, only 29% of the secondary students graduated in 2018  in the expected time, having completed the level in a continuous trajectory without repeating grades (Secondary Education Evolution Report, MEN 2020). When considering

Uruguay: 46.2 (bottom quintile) 83.9 (top quintile); Chile has one of the smallest differences, and Uruguay one of the largest (SITEAL, 2021). 7  Data for Argentina show that it varies from 37.7% in low, 48.45% in medium, and 70. 5% in high; Brazil 46.4%, 63.3%, and 78.4%, Chile 62.1%, 71.1%, and 78.1% and Uruguay 27.6%, 54.8%, and 85.3%, respectively.

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the total number, the secondary education graduation rate for 2018 is 54% (Informe Secondary Education Evolution Report, MEN 2020). Thirty-two percent of the students who attended secondary school in 2019 (1 out of 3) were older than the age that theoretically corresponds to their grade. Said percentage tends to be concentrated in state-run schools. In that sense, the effort to sustain the trajectories is unevenly distributed, while the trajectories with the greatest linearity tend to be concentrated in privately managed establishments. Finally, the third trend refers to changes in the demands of teacher training and educational offering. The foundations of secondary education have undergone various reforms, but at the same time, have stayed relatively unchanged. The works, now classic, pointed out its selective character with high attrition (Tedesco 1986) and the cultural valuation of the encyclopedic-based humanist curriculum (Dussel 1997). Likewise, other studies emphasized the persistence of an institutional model for a secondary school whose origin can be found in the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires, which functions as a defining institution (Acosta 2012).8 In recent times, as highlighted in the FLACSO UNICEF Report (2017), different Argentine jurisdictions drafted programs that sought to put pressure on the central nuclei of the aforementioned organizational matrix. The programs, even in their differences, were characterized by a design that includes personalized work, workshops, studies by topic with no annual courses—and therefore modifications in the curricular designs—and changes in teacher hiring, as well as the organization of times and spaces within the institution (FLACSO UNICEF Report 2017). Those changes impact teachers as they require specific training in different aspects. In addition to these demands in teacher training, after 2020, new ones arise in the possible consolidation of a hybrid learning model combining in-person and remote teaching (Benza and Kessler 2021). The systematization of the changes in the three directions previously indicated allows us to characterize secondary education as a preliminary step to exploring the dynamics of inequality. As Dussel (2005) points out, reflection on inequalities in the educational system makes us think about what has happened historically with the notion of equality. Years ago, O’Donnell (2004) portrayed Argentine society as relatively egalitarian and authoritarian compared to the Brazilian one. Even with the changes and transformations of different kinds, we maintain that it is plausible to point out the presence, sometimes more dissipated, others more widespread, of a particular egalitarian drive (Núñez 2019). In other words, we argue that a social imaginary persists in much of Argentine society in which education plays a central role in consolidating expectations about the construction of equality and the possibility of accessing universal rights. Of course, the existence of those ideas does not cancel the more subtle and invisible forms in which social origin accompanies people throughout their trajectory or the construction of symbolic borders that trace different itineraries (Chaves et al. 2017). At the risk of being insistent, we will argue 8  The Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires was founded in 1863 and incorporated into the University of Buenos Aires in 1911. It constituted the model for national schools throughout the country that followed its encyclopedist-based humanist curriculum.

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that the expansion of coverage in secondary education implies a reversal of expectations—the abrupt change between the possibility of continuing to attend secondary school or not—of what is imaginable, blurring certain borders. That does not imply the creation of other borders, an aspect that we will discuss in the next section.

 econdary Education in Argentina: Discussions S on Segmentation and School Experience All educational systems establish some criteria for selectivity. Depending on when that occurs, it can be interpreted as a trend towards higher inclusion levels or the persistence of exclusionary mechanisms. The distribution of social positions and the acquisition of goods considered equal is a key aspect of the system. Argentina, unlike other Latin American countries, does not have centralized evaluations to access higher education. Access to higher education is not defined in a unified evaluative instance as occurs in Brazil with the Vestibular (combined with affirmative policies of ethnic or racial base) (Dallaglio and Mataluna 2020), the Prueba de Selección Universitaria in Chile until 2020—and the subsequent Sistema de Acceso—or Ecuador’s Examen Nacional para la Selección Universitaria (ENES), for example. The social imaginary concerning unrestricted and free access to education possibly leads to the delay of the selection dynamics present in all educational systems. However, the type of institution attended becomes increasingly important both in the educational experience and future educational and career trajectory. The massification process of secondary education makes other axes of differentiation preponderant in subsequent career development, such as the attended institution’s prestige (Benza 2016). In that sense, secondary education acquires greater gravitational pull and is presented as the central instance for acquiring knowledge and skills. The educational system distributes enrollment in higher education in an opaque manner without following clear criteria. The immediately previous step, access to secondary education, also presents some chiaroscuro. In 1984, entrance exams were eliminated as a general rule for access to secondary education establishments, although there are still some exceptions that we will address in this section. From that year onwards, it was established that the allocation of vacancies would be done by public lottery in each school. However, each jurisdiction also incorporates its criteria for assigning vacancies—which vary between the order of arrival, repeating first-year students, siblings of students who attend the school, and students with an excellent ‘academic result’ the previous year or the coexistence of admission exam and lottery (DIEE/MECCyT 2019; Andrada, 2008). This issue is vital given that, as Walzer (2004) points out in his classic study on justice, who attends school and with whom is central since school vacancies are social goods and their distribution will affect the dynamics of association or will deepen segregation.

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Until the pandemic of 2020, the system experienced a plateau effect in the distribution of enrollment in state and private establishments, although in several urban centers, the weight of the latter subsystem had increased. It was most extended in Buenos Aires City since enrollment is distributed in half for each type of establishment. In those years, studies proliferated in the literature emphasizing the need to specify whether we are facing a process of fragmentation or segregation and how the two concepts are connected. Some studies carried out in Argentina’s capital, such as that of Gamallo (2011), point out the student migration from public to private schools in sectors of lower quintiles as part of a gesture of social distancing: an opportunity for social improvement and access to a place of care. Other works emphasize the exacerbation of educational segregation processes as they find that subsidized private schools carry out a selection of their enrollment through aptitude tests and interviews (Moschetti and Snaider 2019). Those processes describe a phenomenon associated with residential segregation, competition between schools, and the presence of selection and discrimination mechanisms in certain institutions (Murillo and Duk 2016). Indeed, as some authors refer to a paradoxical movement to interpret the relationships between city and inequality in Latin America in the last decade—since the expansion of fragmented metropolitan areas persists while income inequality has slightly reduced, consolidating networks and segregated circuits (Segura 2020)—it is plausible to think of a similar phenomenon in secondary education. In this case, concomitantly with the expansion of secondary education, a distributionist pattern of a segmented nature persists and worsens. The characteristics of the educational offer contribute to the creation of different social imaginaries about each educational experience, the implications of studying in a particular type of institution, and the expectations about education. In 2020, together with Victoria Seca and Valentina Arce Castello, we carried out a CEPAL-IIPE UNESCO Buenos Aires and UNICEF-LACRO study titled ‘Diversificación de la estructura de la escuela secundaria y segmentación educativa en América Latina: la experiencia de adolescentes y jóvenes’. That study was part of a larger project, coordinated by Felicitas Acosta with collaboration from Tomás Esper. The research showed that the impact of the deepening of the diversification of the educational offerings configures a mosaic of options, not all equally accessible. According to our report, the school selection process is led, in general lines, by three criteria: (a) academic offering and social prestige of the school; (b) institutional continuity and orientation (Arts, Tech, etc.); and (c) geographic proximity, prioritizing aspects related to guaranteeing availability. The most straightforward procedures concerning forms of admission are present in the institutions that our report characterizes as programs of study that are differentiated from regular education (elite programs, dependent on national universities), which at the same time concentrate representations tied to their prestigious character. The more traditional privately run establishments, and those aimed at the upper-middle classes, have a double lock. The first, and most obvious, is the economic one due to the high fees and the economic resources that families must mobilize. However, many institutions also incorporated admission or placement exams that add to other more informal admission criteria.

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However, in addition to the appreciation of the educational offering, other issues are also at stake. According to Gessaghi (2016), some in the economic elite and ‘traditional families’ choose, for the education of their children, institutions that do not stand out for their high academic level, but maintain their relevance in a formative experience that involves aspects such as guaranteeing endogamous sociability of class that allows them to nurture a specific type of relationship network, favoring an education in certain values ​​over an academic one. That choice is framed in a reading of parallel processes, particularly concerning pursuing higher education. Indeed, recent studies have shown that previous learning experience and familiar traditions in university are central to the interpellation that higher education institutions make to young people from different socioeconomic households (Fuentes 2017). Within this institution, we also include establishments dependent on national universities; there are about a hundred spread throughout the country in Argentina. Those institutions are usually prioritized by professionals or family members of graduates, and they are characterized by an education offering linked to the acquisition of knowledge aimed at continuing to higher education. That aspect makes it so that many teaching and learning practices encourage the young person’s autonomy. Likewise, they are the only public institutions that establish a student selection process, which varies between admission exam, primary school grades average, lottery, quotas for specific profiles, among others (Di Piero 2017).9 In those cases, the admission mechanism implies the mobilization and investment of the students and their families’ time and economic resources. The young students’ stories describe the personal challenges they faced and the fact of having experienced the admission exam and the previous preparation with discomfort and high levels of anxiety and anguish. Students from different parts of the country emphasize the incidence of the economic resources to ‘afford a private tutor’, the effort of combining primary studies, private tutoring, and the admission course (that takes place throughout the school year), the time required for preparation, and the worry of not passing the exam. However, there is also a kind of school selection in other institutional types for families searching for a particular institutional style. That aspect is mainly observable in technical secondary schools and secondary schools with an uncommon orientation (Languages or Arts). This point allows us to discuss the existence of segregation processes within each subsystem. At the same time, some state-run institutions have a certain halo of prestige or condense positive representations.

9  According to recent studies, 67.2% of those who tried to enter the schools did not succeed (Landivar 2019). These institutions are not confused with those created in 2014 by the ‘Proyecto de creación de nuevas escuelas secundarias con Universidades Nacionales’ dependent on the Universidad de Avellaneda, Universidad Nacional de Gral. Sarmiento, Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Universidad Nacional de San Martín—all in Greater Buenos Aires—and the Universidad de Buenos Aires, based in the Lugano neighborhood, a lower-income neighborhood in south Buenos Aires. In those establishments, the admission and organization of the educational offering and the enrollment profile differ considerably from what happens in the more traditional institutions.

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That also happens in private institutions where we find a wide variety of offerings for different audiences. Technical secondary schools are widely valued both for being very demanding and time-consuming (they require one extra year of schooling and the school day is longer: students attend theoretical courses plus workshops) and easing access to the job market. With a lesser presence in Argentina, technical secondary schools also imply a differentiation insofar as they constitute a bet on future labor insertion, their demands, the dynamics of learning a trade, and a “know-how”. The overcrowded secondary education landscape makes the ‘bachilleratos’ (regular secondary schools, the most widespread throughout the country) highly heterogeneous. Their characteristics vary according to the type of orientation—Communication, Languages, and Arts are the most valued—or aspects such as seniority, for those schools created in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that persist today and are distinguished by their monumentality and their prestigious education. In the latter type of establishments, admission is usually gained through two routes: access from another educational level—such as educational continuity within the same establishment—or by taking a language admission exam. In several institutions of the artistic modality, the young students must also prepare ahead during their last year of primary education. In summary: music orientation, intensification in language training, and international baccalaureate diploma are all lines of differentiation in the diverse set of public schools. The personal narratives intertwine the emphasis on the importance of the orientation, the admission exams, or having attended all educational levels in the same establishment. For their part, other families revalue the political nature of public schools, as highlighted by Naradowski and Gotteau (2017). Location within a city’s geography or the jurisdiction to which it belongs is not a minor aspect of this uneven distributional dynamic. The selection of schools implies implementing strategies to access central-located schools or schools in other localities with better reputations. Many times, families change their address, live in one jurisdiction, but their children attend schools in another (because the parents work there or the perception that the school is better than in their home locality), they resort to schools outside their neighborhood. Those long-standing processes are intertwined with other recent ones in the discussion about the return to in-person schooling. As a result of the COVID 19 pandemic—and as a future scenario—public/private migration may accelerate (in two ways, either due to the high cost of school fees in relation to the virtual or in-person offering or access to a better-organized offering), between jurisdictions—registering in one that has more days of in-person schooling, regardless of whether the family lives or not in said jurisdiction—and even within one establishment, due to discussions among families about the characteristics of the offering during that juncture. Those dynamics acquire a character that we are yet to understand, but it will undoubtedly redesign the entire enrollment process. Finally, in other cases, proximity to the student’s residence, siblings or friends attending the same school, and ease of access is prioritized. In these cases, the location of the school takes precedence. Proximity to home translates almost literally as

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the possibility of creating a more personalized bond. That trend was noted by Ziegler and Nobile (2014), who point out that the personalized accompaniment of students is a strategy of both elite institutions and schools that welcome young people from low-socioeconomic status households. Those types of institutions are usually of medium or small size in terms of infrastructure and enrollment. In high school schools in urban centers (bachilleratos), the choice also involves another aspect related to time and convenience to travel by public transport or on foot: the school’s proximity to the student’s home. In their narratives, the young students emphasize travel times, although they also clarify that the availability of seats becomes the priority in large urban centers. If, on the one hand, these processes are linked to choice by default, the result of inequality in access to information and internalization of limits, on the other, the subjects attach positive attributes to that choice. These explanations function as mechanisms that adjust expectations towards the near and possible, both as reconfiguring expectations and internalizing the limits regarding what type of educational institutions to aspire to. Proximity, accompaniment, and ‘neighborhood’ character acquire positive connotations. It is worth questioning the effect of those dynamics during and after the pandemic. Again, the answer is not simple. These dynamics can deepen the segregation in specific educational spaces linked to geographical areas and lead to a revaluation of those same establishments due to neighborhood bonds and short distances to travel that avoid exposure to long journeys on public transportation.

New Dynamics of Educational Inequality Having the notion of inequality as our starting point for reflection invites us to consider its relational character and emphasize those differences that are considered illegitimate. The current configuration of the educational system in the region shows, as we noted in the first section, different trends concerning laws, the expansion of enrollment, and changes in educational offerings. When focusing on Argentine secondary education, development and diversity of the offer are observed, varying in institutional types. It is also possible to find differences within each group, so the panorama is diverse. There is a constellation of proposals in secondary education that, in turn, are valued differently by the students and their families. A priori, the presence of a diversity of institutional offerings does not per se imply that this expansion implies dynamics of inequality. Therborn’s (2015) work highlights the distinction between differences, given or chosen (in terms of styles) and inequalities, which are socially constructed. Therefore, inequality can be thought of as a difference that violates some rule or assumption of equality (Therborn 2015). Likewise, it is crucial to contemplate, especially in the face of demands for recognition of diversity, that the social categories of difference are constructed historically and culturally, vary in time and space, and ‘once established, they have a full influence on production and reproduction of inequalities’ (Jelin 2020: 156).

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The conceptual discussions and approaches to the study of inequalities today possess new elements and perspectives. In a suggestive article discussing the research agenda on inequalities in the region, Kessler (2019) makes explicit the analysis limits according to the indicator used. The author highlights, for example, that the drop of the Gini coefficient does not reveal the original division between capital and labor or what happens with the distribution between classes, ethnic groups, and genders. In this way, the research agenda on educational inequality has incorporated new aspects of analysis and dynamics, beyond the inequalities of access and career, and origin based on indicators such as income or family educational level. One critical work in that direction is Reygadas (2020), in which the relationships between differences and inequalities are presented as one of the five symbolic processes through which inequalities are produced, reproduced, and interrogated. Indeed, inequalities are exacerbated when cultural affinities, lifeworlds, daily experiences, and conditions of existence are increasingly contrasting between the elites and the most disadvantaged social groups. In this text, we return to that perspective and propose to think about intertwined processes, for example, with access to symbolic goods such as education or culture and the categorization and creation of limits. We understand that one of the dimensions where it is feasible to observe the widening of the differences is educational experiences.10 Based on this conceptual framework, in this work, we propose that the type of educational institution, while providing a differential educational experience, functions as a cleavage of expression of inequality. We do not intend here to exhaust the debate but rather the opposite, to contribute new lines of discussion to studies on the fragmentation of secondary education, the exacerbation of the distances between those who attend total institutions and those who go through a limited school experience (Saraví 2015) or the importance of ‘deserving’—who deserves to be in school—as shown by Chaves et al. (2017). The pandemic updates these debates. The response of the educational policies at the macro level and the school institutions at the micro-level has revealed two issues: inequality in the characteristics of the educational offering and inequalities in access to said response. Both processes were sustained by a preceding dynamic: the naturalization and legitimation of these same inequalities. On that substrate, as cultural support for the inequalities that regulate social interactions and distances (Bayón and Saraví 2019), new lines of differentiation are established. To put it more clearly: the axes of differentiation and the exacerbation of the differences between youth educational experiences according to the type of institution were pre-existing events to the pandemic, which were heightened during this time. The evidence shows that educational establishments in Argentina reacted differently, but in a way that we can inscribe as part of the mosaic of institutional types described. Quite clearly, the institutions reproduced the same chiaroscuro in remote education as in-person education. Some schools replicated the in-person model  This discussion is interrelated with the classification process that Reygadas takes from the analysis of persistent inequality by Tilly (2000) and the establishment of categories that erect boundaries between groups, attributing qualities and defects to participants on each side.

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through platforms such as Zoom or Meet, weaving together hours of synchronous classes; in other schools, the writing and sending of papers predominated; there were many schools where WhatsApp was the primary form of contact. Many establishments combined platforms and used Google Classroom as the main platform to communicate homework. In other places, the students accessed booklets that were handed in together with bags of groceries.11 On the other hand, the difficulties in accessing the school educational offering during the pandemic exposed the lack of laptop distribution programs12 as well as connectivity issues, interrelating educational inequalities and access to public services. It is worth noting that both processes occurred concomitantly with the debate on whether to resume in-person schooling or not and with the redefinition of what is understood by ‘school’, with teachers adapting to multiple isolation bubbles and platforms. The youth narratives account for the heterogeneity of responses and the consolidation of inequalities. In turn, the most mobilized participants calling for resuming in-person schooling are precisely those groups that have guaranteed admission, permanence, education, and exit processes in the educational system. These cleavages occurred quite clearly according to social class and regions of the country. It is possible to find there new axes where inequality is expressed. In this time of uncertainty, the images and social representations built on the schools are associated with the personal qualities of the students who attend them (Bayón and Saraví 2019). In research carried out in Mexico, Bayón and Saraví point out that the students deployed strategies of self-blame and internalization, saying of the school that they have been admitted to: ‘it’s the one that I deserve.’ We can imagine something similar to that phrase in the students’ mouths in the year 2020. The type of bond between them and their teachers, the students’ support and the type of homework they were assigned, and the link with socio-educational policies. In short, the characteristics in which educational continuity occurred are part of a new differentiation in the schools’ prestige and social value. The capacity to develop educational offering during the pandemic appears as a line of distinction. Elizabeth Jelin (2020) warns that study the dimensions of inequality should not analyzed as a product of a summation or addition. She reminds us of the importance of understanding its configuration. In the educational field, class, gender, ethnic, or territorial inequalities intersect with the type of institution attended. The student’s perception of school choice, the characteristics of the educational offering, and the student’s school experience reflect both the expansion of the offering and the configuration of new dynamics of inequality (before, during, and, possibly, after the pandemic). That dynamic is expressed, fundamentally, in different institutional  Those offerings are, in turn, conditioned by the quality of Internet connection and access to a computer. According to a report from the Ministry of Education and UNICEF, 79% of those who attend privately managed secondary education schools have access to a computer, and 56% have permanent access to good Internet connectivity. For students attending state-run institutions, those numbers are reduced to 42% and 39%, respectively. 12  Argentina’s Conectar Igualdad program was created in April 2010. It aimed to deliver a netbook to all students and teachers in public secondary schools, special education schools, and teacher training institutes. It ended in 2016. 11

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types that widen inequalities in learning and forms of sociability and affect the construction of social imaginaries about the future.

Some Conclusions for Further Discussions In this work, we focused on a less considered aspect in the study of educational inequalities. We analyzed it, exploring the dynamics that occur and the consolidation and expansion of a diverse offer of secondary education institutions. In a scenario of dispersion and fragmentation, the different types of institutional offerings provide different learning. The decision or choice to study in a specific institution functions as a projection of the subsequent educational trajectory, in a way that configures processes of disguised selectivity. The increase in educational coverage, at least until before the pandemic, was reflected in two trends. Although choosing a school seems to have become easier, maybe more so for some households than others, opportunities are unevenly distributed among those who can choose between different alternatives and those who can only choose between the schools that are closest to them or by default, in a situation where they have access to imperfect information. That may be due to differences in resources and expectations between what is desired and possible: symbolic borders that appear to mark different destinies. In this chapter, we point out the different types of inequalities in Argentine secondary education. First, pre-existing ones to the pandemic: access and the type of trajectory as limits to expansion. Second, inequalities in the perception of the educational good in terms of the social imaginary about the type of institution and the opportunities it brings. In this scenario, when admission time comes, school selection functions as a critical element that allows for divergent trajectories to be imagined. In some cases, it is considered a ‘choice,’ a bet on the future; in others, the intention is what matters, or it is the only available option to continue studying. In many cases, families look for crucial advantages for their children, thus multiplying cleavages and hierarchies within the educational system (Dubet 2015). We understand that this vital aspect of the distributive processes happening in secondary education appears in an opaque way in the educational system and permeates school experiences so that it augurs unequal trajectories. The preliminary findings of our research allow us to say that there is sedimentation taking place in the school experience of inequality, which affects the possibilities of imagining different futures (Santos Sharpe and Núñez 2021). It is necessary to continue investigating these questions, but these approaches provide the initial elements to do so. In addition, we must consider the differences between those students who had a greater bond with their institutions and found a better-organized offering—both remotely and in-person—and those who lost touch with their schools or dropped out. In short, the challenge that the educational system faces, and will face, is to build hybrid models and, fundamentally, less segregated educational spaces where the perception of the quality of goods expresses the possibilities of common belonging.

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Part II

Gender Inequalities

Chapter 6

Gendered Necropolitcs: Inequalities and Femicides in Central America Montserrat Sagot

Central America is one of the most violent regions in the world outside of an open war zone, with countries like El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala presenting some of the highest homicide rates (UNODC 2019). As a result of this deadly process, El Salvador and Honduras also have the highest femicide rate in the world (Small Arms Survey 2016). Globally, El Salvador and Honduras stand out with rates of more than ten female homicides per 100,000 women. The level of violence affecting women in El Salvador and Honduras exceeds the combined rate of male and female homicides in some of the 40 countries with the highest murder rates in the world (Small Arms Survey 2016). Guatemala is also among the ten countries with the highest femicide rates on the planet. As a regional tendency, female homicides have increased at a higher rate than male homicides during the first two decades of the twentieth century (Menjívar and Walsh 2017; Programa Estado de la Nación 2021). Aside from being the most violent region in the world, Central America is also one of the most unequal in terms of income distribution (CEPAL 2019). Furthermore, Central America also experiences historical gender as well as horizontal inequalities around race and ethnicity inherited from a colonial past. As several studies have suggested, income inequality and economic deprivation show a strong and causal effect on crimes such as murder (Bailey 1984; Parker and Toth 1990; Grana 2001). Sociopolitical, race, and gender inequalities, notably unequal access to resources, are also known to be a root cause of violent behavior (UNODC 2019). Women living in this type of environments, marked by different types of inequalities and social disorganization, are at an increased risk of becoming the victims of violence, including its most extreme manifestation: femicide.

M. Sagot (*) University of Costa Rica, San José, Costa Rica e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Vommaro, P. Baisotti (eds.), Persistence and Emergencies of Inequalities in Latin America, Latin American Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90495-1_6

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While femicide is a universal phenomenon, there are certain contexts, generated by histories of colonial domination, exclusion, racism, sexist social norms, impunity, and the presence of organized crime that propel the conditions for an increased rate of femicides. Thus, gender, race, class, age, produce the flesh and bone of the female body whose life is at stake in contexts of multiple expressions of inequality. This chapter will analyze how the multiple systems of inequality in Central America, exacerbated by the pandemic, have ended up producing a lethal context for women or a gendered necropolitics. That is, a brutally stratifying social system whose discourses and practices produce the conditions to make some women, particularly the young, poor, and racialized ones, “biopolitically disposable”. In order to address the relationship between inequality and femicide in Central America, the paper first presents a conceptual definition of femicide and discusses the micro and macro societal factors associated with the incidence of this type of crime. The second section deals with Central America and its long history of violence and unequal relations, which generated the conditions for a context of disposability of many bodies, particularly female bodies. The escalation of lethal violence against women in the region and the construction of a gendered necropolitics are discussed in the final section.

 emicide: The Most Extreme Form of Violence F against Women Violence against women has been identified as an endemic social problem, stemming from a social organization structured on the basis of gender and other forms of structural inequality. It is also an extreme manifestation of discrimination and a deadly tool to maintain women’s subordination. This type of violence involves a combination of everyday, interpersonal violence, such as domestic or family violence, and systemic gender-based crimes promoted by organized groups or authoritarian and repressive States (Sagot 2020). Different studies conducted around the world indicate that violence against women is also the result of how gender subordination intersects with other categories of power and resource distribution, such as class, ethnicity, age, nationality, migration status, geographical location, sexuality, etc., creating different levels of risk and vulnerability for women (Sokoloff and Dupont 2005; Johnson et al. 2008; Muñoz Cabrera 2011). The reality of domination at the societal level is the most crucial factor contributing to, and maintaining, this type of violence at the individual level. Violence against women also manifests itself in a continuum, with widening patterns that go from the less harmful forms to the most lethal ones, including psychological, physical, economic violence, and sexual acts and threats. All these forms of violence constitute socially and politically constructed acts and femicide stands at the end of the continuum as the most acute form of violence against women.

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Femicide is defined as the killing of women because they are women (Radford and Russell 1992). It is perpetrated by men to obtain domination and control based on a sense of superiority over females, by sexual pleasure, or by assumption of ownership over women (Radford and Russell 1992). A femicide involves then the misogynistic killing of females by male relatives, intimate partners, former partners, suitors, sexual attackers, known or unknown to the women, when women’s bodies are objectified, used as trophies, or used as an instrument for revenge among men. Femicide is a dramatic expression of the inequality between the feminine and the masculine and it is an extreme manifestation of domination, terror, social vulnerability, extermination and, even, impunity (Sagot 2013). In that sense, femicide is caused by an unequal power structure that puts women in a position of subordination, which expresses itself in the material, the institutional, and the symbolic. The concept of femicide is very useful because it helps us understand the social and generalized character of the phenomenon of violence against women and it allows us to dismantle arguments that this type of violence is a personal, family, or private matter. Instead, talking about femicide firmly grounds this violence in the profoundly political, as it is the result of structural relations of power, domination, and privilege between men and women in society. Through the use of the concept of femicide, it is possible to deconstruct the androcentric structures that elide unequal power relations and men’s motives to take women’s lives (Monárrez Fragoso 2015). The bodies of slain women, many of them left with signs of torture, mutilation, sexual abuse, overkill, or abandoned in fields and even in garbage dumps, become also important signifiers of the gender system and of the economic social class system. Thus, women’s dead bodies are transformed, in this manner, into concrete expressions of a profoundly unequal society that even despises women and femininity. As Julia Monárrez Fragoso (2015) argues, women are the objects of a violence unleashed against a biological body—that of an individual—and also against a cultural body shaped by gender, economic, and racial relations, as well as by public insecurity and a masculine State which does nothing to prevent these deaths. Therefore, in cases of femicide, the victim-perpetrator relationship reveals unequal power relations on the macro and micro levels. That is to say, in the unfolding of a femicide, it is possible to see in operation the unequal relations that exist between the individual victim and the perpetrator, and also the social relations of gender in its intersections with other determinants such as class, age, race, sexuality, etc. In that sense, this extreme form of violence also makes visible other social and economic injustices that have affected victims, their families, and, even, the communities where these deaths have occurred. Therefore, a femicide is the distinct mark – the final one—branded upon the female bodies that have experienced multiple forms of dispossession and injustice. A femicide can take place in both the public and private spheres. It can be perpetrated by individuals or groups, States (directly or indirectly), or parallel power structures—the de facto powers—all of which, when committing or propitiating the murder, show how they have the power to decide who counts and who does not in a given society (Fregoso and Bejarano 2010; Monárrez Fragoso 2015).

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When addressing extreme forms of violence, it is necessary to highlight that while the great majority of murder victims in the world are men, the types of violence they suffer, the relations between victim and perpetrator, and the contexts of their deaths are very different from the women’s (UNODC 2013; UNODC 2019; Geneva Declaration Secretariat 2015). A very high percentage of men are attacked by strangers or men outside of their family circle, for reasons associated with business disputes, street fights, organized crime, police violence, or political conflicts. The situation is very different with women, where it is estimated that almost 60% of all women’s murders are committed in the context of an intimate or family relationship or due to sexual violence. Women are also the main victims of “murder-­ suicides” events (Geneva Declaration Secretariat 2015). Hence, most women are killed for reasons related to their gender and by men who are close to them, motivated by a sense of dominance and control. Women are also killed as a result of sexual violence such as rape, sexual trafficking, or when their bodies are viewed and treated as a territory to be fought over by the parties in conflict (Wilson 2014). On the other hand, less than 6% of men are killed for reasons associated with domestic, family, or sexual violence and still less are victims of murders committed by women who are close to them (UNODC 2013; Geneva Declaration Secretariat 2015). In that sense, even though men are the principal victims of homicide globally, women continue to bear the heaviest burden of lethal victimization as a result of gender inequality and misogynist ideologies.

Central America: A Long History of Violence and Inequality Central America is characterized by its geographic, social, ethnic, and cultural diversity. However, the countries in the region have some features in common: a long history of colonial domination, which resulted in systemic racism, land grabbing practices by the elites, and the presence of enduring oligarchies, characterized by their masculinist and authoritarian profile (Torres-Rivas 1981; Solís 2006; Lebon 2010). In addition, there have been historical and continuing asymmetrical political and economic power relations with the colonial and imperial powers. First with Spain, England, and later, with the United States. At the end of the nineteenth century, the different governments in the region opened the door to North American entrepreneurs, with generous concessions, including tax exemptions, duty-free importation for all goods necessary to their operation and, more importantly, free access to far reaching lands (Leonard 1993). Those concessions not only benefited the local elites, securing them international political and economic alliances, but also promoted a process of land appropriation by the first transnational companies, such as the United Fruit Company, and also created the bases for the installation of an infamous institution: the “enclave”. This was also the beginning of the direct intervention by the United States in the internal affairs of the region. The US intervention in the region continued for the most part of the twentieth century and Central American leaders and elites willingly

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cooperated with Washington’s strategies during the depression of the 1930s, World Word II, and, particularly, during the Cold War and the campaigns against communism (Leonard 1993; McCormick 2019). During that period, with the exception of Costa Rica, neither the local elites, nor Washington policymakers wanted to invest in the improvement of the quality of life of the populations, or guarantee them some basic services and rights. From the early 1960s, the Central American elites, influenced by anticommunist politics, strengthened its dominion and started to brutally suppress any opposition, particularly the revolutionary movements that were created in different countries as a result of the harsh living conditions provoked by the long history of exclusion and dispossession. During the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, the military regimes and dictatorships that characterized some of the Central American countries developed a repressive machinery that was brutally employed against the population. As a result, Central America witnessed some of the worst massacres that took place in the twentieth century in the Western Hemisphere, such as the massacre of El Mozote (El Salvador, 1981) and the massacre of Dos Erres (Guatemala, 1982). The political conflicts and systematic violations of human rights continued even into the 1990s in countries like El Salvador and Guatemala. It is important to remark that, as part of the counterinsurgency strategies developed against mostly unarmed populations in this period, the military regimes exerted specific forms of violence against women. Gang rape, sexual slavery, mutilation, torture, and forced pregnancy were part of the ongoing forms of terrorizing women at different moments in Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua (Fregoso and Bejarano 2010; Franco 2013; Casaús Arzú and Ruiz Trejo 2017). The murder of women and children in front of the men of their families and communities was also practiced as an act of humiliation and an extreme assertion of authority on the part of armed forces. As Koonings and Kruijt (1997: 7) assert, in many Central American countries “there was an iron-clad civility for the privileged few, and violence against the underprivileged masses was a routine affair”. A new historical cycle began in Central America with the victory of the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua in 1979. After that, the Peace Accords signed in 1987 opened up opportunities for putting an end to the war and to the military regimes. The process was a complex one and was prolonged until specific peace accords were signed in El Salvador in 1992 and in Guatemala in 1996, which, finally, propitiated a democratic transition involving all countries. However, the transition to democracy was restricted and incomplete. Peace agreements were signed and the war was over, but not the conditions that generated it in the first place. The transition was mostly to formal electoral democracies, but the majority of the States in the region continued without assuming their responsibilities to invest in social development or to provide conditions for guaranteeing the well-being of the general population. Although all countries became political democracies senso stricto, most of these societies remain socially and economically undemocratic (Desmond Arias and Goldstein 2010). In addition, the peace accords did not end the authoritarian tradition, which remained lingering in the architecture

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of the States and in the production of policies or the omission to produce them. The most salient example of this was the 2009 coup d’etat in Honduras, backed by the United States. Furthermore, the democratization process was very rapidly combined with neoliberal, market-oriented policies. As a result, the extreme asymmetries have only deepened, making Central America one of the most unequal regions in the world in terms of wealth distribution (Pérez Sainz 2014). Wealth distribution is the starting point for any analysis of redistributive injustice and its consequences. Poverty rates are also staggering in the region: 55% of the population lives in poverty and over 30% in extreme poverty (CEPAL 2019). The poverty rate for Honduras alone is 66% and for Guatemala and Nicaragua is over 50% (Banco Mundial 2021a, 2021b). In the case of Guatemala, one-fifth of the population lives with incomes between US$5.5 and US$13 per day, meaning that 85% of the population is poor or vulnerable to falling into poverty in the event of a shock (Banco Mundial 2021a, b). Poverty has a more profound impact on the indigenous, afro-­ descendants, and rural populations. Also, the proportion of women among the poorest sectors has experienced an important growth in recent years (CEPAL 2021). According to Menjívar and Walsh (2017), who ends up poor is not an accident, it is the outcome of deliberate policy decisions that cause and perpetuate social and economic exclusion. Neoliberal reforms that lead to the displacement of workers, increases in unemployment, underemployment, and insecurity lie at the root of expanded forms of structural violence in the lives of the poor today. Poverty conditions are exacerbated by the fact that the majority of the people in the work force (63%) is in the informal sector, which means no security of any kind (OIT 2018). In the case of Central America, women are concentrated in the most precarious and lowest-paying forms of informal work. In every country of the region, even in Costa Rica, the material well-being is one of the dimensions that presents the most profound inequalities between women and men (World Economic Forum 2021). Thus, the vast gender asymmetries that exist in Central America, in terms of resource distribution and opportunities, put women in positions of great vulnerability to different forms of exploitation, abuse, and even death. Moreover, the conditions of dispossession are so extreme in the region that, in Guatemala, 53% of the population suffers from malnutrition. In fact, Guatemala has the fourth highest rate of chronic malnutrition in the world and the highest in Latin America, with indigenous and rural populations disproportionately affected. Chronic childhood malnutrition, the one that has irreversible consequences and causes stunting, affects 47% of all children under the age of five, 58% of indigenous children, and 66% of children in the lowest income quintile (Banco Mundial 2021a, b). In the case of El Salvador, 51% of children under the age of one living in rural areas suffer from anemia due to iron deficiency (WFP 2021). Hunger in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua has increased almost fourfold over the past few years (WFP 2021), affecting now millions of people. Even in Costa Rica, the most advanced democracy in the region, 10% of the population suffers from hunger every day (FAO 2018). In some areas of Central America, people are literally shrinking as a result of hunger and inter-generational malnutrition.

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As a consequence of the historical unfettered exploitation of natural resources, Central American countries have borne the brunt of different climate emergencies, including hurricanes, droughts, and erratic weather, which have disrupted food production, destroyed homes and livelihoods, and killed thousands in many communities. The climate emergencies and the government’s inaction on those issues have provoked more poverty, hunger, insecurity, mass displacements, and even more violence. Conflict over natural resources has always been a major driver of violence, both at interpersonal and national levels (O’Brien 2017). As stated before, after a long history of colonial domination, inequality of different sorts, racism, the direct intervention of the United States, authoritarian governments, and widespread human rights violations, the transition to democracy was deeply entwined with neoliberal policies. That process was formalized and sealed with the signing of the Free Trade Agreement between the US, Central American, and the Dominican Republic (CAFTA-DR). US, Central American and the Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) restructured the region’s economy and obligated the Central American States to modify their national laws and domestic regulatory capacities for economic activities. Among other issues, CAFTA also limited the means to enforcing the existing environmental laws and guaranteed economic dependence on the United States through massive trade imbalances and the influx of American agricultural and industrial goods that weaken domestic industries and rural economies (Jenkins 2006; Universidad de Costa Rica 2006). According to several studies, in those regions where neoliberal policies have been brutally implemented  – where they have generated exploitation, poverty, extreme inequality, population displacements, and a deterioration of the welfare policies – there is a tendency to construct extremely violent environments (Curry 1997; Ayres 1998; Desmond Arias and Goldstein 2010). In fact, the implementation of neoliberal policies that have led to increasing trends of inequality and precarization of life, as the ones described above for Central America, are at the root of generalized violence (Menjívar and Walsh 2017; Sierra 2021). It is important to point out that while homicide rates in Central America have decreased in the last years, they are still very high compared to other parts of the world. The general homicide rate for Central America in 2019 was 28.8 per 100,000 inhabitants (Infosegura 2021). The rate for Honduras was 43.6, El Salvador 35.8, Guatemala 21.5, and Costa Rica 11.2. Any rate above 10 per 10,000 is considered “epidemic” by the World Health Organization (2002). In addition, homicide rates are only the tip of the iceberg in a violent society. For everyone who dies as a result of violence, many more are injured and suffer from a range of physical, sexual, reproductive, and psychological forms of violence. In Central America, market ideologies have also resulted in unregulated extraction of wealth, which is essential to produce corruption, illegal enterprises (drug, human, and firearms trafficking), more authoritarianism, and impunity. Thus, various countries of the region provide examples of how neoliberalism uses democracy as an instrument for doing business and to provide a good environment for investment, but, at the same time, it builds a social regime characterized by life

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experiences under extremely unequal relations of power. Those countries, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, are examples of how neoliberal capitalism sets limits to democracy, impeding its development towards a truly inclusive system. Many of those limits are set by the de facto powers that concentrate power like never before, such as transnational companies and organized crime that operate in the “second or parallel state”, as Rita Segato (2014) calls it. The de facto powers, organized crime, and other informal groups in particular are, and have been, a significant source of lethal violence in the region. Transnational criminal organizations have sought to secure trafficking routes through Central America by battling one another and local affiliates and by intimidating and infiltrating government institutions. While this phenomenon has been exacerbated by the operation of market ideologies, it is important to recognize that in the past, violence was wielded not only by formal institutions but also routinely by informal groups partnering with the State. Transitions to “democracy” did not eradicate these precedents in various Central American countries. According to Enrique Desmond Arias and Daniel Goldstein: violence is a mechanism for keeping in place the very institutions and policies that neoliberal democracies have fashioned over the past several decades, as well as an instrument for coping with the myriad problems that neoliberal democracies have generated… Such violence is not the simply result of institutional failure but the logical outcome of neoliberal democracy unfolding (Desmond Arias and Goldstein 2010: 5).

As a result, access to law and justice remains a privilege in Central America, as does the ability to navigate the legal systems. As stated by Jenny Pearce (2018), social and economic inequality “subvert” the rule of law. In many countries, the impunity levels surpass 90% for all reported crimes (CIPREVICA 2018) and the conviction rate in cases of homicide is only around 5 per 100 murders (Pearce 2018). The lack of access to justice has created a structural impunity that perpetuates and even encourages the repetition of violent acts. Therefore, the failure to address violence through legal procedures correlates with the rise of lethal violence while also serving the interest of various actors, with public, political, business, or de facto powers. Following the analysis of Patricia Hill Collins (1998), it is possible to argue that violence is the tie that binds the different forms of inequality. In that sense, violence is a site of intersectionality that structures the relationship among different social, political, and cultural hierarchies. Violent acts become then legitimated and promoted in relationship to inequalities generated by class, race, gender, age, and sexual orientation mediated through the legal system, government agencies, and other social institutions. In recent times, neoliberalism is the phenomenon that catalyzes and strengthens the tie between violence and inequality. In that sense, prevalence of the market forces imposed by neoliberalism represents a serious questioning even to the formal citizenship model of liberal democracies of the twentieth century. The techniques of neoliberal globalization are invested with moral calculus about more or less worthy subjects, practices, and visions (Ong 2006). By producing segregation and exclusion, authoritarianism, the resurgence of

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religious fundamentalisms, and renewed relations with the global centers of power, neoliberalism has generated high levels of violence and insecurity for ample sectors of the population. In Central America, in the last decades, the operation of market ideologies has produced societies that are politically democratic, at least formally, but profoundly authoritarian in its social relations, creating a bio-arithmetic for the disposability of many bodies, those who are not considered worthy. Although violence is generalized, women suffer specific and more extreme forms of brutality in the form of femicide and various other forms of gender violence.

Gendered Necropolitics As stated before, while femicide is a universal and historic phenomenon, there are certain contexts that propel the conditions for an increased rate of femicides. That is the case of Central America. In that sense, femicides are not social anomalies in those contexts. They play a social role in a climate of increasing inequality, authoritarianism, and neo-conservatism and become a key element of a punitive and disciplining discourse. Although the ones who get murdered are usually the most vulnerable ones in terms of age, class, race, location of residence, etc., the coercive message is for all women. As an extreme manifestation of violence against women, femicides not only function as a tool of gender inequality but also as a tool of racism, economic oppression, xenophobia, heteronormativity, and, even, as a legacy of colonialism and its genocidal practices. It is important to point out that for a femicide to take place, a series of individual, cultural, and structural factors must be in alignment. Thus, femicides are the result of several stratifying systems that are operating at the same time, whose discourses and practices end up constructing a context in which some women are “biopolitically disposable”. In those contexts, femicides play a crucial role and become a manifestation of “necropolitics” (Mbembe 2003). This is a lethal politics in which some bodies are vulnerable to marginalization, objectification, and even erasure. From the perspective of necropolitics, those stratifying systems also generate biopower through sovereignty; that is, the power and the capacity to decide who matters and who doesn’t, who is disposable and who isn’t (Mbembe 2003; Casper and Moore 2009). As Melissa Wright (2011) argues, the politics of death and the politics of gender go hand-in-hand and both enter into play to produce a femicide. Hence, femicide, as a manifestation of a gendered necropolitics, instrumentalizes the life of the most vulnerable women, builds a regime of terror, and sentences some to death. Because of those characteristics, some authors consider femicides as a form of capital punishment that plays the role of controlling women as a gender (Radford and Russell 1992; Caputi 1987). Femicides are a systemic tool to make women accept society’s masculine rules and, therefore, to preserve the gender status quo, which is very important for sustaining neoliberal societies.

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Traditional gender roles, the sexual division of labor, ideologies of “separate spheres” for women and men, and heteronormativity are all fundamental features that have helped to structure capitalist societies. They also continue to play a fundamental role in the instauration of a “traditional morality”, which, according to Wendy Brown (2019), characterizes “phase two” of the neoliberal age. By means of femicide, as a lethal sexual politics with a controlling purpose, women internalize the threat and the coercive message, and set limits to their mobility, actions, and behavior, both in the public and private realms. All of which is essential for the reproduction of traditional roles and gender inequality. Some authors even talk about a re-masculinization or a hyper-masculinization of the State and society as a result of the operation of market ideologies in their savage version (Schild 2016). Neoliberal reforms implemented in Central America caused and continue to produce social and economic exclusion, deep tears in the social fabric and the loss of a sense of solidarity and community. As stated before, those reforms have also promoted the formation of a series of de facto powers that freely operate on all planes of existence. All those phenomena lie at the root of the expanded forms of violence experienced in Central America, including the brutal femicides. It is also important to point out that States also ramp up the violence with their “wars on drugs”, increased militarization, and hardline policies, which, in many cases, end up being wars against women and other marginalized groups. So, in this new space-time built as a result of the “marketization” of society and human relations, extremely precarious conditions and perpetual violence expulse entire groups from the category of “human”. Under this civilizational model, many people live, as Frantz Fanon stated, “under the human line” (1986). And, in this manner, it is in these contexts where necropolitics is most easily installed, as a result of de-humanization and an extreme devaluation of life. Although the devastating consequences of neoliberal reforms and market ideologies affect large sectors of the population in Central America, they impact women and men differently. According to Menjívar and Walsh (2017: 224): “both women and men are robbed, extorted, and killed. However, women suffer qualitatively different and more extreme forms of brutality in the form of femicide and various other forms of gender violence”. As the tie that binds the different forms of inequality experienced by women in the region, femicides and other forms of violence have been on the rise during the last years despite some reductions in the general homicide rates. That is a consequence of the flourishing of the gendered necropolitics, which creates the social conditions necessary to discard many women, particularly from the most excluded groups. A similar situation was seen in Ciudad Juárez after the passage of the Free Trade Agreement between Mexico, the U.S., and Canada (NAFTA). Between 1994 and 2001, the men’s murder rate in that city increased by 300% and the women’s by 600% (Wright 2006). In the case of Central America, after the 2009 coup d’etat in Honduras, male homicide rates increased around 60%, but female homicide rates increased 246%. (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras 2014). In Guatemala, between 2014 and 2018, the proportion of female homicide victims increased in relation to the

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total homicides (Boche 2018). El Salvador also witnessed an escalation of 63% in the rate of lethal violence against women between 2014 and 2017 (Montti et  al. 2018). This tendency is even present in Costa Rica, a country with lower criminality. However, in 2020, male homicides decreased by 3%, but female homicides increased by 38% (Infosegura 2020). In this manner, the political economy and the different systems of inequality are reflected in the bodies of the women killed. In Central America, those bodies are, primarily, of poor, young women with low levels of formal education (Carcedo 2010; Sagot 2013). As instruments of a brutally stratifying system, violence and femicide are not monolithic phenomena. There are individual women and groups of women that are disproportionately exposed to violence and death, as they are in riskier intimate relationships or in more dangerous social positions (or both). In that sense, women from the most excluded and discriminated sectors are those that face the most danger, as they are more easily dehumanized and defined as disposable in the context of a gendered necropolitics. It is important to emphasize that neoliberalism and its resulting structural conditions also have a socio-cultural effect, which is the reinforcing of social norms that justify men’s sense of possessiveness over women. As a response to precariousness, racism, and social exclusion, many communities experience a reinforcement of gendered traditionalisms, religious fundamentalisms, and positive views of aggressive and authoritarian masculinities. Neoliberalism has spurred on the resurgence of traditionalisms that invoke new forms of female submission and the normalization of traditional gender roles that include men’s control of bodies, resources, and family decisions. The interconnection of market ideologies with these traditional gender norms and roles constructs a strong tendency for women to be defined as possessions, trophies, objects of pleasure, and commodities, which opens up many more possibilities for exploitation and violence. In other words, neoliberalism and market ideologies—in their “savage” versions—reinforce the construction of “toxic masculinity”, which expresses itself as power, domination, and control over women and, consequently, as attitudes that lack empathy and promote the dehumanization of women. The construction of toxic masculinity is also bolstered by State authoritarianism and militarization, as well as by the parallel power structures that further appropriation and dispossession through strategies of informal warfare. In these contexts, as Rita Segato (2014) reminds us, violence against women stops being “collateral damage” and is transformed into a strategic objective of domination. Violence against women becomes, in that way, the hegemonic discourse of toxic masculinity and it gives the men who exercise it the possibility of obtaining success in a society that establishes a relationship between manhood, honor, and dominance. When social exclusion takes away men’s economic opportunities, the possibility of having a well-paid job, the prestige and the role of provider, violence becomes a way for re-affirming masculinity, in the absence of other alternatives. Under these circumstances, the social acceptance of violence against women is normalized and toxic masculinity becomes the normal way of “being a man”.

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Social acceptance of violence is extremely problematic because, as several studies have shown, the existence of high levels of tolerance towards this type violence puts women at a higher risk (Heise 1998; WHO 2009). In fact, social tolerance concerning the everyday violence that women suffer is one of the primary factors connected to femicide and considering women’s bodies as disposable. This impacts not only upon women but society at large. In the medium to long run, social acceptance of sexual degradation and violence against women plays a key role in the acceptance and normalization of violence in general. In fact, there are continuities between the extreme forms of violence against women of the past and the femicides of the present days. As Victoria Sanford (2008) asserts, there are haunting similarities between signs of gendered violence and sexualized torture found on victims of femicide today and methods of torture used against women during the civil war years in the region. Social tolerance of violence is also seen in the impunity that serves as fuel for feeding higher rates of women’s abuse and femicide. It also leads to a naturalization of these acts and to the erasing of women as subjects worthy of justice. Hence, the high levels of impunity in cases of femicide, even higher than in other types of crimes in Central America (RESDAL 2013; Saccomano 2017), suggests that this absence of justice for women and punishment for perpetrators is not an accident or the result of failed institutions; rather, it is a structural component of the gendered power system, which is actually promoted by the State’s commissions or omissions to confront and punish violence against women, particularly in its most acute form. Although a gendered necropolitics is present in all the countries of the region, it has some specific manifestations depending on some contextual elements. For instance, in countries or regions with lower levels of criminality, Costa Rica and Nicaragua, for example, women tend to be killed in higher numbers in the context of intimate or family relationships (UNODC 2013). That means that, for these countries, the home is the most dangerous place for women, and the family is the most violent social group. However, in countries and regions with high levels of criminal violence, women are attacked as much in the private as in the public sphere. In those cases, women are also made into lethal victims of activities such as human trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation, disputes, and rites of passage in criminal groups, as well as in those scenarios related to the activities of military, paramilitary, private security, or police forces. Many of those activities and scenarios are interconnected and, sometimes, the separation between the intimate and the non-intimate, and the public and the private vanishes in some of them. That is because, in Central America, political and social violence are intertwined with other forms of violence, and there is a reciprocal relationship between violence exercised from the State or other public actors and violence in private spheres. Thus, the modes of life promoted by the implementation of neoliberal policies, characterized by social exclusion, inequality, and authoritarianism, have closely related manifestations in the public sphere, in the family, and in interpersonal relations. There is, then, a continuum of violence against women, that is normative and functional, which goes from the violence directly promoted or sanctioned by the States, to violence related to socio-political agendas or criminal activities and to everyday and interpersonal violence.

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The new conditions generated by the Covid-19 pandemic have also increased the levels of violence against women in the region and in the world. Violence against women tends to increase in any emergency, including epidemics (UNWomen 2020). Emergency situations and disasters always exacerbate pre-existing inequalities and power hierarchies, which are at the root of the different forms of violence against women. Social disruptions that change patterns of human activity, such as isolation, restricted movement, lockdown measures, and job losses have a particularly acute impact on women. As family members spend more time in close contact, especially under conditions of overcrowding and heightened needs, household stress intensifies and the risk of violence grows even greater for the most vulnerable people, particularly women and children. In addition, the pandemic also produced a revitalization of traditional, family-oriented discourses that contributed to a re-domestication of women. As a result, the chances of women being exposed to violence dramatically increased. In Central America, the pandemic has also fractured many of the already tenuous ties within the communities and reduced even more the limited support mechanisms available to women, which leaves them more isolated and vulnerable. Empty cities have also increased the risks for women who work in the so-called “essential services”. These women are not only more prone to contagion and death, as a result of the virus, but also have become increasingly exposed to sexual violence, kidnapping, and even murder because of the way they have to move around the cities and territories in the context of lockdown measures. In addition, the pandemic contributed to reinforce the most authoritarian and controlling features of some States in the region. In fact, the crisis is giving governments new justifications for the implementation of repressive measures and new forms of political and social coercion. The governments of El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Guatemala are reviving the repressive repertoire of the past and imposing states of exception. There is a radicalization of the apparatus of biopolitical control no longer in the name of national security, as in the past, but in the name of “public health”. As it has been demonstrated, when societies become more authoritarian and coercive, the prevalence of violence increases, especially among women and other vulnerable populations. Thus, while the general homicide rates declined in the majority of the Central American countries during the first year of the pandemic, this was not accompanied by an equivalent decrease in the violent deaths of women. Other forms of violence against women did not decline either. In fact, reports on physical violence showed an increase of 12% to 382%, depending on the country (STM-COMMCA 2020). Therefore, in women’s deaths as a result of misogynistic killings, it is possible to see the convergence of various coercive powers, such as a political economy that creates profound inequalities and exclusions, a State that generates violence, as well as tolerance and impunity to this violence. They also converge the organized crime industry, a model of masculinity associated with control, domination, and honor, as well as a racist and heteronormative system, with renewed relations with the centers of colonial power. The last dispositive that has helped to exacerbate those coercive powers is the pandemic and the States response to it.

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The bodies of women killed, by individuals or collectives, private or public, clearly exhibit a voluntaristic will to exterminate women, which is an integral part of the gendered necropolitics and its sovereign power to discard some female bodies. If we would like to envision a world without femicides it is necessary to emphasize the need to transform the structural factors that promote the establishment of a gendered necropolitics: inequalities, exploitation, authoritarianism in the public and private spheres, religious fundamentalisms, racism, the marketization of social relations, and the hierarchical power relations that naturalize traditional gender norms. That would help to eliminate the precarity of life, to reconstitute the social fabric, and to recover a sense of empathy and solidarity. The transformation of those structural factors would require the construction of a new society and a new biopolitics that respects and embraces life in all its forms, instead of the necropolitics, which has been promoted and reinforced by neoliberal ideologies and practices.

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Chapter 7

Care, Gender and Social Inequalities Karina Batthyány

Introduction In recent years, the term care has begun to appear in the foreground in public policies and has become a key dimension of analysis and research on social policies, particularly those of social protection. Likewise, regulatory advances that point to the recognition of care as a public matter and not a private one began to appear more slowly than desired. The crisis unleashed by the coronavirus pandemic disrupted work, domestic and care dynamics, deepening inequalities and the crisis of care. The purpose of this article is to provide some reflections on the emergence of care as an object of study and as a public problem in Latin America and the Caribbean, in the context of the so-called crisis of care and under the prism of gender inequalities. From its appearance as an academic concern until today, care has become, in general, one of the most dynamic and controversial fields of study in contemporary social sciences. The article aims at presenting a brief theoretical discussion on the construction of care as an object of research, a presentation of the different stages in research on the subject in the Latin American region and its relationship with the field of public policies. In particular, it will also address the impacts of the current pandemic crisis on the issue and the emerging discussions based on the visibility and centrality of care services for life. Gender studies have shown how the tasks that occur in the domestic sphere are crucial and essential for the functioning of the economic system and for social well-­ being. The notion of care arises to represent the work of reproduction, also encompassing the most affective and relational part of these activities. Without pretending to offer an exhaustive definition, it could be said that care designates the action of helping a child or a dependent person in the development

K. Batthyány (*) University of the Republic (UDELAR), Montevideo, Uruguay © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Vommaro, P. Baisotti (eds.), Persistence and Emergencies of Inequalities in Latin America, Latin American Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90495-1_7

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and well-being of their daily life. It involves being in charge of the material care. It is a job. But it also represents an economic care that, at the same time, implies a cost in that sense. It also includes psychological care that entails an “affective, emotional, sentimental bond”. The specificity of care work is based on a relational aspect. Care can be carried out in an honorary or charitable manner by relatives, within the household, or it can be carried out in a remunerated way within the family or not. The nature of the activity will vary depending on whether it is carried out within or outside the family and, also, according to whether it is a paid task or not (Batthyány 2005). In this regard, Carol Thomas (2011) stated the need to define the types of care we are referring to when engaging in debate or research on this issue, and proposed a multidimensional notion of care with the following seven dimensions: • The social identity of the carers, that is, the social characteristics which define the carers in their familial or professional roles. • The social identity of the care recipients, which refers to the social characteristics of the care recipients and their status or degree of dependency. • The inter-personal relationships between the carer and the care recipient. • The nature of care. • The social domain within which the care relationship is located, mainly referring to the distinction between public and private domains, since the characteristics of these two domains differ. • The economic character of the care relationship, to understand if it is waged or non-waged work. • The institutional setting and physical location in which care is delivered.

The Emergence of Care as an Object of Study Care is a concept in a continuous process of theoretical construction, which was incorporated by the academy from common sense without an initial theoretical conceptualization (Carrasco et al. 2011; Thomas 2011). Due to its richness and theoretical density, care ended up becoming, both in academia and in politics, a powerful and strategic concept, which managed to articulate various debates and agendas. Academic debates on care go back to the 1970s, in Anglo-Saxon countries, driven by feminist currents in the field of social sciences to represent the work of reproduction also encompassing the most affective and relational part of these activities. In Latin America and the Caribbean, care has been the object of specific knowledge in the last twenty years. The approach to care began as one of the different types of unpaid work. During the 1970s and 1980s, care was integrated into what was known as “domestic work”. In these early works, care was not central: the emphasis on the study of domestic work was aimed at making visible the tasks that women carried out at home in an unpaid manner but which contributed to individual and social well-being.

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As the studies multiplied, the analysis of these tasks became more complex. New problems were incorporated, such as the link between these tasks with the sexual division of labor and the productive and reproductive spheres (Rodríguez-Enríquez 2015). Progress was made in the description and understanding of the activities carried out within households, and their distribution between men and women. In the process of visualizing and understanding unpaid work, care began to be distinguished from domestic work (Aguirre et al., 2014). Care is similar to domestic work as it shares its invisibility and it is supposed to be associated with certain feminine skills, but it differs due to its relational component (Carrasco et al. 2011). This key shift allowed the diversification of treatments towards care, until it became a specific field of knowledge.

Four Latin American Views on Care Despite the fact that care is currently a highly explored object of study by the social sciences and not only from a gender perspective, there is not a theoretically finished and consensual concept of care, but conceptualizations and empirical studies focused on some of its principal aspects, which depend on the accent of the relational or linking aspects in the definition, its connection with the concept of work and with the professionalization of care. We can reduce the trajectory of the conceptualization of care in the region through four perspectives, which offered different definitions and problems. Firstly, one related to the care economy; a second one that places care as a component of social welfare; a third one that puts emphasis on understanding care as a universal right; and a fourth one that focuses on the ethics of care (Batthyány 2020). The first of these perspectives, that of the care economy, comes from feminist economics, a critical conceptual and methodological proposal that questions the way in which we interpret what part of economics is or not, withdrawing the analysis of markets as the central aspect of the economy. In line with this trend, the care economy is understood as “all the activities and practices necessary for the daily survival of people in the society in which they live” (Rodríguez-Enríquez 2015). From this perspective, care is similar to the idea of ​​reproduction of life and distances itself from more limited views of the meaning of care (Aguirre et al., 2014). Within this framework, several types of research work are developed, which aim, for example, at quantifying the time of care through time-use surveys; develop satellite accounts to measure the share of unpaid care in national accounts; or carry out diagnoses on the supply and demand of care. Numerous works by economists and sociologists in the region have reported on the contribution of women to the provision and distribution of goods and services for the reproduction of life (Esquivel 2011; Vásconez 2012; Espino 2011). In the same vein, research on female migration and its link with care is registered, where the concept of global care chains predominates (Herrera 2013; Sanchís and Rodríguez Enríquez 2011; Anderson 2013; Soto et al. 2012).

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In Colombia, the care economy was highlighted as the predominant perspective. In 2010, a law of the Colombian Congress proposed including the care economy in the national accounts. In this country, there is also a remarkable development of studies, mostly focused on paid caregivers and the consequences that care has on their health and well-being, with the aim of developing tools that improve the practices and management of the care offer (Munevar and Pineda 2020). Other countries where care offer studies stood out were Chile and Brazil. In the Chilean case, different tools are widely spread, such as the use of measurements of time-use, a key methodology for surveying unpaid and care work; the analysis of public policies with a gender perspective; and more recently, the research on care-­ related migration, from the perspective of global care chains (Arriagada 2020). Paid domestic workers in Brazil underwent a process to be differentiated from the concept of “servant”, who traditionally was a caregiver in labor inferiority (practically slaves) and characteristic of the history of care in Brazil. Nowadays, paid domestic work is the most important female occupation, and this has been the main substitute for reproductive work time of middle- and upper-class women, who work in exchange for remuneration: this is where the class, sex and race inequalities that structure this society are manifested (Araujo Guimarães and Hirata, 2021). In this respect, time-use surveys in the Latin American region have been highly revealing, and highlighted the unequal division of unpaid labor between men and women. Despite the fact that time-use surveys conducted in different countries are not always mutually comparable, some very interesting patterns may be observed. Firstly, they show that women have a greater overall workload than men, and that men participate less and spend less time on domestic and care chores. Secondly, they show that women’s total working day, including both paid and unpaid labor, is longer than that of men, and that women’s participation in paid work is lower when they have preschool-aged children. Thirdly, these surveys have revealed that on average, women spend more than twice the amount of time per week caring for children and other household members than men, and the longer time spent by women on these activities increases sharply in the stages of the lifecycle associated with childbearing, whereas, in the case of men, that time remains virtually constant throughout their lives. Childcare, the care of the sick and the elderly increase women’s share of domestic work and the time they spend on it. One of the components identified under unpaid labor is caregiving.1 The view of care as a component of well-being comes from sociology and the analysis of public policies, and it is rooted in feminist critiques of the typologies of well-being regimes introduced by Esping (1990). This criticism aimed at claiming the contribution of families to social welfare and making visible the gender inequalities existing within them. This perspective extended the notion of the welfare regime to the domain of care (Daly and Lewis 2000), and raised the need to

1  This statement does not deny subsequent criticism of the assessment of care through the use of time.

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de-­ familiarize and de-feminize, in addition to de-commoditizing, care work (Torns, 2015). Through the concept of a social care regime, Shahra Razavi (2007) describes the different current schemes regarding the provision and distribution of care, each with its own architecture and assignment of responsibilities. Authors such as Esquivel (2012) took up this analysis to apply it to southern countries, observing that in our region there is no consolidated care regime, but rather incipient actions of segmented access. In addition, the role of the State as a redistributor of resources  – where money transfer packages predominate  – very frequently reproduce gender inequalities (Faur 2014). Empirical research shows that the social organization of care in the region is a dynamic result of the way in which families, the State, the market and community organizations interrelate in a changing way to produce care, and that it still falls preponderantly on women (Esquivel 2011; Rodríguez-Enríquez 2013; Lupica 2014; Salvador 2011; Batthyány et al. 2017). In Argentina, most of the studies have focused on the social organization of care and the discussion about the responsibilities of the State, the market, the family and the community, considering the care of children as a privileged field of research with significant contributions on the tensions between care and paid work, as well as the incidence of cultural guidelines for the resolution of the responsibilities and logics of care (Borgeaud-Garciandía 2020). The third perspective, that of the right to care, can be interpreted as a consequence of the problem posed by the second perspective. The claim that care must be guaranteed as citizens’ rights implies recognizing at the same time the right to receive the necessary care in the different circumstances and moments of the life cycle; the right to choose whether or not to provide care within the framework of unpaid family care; and the right to perform care tasks in the context of decent work that is socially and economically valued according to the contribution to social welfare (Pautassi 2010). These last two analytical perspectives, and the research that has emerged from them in the region, have shown a connection with public policies as a result of their analyses, since their research results are used to question, problematize, suggest or recommend policy actions. The fourth perspective, that of the ethics of care, originates from a reinterpretation of Carol Gilligan’s theory, back in the 1980s, about the existence of a particular morality of women. Although this approach was widely criticized by feminist literature, some of her ideas were taken up later on, breaking the essentialist equation femininity = care, but defending the construction of an ethics of care (Tronto, 1993). This reworking influenced the emergence of lines of research that address the most subjective, emotional and ethical aspects of care. In our region, there are studies that address the caregivers’ perspectives and the role that moral and emotional perceptions play in their performance; or they conceptualize the sexual, relational and emotional dimensions of care work (Soares 2012). In addition, many of the authors who ascribe to this trend question the techniques for measuring care through time-use surveys, and propose alternative approaches that incorporate the idea of​​ exchange, of giving and receiving care (Legarreta Iza 2011).

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The Uruguayan case is a pioneer in the field of generating knowledge about care, but also with regard to public care policies. Although the analysis of care began as one of the different types of unpaid work, in the process of recognizing unpaid work and making it more visible, care began to take its own prominence in the field of research and public policies. Research carried out in Uruguay sought to study the social representations and mandates associated with care work, showing the roots of “familism” in the social organization of care (Batthyány et al. 2013). It also inquired about the changes and prevailing elements in the sexual division of work and gender roles in care tasks, and it provided evidence regarding the transition from a model of female caregivers and housewives to another model of women included in the labor market, who articulate care in various ways according to their socioeconomic level (Batthyány, Genta, and Scavino, 2019). In addition, it analyzed the decision-making processes for making use or not of the time reduction leave for care, which provided key information on the need for a better articulation of time policies (such as leaves) with care services policies, which helped guide public policies (Batthyány et al. 2018).

The Right to Care and Public Policies Latin America presents a great heterogeneity in the social organization of care as a result of the different family dynamics, labor markets and economic structures, and due to the fact that States have dissimilar strengths and traditions. However, the available elements share some common features that characterize the social organization of care in the region. Among these, we highlight the fact that care continues to be a private task, mainly carried out by families and, as we know, by women within families. Thus, bearing in mind the challenges that arise from social, economic and demographic changes, exacerbated during the pandemic crisis, there is a need to advance towards the recognition of the right to care, and its positive inclusion in public policies. This implies at least three lines of action: redistribute, revalue and reformulate care (Perez Orozco and López Gil 2011). Redistributing means building a collective responsibility around care, moving from considering it as a task that is exclusively private to considering it a matter of collective responsibility and, therefore, achieving universal access to dignified care. Revaluing implies dignifying care as work and recognizing it as an essential dimension of well-being. Reformulating refers to doing away with the fact that care is associated to femininity and the family exclusively. These three elements are not independent: redistributing without revaluating will be impossible and vice versa. As long as care work is not valued, only those who have the least ability to choose will do so; at the same time, those who do not provide care cannot value care work, because they will continue to naturalize this task. Recognizing that care is an essential activity and that it should not fall only on women means a revolution that implies changes in all social structures.

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Care policies are under construction and, like all public policies, they must consider multiple interests that are manifested in the different stages of the development cycle according to reality and the national context. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the productive structure, the gender system and the configuration of families consolidated profound inequalities in the distribution of time between men and women. This results in inequalities in terms of opportunities for personal and professional development for men and women, as well as for the exercise of their rights. So much so that, in the region, before the pandemic, women dedicated between 22 and 44  hours a week to domestic and care tasks (ECLAC 2020). The time-use surveys carried out in the region have shown that women spend two thirds of their time performing unpaid work and dedicate one third of their time to paid work, while, in the case of men, this relation is reversed (ECLAC 2020). In Latin America and the Caribbean, social inequalities are closely linked to the unequal provision of family and social care, resulting in a true vicious circle: those with more resources have greater access to quality care, although they have fewer household members that require care. We can affirm that, in general terms, in our region, there are no consolidated public policies in terms of care so far, but incipient actions with little articulation, that is, they do not make up a clear offer of care provision devices or care systems per se. The social organization of care is anchored in family arrangements, with segmented access to public policy instruments for workers in the formal sector of the labor market, people living in extreme poverty or facing particular circumstances. Even some recent policies aimed at care maintain the role of the State as a subsidiary and focus on those who are in conditions of socioeconomic vulnerability. In the different countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, there is a great diversity of policies, programs and regulations that allow States to address care.

The Crisis of Care During the Pandemic The pandemic has made evident the importance of care for the sustainability of life, as well as the low visibility that this sector has in Latin American and Caribbean societies and economies, where it is still considered an externality and not a fundamental component for development. Lockdown measures and the closure of educational and care centers concentrated the burden of care on families. It was a return to the “behind closed doors” practice, and each person had to find a solution according to their own resources. In the Latin American region, as across the globe, COVID-19 had two broad effects on gender inequalities: a disproportionate impact on women’s paid labor, especially in feminized sectors and occupations, and an unequal division of care and household work.

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Feminized sectors and occupation most affected by the economic crisis wrought by COVID-19 included tourism and hospitality, particularly paid domestic work, much of it performed in hotels. In these areas, the pandemic exacerbated economic inequalities among women, as they employ large numbers of women with relatively few valued skills who tend to belong to vulnerable economic groups (Alon et al. 2020). Women are also employed in informal jobs in domestic and care work in a greater proportion than men and so are less likely to be protected by the unemployment benefits available in the formal labor market. In Latin America and the Caribbean, 93% people employed in paid domestic work are women. Domestic work represents, on average, between 10.5% and 14.3% of women’s employment in the region, and a significant segment of the workforce faces precarious conditions and lacks access to social protection. The countries with the highest proportion of women in domestic service are Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina, and here their income is equal to or less than 50% of the overall average income, despite a legally established minimum wage (Araújo Guimarães and Hirata 2021). In most cases, these women also assume responsibility for the care and cleaning of both their own homes and the settings where they work. A second major effect of the pandemic – the distribution of care and domestic work in households – stemmed from the closure of care and educational institutions, together with lack of familial support. With grandmothers and other relatives often at great risk, family members became unavailable for support, thereby increasing the burden of domestic work for many women (ECLAC 2020). In all countries in the region, this effect of closing schools had little visibility outside academic and feminist networks and organizations. Care and work settings often overlap more for women than for men, whose employment and domestic lives tend to provide clearer boundaries. The pandemic and related confinement thus stressed women further by merging care and paid work throughout the day without the distance from home that the workplace can offer. Day-long coexistence with children meant demands for food, attention, entertainment and homework supervision, all of which encroached on the obligations of paid work, which had not necessarily diminished and might, in some cases, have increased. Women with responsibilities for care were often unable to maintain their prepandemic productivity. The pandemic thus revealed the lack of support for workers with family responsibilities. Most had no options either for childcare or for care that other family members required. For them, the closure of institutions rendered the organization of paid work incompatible with care work. The ongoing crisis unveils the unfair social organization of care in Latin America and the Caribbean. The current social organization of care presents a great imbalance between the four areas of access to well-being: families, the State, the market and the community. This social organization of care is based mainly on the unpaid work that women perform within their homes, and it is highly stratified according to social and economic conditions. Gender inequalities have been exacerbated in lower-income households. On the one hand, the demand for care has increased and, in conditions of overcrowding, it has been very difficult to maintain social distancing and sanitary measures. There has been a boost in tasks related to the closure of schools, an increase in the demand

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for health care and the need to raise hygiene standards within households in the context of the pandemic; as we have seen, these tasks fall on women. The health crisis caused by the spread of COVID-19 has made it clearer than ever that unpaid domestic work carried out by women is subsidizing both public services and private benefits. Latin America and the Caribbean was one of the hardest hit regions, not only in health terms, but also in economic terms. According to Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), during 2020 there was a 7.7% drop in regional GDP, which caused the closure of 2.7 million companies, increasing unemployment to 10.7%, an increase of 2.6% points with respect to the figures registered in 2019. As a consequence of these changes in living conditions, the poverty rate rose to 33.7%, the highest figure in the last 20 years (ECLAC 2021). This significant increase in the unemployment rate affected informal workers more intensely, an area where, before the pandemic, 53% of workers belonged to the informal market. According to the ILO, more than half of those 130 million informal workers are women (ILO 2020). The overrepresentation of women in informal work also means that they cannot access retirement rights (Bidegain and Calderón 2018). Eighty-two point two percent of women in the region were not contributing to a pension system (Vaca 2019). In addition to going through this situation of profound vulnerability, few of them have access to social security, being much more unprotected in the face of a situation of sustained employment crisis. The crisis had a differentiated impact on key sectors of female employment. In 2019, women held 61% of jobs in tourism, and 91% of paid domestic work. As a result of job losses and the overload of family care, the female participation rate in the labor market fell from 52% to 45%, returning to the levels that existed a decade ago (ECLAC 2021). In the region, a large part of women stopped earning an income, widening the economic gap that separates them from men. Before the pandemic, for every 100 men living in extreme poverty, there were 132 women (ECLAC 2020). As we have seen, due to inequities and inequalities in the reproductive sphere, women are at a productive disadvantage compared to men. The overload of work on women due to caregiving and unpaid tasks prevents the full development of their autonomy and perpetuates structural inequalities between both genders.

An Agenda in Which Care for Life is at the Center The definition of care is a first and essential step in a broader intellectual and political process, which is the placement of this task at the very core of the social and economic structure. This crisis has made it clear that it is time to start thinking about new forms of social organization in general, where the social organization of care plays a central role. We are in a transition to societies that will undergo reconfigurations in the short and medium terms. We need to be able to establish the necessity to put care at the center, surpassing the market as the organizing axis of common life. A significant

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advance in the region today is the positioning of the issue of care in the public agenda as a result of the displacement of the center of analysis from the private sphere of families to the public sphere of policies. Valuing care implies beginning to think in relational terms, in the recognition and respect of the other, to shift the axis of liberal individuality and the autonomy that prevails in human relationships today and to place interdependence, reciprocity and complementarity at the center. People need goods, services and care to survive. Care is relational and interdependent: we have all needed or will need care at some point in our lives and we have all provided care or will provide care for someone at some stage of our life cycle (Batthyány 2021). The tasks of attention and care are essential for social reproduction, and persons and social well-being. The economy considered productive is sustained by unrecognized and unpaid care work, subsidizing both public services and private benefits. Care policies have great potential to impact the equity of income distribution; the equity between men and women; the promotion of transformation processes within populations; the sexual division of labor and the lack of care at the family level; and the job market. Measures are needed to break the traditional molds so that women are not always the ones who sustain the functioning of our societies at critical moments. The intensification of the care crisis as an effect of the pandemic will not be solved with small adjustments in social policies, nor by distributing care more equitably between men and women at the individual level, but rather with the recognition of its importance and value so that it can be also provided by society and so that the State assumes its responsibility. The care systems aim not only at the generation of a public policy towards dependency but also at a cultural transformation: the transformation of the sexual division of work within the framework of current models that are family-oriented, in order to establish models of solidarity and co-responsibility. This implies rethinking sectoral public policies with their own institutional framework, financing, governance and regulation and provision of services, as well as redefining services and duties that in some cases were attributed exclusively to certain sectors, for example, the education sector, health sector, etc. Care policies should not be considered only as focused or social inclusion policies. The only definitive and effective response to crises in the reproduction of life is given by universal, public and free institutions, by conventional spaces, where the State, market, community and families actively contribute to their development and management, based upon a logic of co-responsibility. Ultimately, it is about building new social pacts in our Latin American and Caribbean societies: agreements between classes, genders and generations, founded on an inalienable real equality – and not only a formal one – and on the recognition of solidarity and interdependence as key values for the construction of a fairer and more sustainable social system in our region.

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Chapter 8

Actions to Promote Gender Equality in the Context of COVID-19 Laura Flamand, Mónica Naime, and Juan C. Olmeda

Introduction The effects of the coronavirus crisis have been particularly acute in Latin America, a region of the world where inequalities have persisted for centuries. Apart from the impact of COVID-19 on the health of the population, lockdowns and “stay-at-­ home” measures have strengthened existing inequalities, especially for women. For example, women are experiencing a severe increase in the number of hours devoted to domestic and care responsibilities. As a result, their income has dropped more than men’s, and they are experiencing more difficulties in recuperating paid jobs. In addition, violence against women has spiked, according to official records. As a result, governments had to react to the situation and implemented concrete initiatives to deal with the crisis. Several studies have already characterized, compared, and evaluated the results of general initiatives. However, few works have assessed actions mainly aimed to protect women during the pandemic. In this chapter, we explore whether social protection policies directed to women have changed during the crisis and in what ways by focusing on the case of Mexico. In particular, we explore whether policies have become more or less gender-­sensitive and, specifically, whether the crisis has affected the degree of mercantilization, familiarization, or clientelization of the welfare regime overall (Martínez Franzoni 2005). The Mexican case is relevant because, on the one hand, gender inequalities have been prevalent well before the crisis. On the other, because the arrival of a new

L. Flamand (*) · J. C. Olmeda El Colegio de México, Mexico City, Mexico e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] M. Naime University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Vommaro, P. Baisotti (eds.), Persistence and Emergencies of Inequalities in Latin America, Latin American Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90495-1_8

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government in December 2018 has meant profound changes in social policy in general and in the programs aimed to protect women. In addition, Mexico is one of the countries that experienced the worst effects caused by the pandemic on a global scale, being the country with the fourth-highest number of deaths, the second-­ highest case-fatality ratio, and the fifth-highest number of deaths per 100,000 people (JHU 2021). In order to achieve our goal, we focus on policies for women’s social protection and present a general overview of the situation in Mexico before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Given that Mexico is a federal country, where state governments assume an essential role in implementing programs, we adopt a multilevel perspective. To perform our analysis, we rely on two databases and identify federal and state government policies for the social protection of women. We then characterize and systematize the policies considering (1) the social rights explicitly protected by those actions, (2) the type of instruments they use, and (3) the degree of incidence in women’s lives. We have organized the chapter as follows. In the first part, we consider and discuss some conceptual notions essential to understand policies for women’s social protection. Next, we briefly present the gender inequalities in Mexico before the pandemic and the deepening effects of COVID-19. Then, we present an empirical analysis of the pre-pandemic scenario, considering and comparing initiatives implemented in this area both at the federal and subnational levels. Finally, before concluding, we replicate the analysis focusing on the period after the arrival of the pandemic (and before the beginning of the vaccination campaign). Our empirical analysis allows us to observe that the federal and the state governments have developed different approaches to social protection for women’s policies before the pandemic. While in the former case, programs and initiatives tended to focus on protecting the right to nondiscrimination, be based on the provision of services, and have an indirect impact on women’s lives. In the case of the latter, governments’ actions aimed to protect the right to economic wellbeing and used cash transfers. As a result of the pandemic, however, and as a result of the emergency, actions at both the federal and state levels tended to be more similar, giving priority to cash transfers and actions that target women directly. In general terms, our chapter stresses the centrality of subnational governments for the social protection of women. It also points out the limitations of studies that only consider federal-level interventions, as it leaves out the majority of actions on the topic and leaves out local interventions that could be more effective in socially protecting women than the federal. Ultimately, women in Mexico may access both the federal and the state-level programs simultaneously, thus the importance of multilevel approaches to social policy in federal systems.

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Social Protection for Women and Gender Equality Social Protection Systems Social protection systems are, in principle, the prime guarantee of social rights for all people: an adequate standard of living, affordable housing, accessible education, an equitable health system, and social security. However, there are different approaches and proposals regarding social protection (Cecchini and Martínez 2012).1 Here we adopt a definition based on social protection as a citizen guarantee. Although it is universal in scope, it recognizes the need to incorporate differentiated and targeted instruments to consolidate social protection, prioritizing the most vulnerable. Thus, social protection includes both contributory and noncontributory protection instruments due to the limited capacity of the formal employment market (Cecchini and Martínez 2012). Even in their most recent incarnation, a vast body of research has revealed that social protection systems in practice may reproduce gender inequalities or abate them (Martínez Franzoni 2005; Molyneux 2006; Orloff 1996). Citizenship is based on an indissoluble bundle: economic and care (in)dependence. Traditionally this has been answered by the sexual division of labor, i.e., men as breadwinners and women as carers, wives, and mothers. Thus, from each of these roles, access to citizenship is different for men and women. Consequently, when citizenship is analyzed considering class and gender, we may observe its most secluded aspects (Martínez Franzoni 2005). Social protection policies have had to adapt to societal and family transformations. The family model, usually known as “sole male breadwinner,” has proved insufficient in the face of increased women’s labor participation and the rise in the proportion of women-led households. These changes imply that families now reconcile care and domestic work with remunerated labor, thus fueling profound reforms in welfare state regimes, especially in new democracies (Altamirano 2020).

Gender-Sensitive and Gender Mainstreaming Gender-sensitive policies derive from the condition of “gender sensitivity,” that is, the ability to perceive the gender differences and issues deriving in inequalities. This perception serves the purpose of considering these inequalities when devising public strategies or actions. Thus, gender-sensitive (or gender-inclusive) policies aim to promote and achieve gender equality and consider both genders’ diverse

1  In general, the evolution of social protection in Latin America may be characterized in four phases: protection based on formal employment, protection against emergencies, protection as assistance and access to promotion, and, finally, protection as a citizen guarantee.

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characteristics and experiences for their design and implementation, particularly regarding inequalities (García-Prince 2008). Several pieces of research have stressed the importance of considering the differences between the life trajectories of women and men when designing social protection policies by, for example, socializing care work or cushioning from the professional effects of taking extended time off from work to raise a family (Novella et  al. 2018). Considering the specific obstacles and the differentiated needs of women when designing social protection policies may fight against the cumulation and reproduction of social inequalities (Altamirano 2020). Gender equality is the overarching and long-term goal, while gender mainstreaming is a set of specific approaches and technical and institutional processes adopted to achieve that goal. Gender mainstreaming integrates gender equality in public, private, and social organizations and national and subnational policies, services, and programs. The long-term objective is to transform discriminatory social institutions, laws, cultural norms, and community practices, particularly those limiting women’s access to human and social rights or restricting their access to public space (UN Women 2021).

Gender Equality and Social Protection Policies For the legal principle of equality to become tangible, it is necessary to design instruments capable of translating norms into concrete actions. Actions that public servants at the different levels of government may in practice be able to implement. In order to reach equality, norms and actions need to be clearly defined in scope. According to García-Prince (2008), when devising public policies, equality is not truly guaranteed when it is conceived only as the presence of equal opportunities (i.e., equal access). Therefore, for equality policies to be effective, they must include provisions guaranteeing, at the same time, equality in access, treatment, and results. In particular, in public policy interventions, equality of treatment signifies an almost identical intervention that considers social differences and inequalities. Equality of treatment is essential to implement effective equality policies because, in the trajectory toward reaching the full exercise of a right, the social disadvantages experienced by individuals come to the fore (e.g., indigenous origin, low levels of social capital, old age, disabilities). These social disadvantages may derive from material conditions or social constructs such as the hierarchical valuations associated with gender, physical conditions, or ethnic origins (García-Prince 2008). In short, equality of treatment implies deactivating the disadvantages that impede people from exercising their human or social rights to the full. In this sense, equality policies must ensure that all individuals have access to the necessary means and resources when navigating the process toward the full exercise of a social right (García-Prince 2008). According to Molyneux (2006), social policy in Latin America has not been gender-blind but instead has worked with gendered conceptions of social needs:

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familial, patriarchal, and paternalistic. After structural reforms, new anti-poverty programs positioned motherhood as a key to their success. For example, Oportunidades/Progresa in Mexico claimed that it helped empower mothers and daughters who are beneficiaries. The program shows evidence of gender awareness as gender is central to its design and implementation. Four aspects point to gender sensitivity in the program: the women heads of participating households received the financial transfers; scholarships were 10% higher for girls in order to encourage their school attendance specifically; there was a scheme to monitor the health of pregnant and breastfeeding mothers; and, finally, women were prompted to take on leadership positions in their communities. Molyneux clearly states that these activities were inconsistent: “they represent a combination of equality measures (for the girls) and maternalistic measures (for their mothers)” (2006: 436). In general, thus, conditional cash transfer programs have reinforced the sexual division of labor through which gender asymmetries are reproduced because they operate under the normative assumption that women are mothers who must serve the needs of children and the household. Thus, the valued forms of social participation in the organization of care work need to be challenged rather than deepened by government interventions (Molyneux 2006). In order to analyze both welfare regimes and the practices of resource allocation that make them possible, it is necessary to unpack usually hidden elements: the production of welfare depends on the amalgamation of patterns and inequalities based on socioeconomic and gender differences (Martínez Franzoni 2005). We may place welfare regimes on a continuum: on one extreme, the regimes promoting allocation conditions more favorable than those based on market exchanges or the sexual division of labor; on the other, those deepening socioeconomic and gender inequalities. Martínez-Franzoni (2005) proposes three ideal types of welfare regimes that may be characterized as styles or orientations of public policy: (a) state-centered with a sole provider, (b) market-­centered with focalized state interventions, and (c) family-centered with feeble states and markets. In order to determine where to place a specific welfare regime, it is critical to determine three main characteristics: the degrees to which it may decommodify (i.e., welfare does not depend on purchasing power), defamiliarize (i.e., welfare stops being the responsibility of families, specifically of women), and declientelize (i.e., access to welfare is primarily universal and does not depend on clientelist relationships) access to welfare.

 he Mexican Case: Gender Inequalities and Gendered Effects T of the Pandemic Social rights in Mexico are enshrined in the national legislation guaranteeing food, education, a healthy environment, nondiscrimination, health, social security, work, housing, and economic well-being. There is, however, a significant gender gap in

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the protection of social rights in the country: 42.4% of the total number of women live in poverty which reveals a dreadful situation concerning their economic and physical autonomy (Coneval 2021). Furthermore, 1 out of 4 women reports having suffered discrimination when accessing social services, notably when requesting health care (INEGI 2018). In general, women in poverty, burdened with care work, and lacking basic dwelling facilities are thus less likely to participate in the economy, which, in turn, strengthens the vicious circle of deprivation and lack of an autonomous income. Moreover, the pandemic has deepened this gender gap. Overall, in Mexico, women tend to be more vulnerable than men in the face of COVID-19 in terms of health, labor, and domestic violence:

Health In general, there is a wide gender gap in the adequate access to health services for women in terms of availability, accessibility, and quality. In part, see below, because considerably fewer women have social security, and thus they have lesser access to health services. In addition, in Mexico, there is a more significant proportion of people with morbidities tending to aggravate COVID-19 among women than men: diabetes (11.6 vs. 9.1%), hypertension (20.9 vs. 15.3%), and obesity (32.9 vs. 26.6%) (Coneval 2021).

Labor The proportion of women participating in the labor force is considerably smaller than that of men (45% and 75%, respectively). Additionally, many women work in the informal sector of the economy (28.9%), and they are primarily self-employed. In addition, a considerable share of women works for companies or the government with no social security benefits (17.3%). Thus, women have lesser access than men to social security: only 66 women for every 100 men have access to these benefits (Coneval 2021): “Schools have been closed in the large majority of states since March 2020. Overall, women have been more likely to cut working hours or quit their jobs to care for minors and the elderly and to carry out domestic chores” (Llanes and Pacheco 2021). Furthermore, women tend to be employed mainly in the service sector (health, education, tourism, cleaning, commerce), which has witnessed the largest share of closures and losses of employment.

Violence Toward Women In 2020, the Ministry for Public Safety reported that calls to 911 lines related to “violence against women” had increased by 73% compared to 2019 (SESNSP 2021). In addition, during the shutdown of May 2020, according to data released by

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the Mexico City government, calls to the emergency helpline “Línea Mujeres” increased by 97% relative to the same month in 2019 (EQUIS Justicia para las Mujeres et al. 2020; UCSF 2021). The preexisting gender gap and its exacerbation by the pandemic required government intervention. Regarding the social protection of women, given that Mexico is a federal country, the federal congress has the unique power to legislate nationally, and state governments need to adjust to the national legislation adopted by it. However, the most critical pieces of legislation at the national level do not distribute duties and responsibilities across levels of government. Instead, they mandate a relatively vague shared duty to coordinate, which has the practical effect that the federal government and every state government may decide the focus and extent of their social protection policies for women freely. Also, the fiscal dependency of states on the federal government limits Mexican subnational governments’ legal and policy autonomy over several policy areas. This dependence is crucial for understanding how the characteristics of the Mexican federal system have permeated the response of the different levels of governments to the COVID-19 crisis. In Mexico, social protection is insufficient, fragmented, and profoundly unequal across subsystems, while, in comparative terms, social expenditure in the country is relatively low. Thus, despite the campaign promises of Peña Nieto (2012–2018) and López Obrador (2018–2024), to this date, there are no clear and integrated policy actions available to develop a universal social protection system. In general, there are two policy instruments available for providing social protection: (a) Contributory social security, which tends to include health and unemployment insurances, pensions, compensations for workers, and family allowances. Moreover, (b) social assistance is usually noncontributory, means-tested, and considers income transfers, subsidies, and other benefits (Dion 2009; Martínez Franzoni and Sánchez-Ancochea 2014). In Mexico, to this date, both instruments for social protection coexist, and we may characterize the overall system as highly fragmented. The social security subsystem includes IMSS for private workers and ISSSTE for public employees, while the federal, state, and local governments offer social assistance through specific programs for those uninsured. In addition, people living in urban localities tend to be enrolled in social security, while those residing in rural communities are usually protected by social assistance programs (Flamand 2018). Compared to OECD countries, and even to those in the Latin American region, Mexico invests a relatively low proportion of GDP in health and social services. For example, excluding education, Mexico spent 7.5% on social protection compared to 11.4% in Chile and 20% in the average OECD country (OECD 2021). This horizontal fragmentation has implied that women tend to enjoy less social protection than men because it is less likely that they have a formal job with social security benefits. Furthermore, vertical fragmentation signifies that the quantity and quality of the social services to which women have access to guarantee their social rights varies considerably depending on their place of residence. The life trajectory of women from birth to old age is highly influenced by the state in which they live. Thus, for example, the number of years of schooling for women is almost two years less in Oaxaca than the national average. Regarding

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unpaid work, the proportion of women who work in Jalisco without pay almost doubles that of those living in Mexico City (Inmujeres 2020a).

 ctions to Promote Gender Equality in Mexico Before A the Pandemic Here we study social protection policies for women. We understand public policy as the set of deliberate public interventions to correct or modify a social or economic situation that has been recognized as a public problem (Aguilar 2010; Merino 2013). Public policies have been understood around an analytical cycle composed of four main processes: problem definition, policy design, implementation, and evaluation (Merino 2013; Weimer and Vining 2011). The first stage refers to identifying and defining a problem that deserves public intervention. The second involves drawing a road map to alleviate the public problem: identifying the people, institutions, processes, times, among others, that will intervene in solving the problem. The third is the in-the-field execution of that roadmap. Finally, in broad terms, evaluation refers to comparing the situation before and after the public intervention. Our analysis focuses on the stage of the design of interventions to understand the specific mechanisms adopted to materialize the public policy in question. Of course, this comes at a cost because interventions are meaningless if they do not have a budget, actors, frontline workers, and timelines. Nonetheless, the advantage of this choice is that it preserves the political and technical aspirations of the actors that designed each intervention. Also, focusing on the outcome of the design allows us to identify synergies, complementarities, and duplications and overlaps between the interventions carried out by different levels of government. For the period before the pandemic, we use the inventories of federal and state social programs prepared by the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (Coneval) to reconstruct the situation before the arrival of COVID-19.2 Coneval inventories identify the entire universe of social policy interventions carried out by the federal and state governments. The first review of these databases allows identifying 155 federal and 1214 state interventions for 2018 and 2016, respectively. Data show that although the federal government has developed a significant number of interventions for this area, state and local governments also play an active role in the social protection of the general population. The inventories also provide information that allows identifying those interventions that seek to protect women since these databases account for the biological sex of the people to whom the government action is directed. For example, at the federal level, only two of the 155 interventions previously identified are explicitly classified 2  The Coneval inventories are key sources since they identify all the interventions of the federal and local governments in matters of social development. This effort began in 2007 as a list of interventions and, subsequently, evolved to the current versions that identify and systematize the key information of each intervention and, in addition, link them with social rights (Coneval 2019: 10).

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as directed at women (1.29%), while, at the state level, 61 out of 1213 are explicitly aimed at women (5.02%). The reduced number of interventions classified as explicitly directed at women stands out immediately. However, this is a premature conclusion, as the categorization can be restrictive because, as discussed above, interventions with an impact on women’s lives are not limited to those exclusively directed at them. For example, consider the Program to Strengthen the Transversality of the Gender Perspective (Programa de fortalecimiento a la transversalidad de la perspectiva de género). This intervention promotes incorporating the gender perspective in norms, instruments, programs, and actions of the federal, state, and municipal governments; and is listed as directed to both sexes in Coneval’s inventory. That is also the case with the Daycare Program to Support Working Mothers (Programa de estancias infantiles para madres trabajadoras). These two interventions benefit the general population, regardless of sex or gender, but given existing gender roles and inequalities, these interventions are expected to benefit women primarily. In order to select the interventions relevant to our study, we designed a process for identifying those where any of the following keywords appear: woman/women, gender, mother, girl, pregnancy within specific categories (name, description, problem or priority addressed, purpose, attention groups, and component). This process allowed us to identify 17 federal interventions and 124 state interventions for the period before the arrival of the pandemic.3 The interventions identified will be analyzed following three elements that capture their aim: the right they seek to protect, the instrument through which each intervention is based, and the degree of incidence of the intervention in women’s lives. Social rights are those prescribed by the Mexican national and international legal framework: health, food, education, housing, work, nondiscrimination, social security, economic well-being, and a healthy environment. These are rights of the individuals, and thus all governments must guarantee them. A policy instrument is a specific tool used to achieve its goals (Capano and Howlett 2020; Salamon 2002). They range from economic support, food support, credit, fiscal and administrative stimuli, or services. The degree of incidence of each intervention in women’s lives may be direct or indirect. An intervention of direct incidence offers the benefit straight away to women. In the case of indirect incidence, the intervention benefits a family member under the assumption that women are responsible for their care (children and older adults) or because the benefit is given to an institution that, in principle, works for the benefit of women.

3  State interventions correspond to 2016, while the federal interventions identified in the 2018 federal inventory were updated to 2020.

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Social Rights At the federal level, economic well-being is the social right most frequently addressed (4 out of 17), followed by education, nondiscrimination, and social security, with three each. At the state level, interventions aim primarily to protect the rights to nondiscrimination (with 37 interventions out of 124), followed by the right to health with 36 and the right to economic well-being with 32. At both the federal and the state levels, the rights to economic well-being and nondiscrimination are emphasized. An example of actions to promote women’s economic well-being is Jalisco’s “Support to Women Heads of Households,” which gives cash transfers in order to “increase its productive capacities and economic support for the care of her underage children” (Government of the State of Jalisco 2020). Being a mother is a condition to apply for the benefits. These actions promote the economic autonomy of women. However, the fact that social rights are interdependent makes that this type of intervention can hardly have long-term effects without other rights being protected, such as interventions to promote work, education, housing, and food. The emphasis placed on protecting the right to nondiscrimination typically includes actions to prevent violence against women, like the Centers for Women’s Justice (Centros de Justicia para las Mujeres). These function as shelters for women victims of domestic violence or Mexico City’s Program for Support to women in a situation of gender violence, which consists of monthly cash transfers for 6 months. Violence against women in Latina America and Mexico is particularly severe, with 19 out of the 32 states having a gender alert activated, which occurs when violence against women becomes widespread in a territory. Nonetheless, tackling violence against women also requires improving the social protection to which they have a right (Guedes et  al. 2014). The absence of guaranteed social rights keeps women in a situation of vulnerability and lack of autonomy, which makes violence against them more likely to occur. A third of the interventions at the state-level focus on nondiscrimination; specifically, they focus on actions to prevent or stop violence against women. This emphasis seems to indicate the short-sightedness of the interventions for the social protection of women. The fact that actions to prevent gender violence in the Mexican federal system are concentrated at the state level probably is related to the fact that this order of government is entrusted with prosecuting such crimes. The overemphasis on the right to nondiscrimination contrasts with the fact that no actions at the federal or state level protect the rights to housing and a healthy environment. This absence is particularly relevant considering that stereotypical gender roles place women at the center of the care of the household, including access to clean water. If housing and the surrounding environment are considered the responsibility of women, then lack of access to public services toward securing these rights may trigger gender violence along the lines described above. Actions focused on the right to health fall into two categories. The first one includes interventions on reproductive and maternal health, as well as family

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planning services. Again, these interventions are critical, yet they focus on women in their role as mothers. The second category includes teenage pregnancies, which are a severe public health problem in Mexico. The adolescent fertility rate in Mexico is five times higher than in the average OECD country, and it is the only member country where the mean age of women at childbirth has gone down since 1970 (OECD 2019). Closely connected to this line of reasoning, while the right to food is not considered in the array of federal actions, it is possible to find some interventions at the state level to secure this right. This absence does not necessarily imply that social protection interventions seeking to guarantee this right do not exist, but rather that those in operation are not directed to women specifically. Clear examples, in this regard, are the interventions by Liconsa and Diconsa (Gobierno de México 2020a, b), which seek to protect the right to food in high and very high marginalized localities, without distinction of sex. To sum up, considering the social rights before the arrival of the pandemic, a more comprehensive array of them is protected at the state level than at the federal in the social protection interventions for women.

Policy Instruments The most frequent type of instrument used to protect women are services. This is true for the federal (59%) and the state levels (60%). There is a wide array of services: legal advice, training, childcare, nurseries, and medical services. A clear example operates in Mexico City: the local government operates the Education for the Economic Autonomy of Women at local community centers (PILARES). It consists of training to learn different trades, produce goods and services, and create small businesses or e-business. It also includes a job bank to connect them to potential employers. The type of professional training aimed at women includes cosmetology, jewelry-making, gastronomy, fashion design, the development of urban gardens, and plumbing. In contrast, the courses offered by the Institute for Training for Work of Mexico City provides the general population courses that look more “masculine” like human resources and management, marketing, and English (ICAT 2020). Overall, despite the fact that some services provided for women can reproduce gender stereotypes, the fact that services are the dominant instrument at both levels of government may be considered positive as they translate into a tangible benefit for women for two reasons: First, the emphasis on service provision for the social policies of women contrasts with studies that have analyzed social policy in Mexico in general, without distinguishing those for women. The majority of the interventions have focused on cash transfers (Cejudo et al. 2018: 16). Cash transfers, although efficient and with a low implementation cost, have considerable risks. They exhaust themselves as they have constrained effects in terms of protecting social rights (Cejudo et  al. 2018;

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CNDH 2019). Nevertheless, the second most frequent type of instrument used is cash transfers. Second, cash transfers have been considered optimal for gender-sensitive policies as it is possible to determine and target the direct beneficiary of a policy. However, recent studies have begun to show the limitations of this approach (Simon 2019). Intra-household interactions affect the effectiveness of cash transfers to women, as compared to other types of instruments. For example, if men are considered to have control over the money while women are socially expected to care for food and health, then cash transfers to women will, to a meager degree, contribute to abate gender inequalities. Also, accompanying cash transfers with, for example, financial literacy training such as micro-budgeting and debt management has been shown to empower women (Campbell 2014).

Incidence in Women’s Life When it comes to the degree of incidence of each intervention in women’s lives, we distinguished between direct and indirect, as explained before. Women received the benefit directly in only three interventions at the federal level, while the remaining 14 were directed to a family member (9) or an institution (4). Thus, before the pandemic, women did not receive benefits directly, but mainly due to their relationship with a family member or an institution. This finding is consistent with other studies on social protection policies for women. These studies showed that women’s protection was frequently associated with motherhood, domestic work, and care (Altamirano 2020). Given the above, most interventions failed to empower women and reinforced the patriarchal structure and gender stereotypes (Molyneux 2006). When we examine state-level interventions, however, direct interventions were more common. In 108 of the 124 interventions, women were direct beneficiaries, indirectly through a family member in 11 and via an institution in 5. For example, the program “Comprehensive Support for Single Mothers Residing in Mexico City” is aimed at women heads of households to support them in improving their diet and health and giving them access to legal and cultural services.

 hanges to Social Protection Policies for Women During C the Government of López Obrador The actions described in the previous sections must be understood in the general context of the social protection systems in Mexico. They are indeed insufficient, fragmented, and unequal. The current President, Lopez Obrador, acknowledging this situation, has attempted to distinguish himself from the previous governments by adopting a new approach to the social policy under the motto primero los pobres

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(poor people first). This new approach signified the elimination of emblematic and relatively successful interventions (e.g., Progresa-Oportunidades-Prospera and the Seguro Popular) and the development of new ones (Sembrando vida and Jovenes construyendo el futuro). Regarding social protection for women, we contrasted the actions implemented at the beginning of 2018 versus those in operation in 2020, a period that allowed President Lopez Obrador to put in place his version of social policy interventions. We identified several phenomena: (i) cases where there is continuity; (ii) cases where there is a nominal change; (iii) cases where there is a substantive transformation; and (iv) cases where the intervention was eliminated. We documented a high degree of continuity: Of the 25 actions for women’s social protection in operation in 2018, 14 have continued up to 2020. There is, therefore, a high degree of continuity over the change in government. There are no new interventions created by the government of López Obrador, but rather adaptations to those in place before. As for the nominal changes,4 three underwent profound transformations that eliminated the “women” element of their design5; and five interventions were eliminated.6 Worth mentioning is the substantial transformation of the National Program for the Financing of Microbusiness and the Rural Women into the “Crédito Ganadero a la Palabra” (Credits for livestock). The former prioritized women applicants, while the second one does not seem interested in abating gender inequalities in this field. Also, the Community Kitchens program (Comedores Comunitiarios) was dismantled by the present government. This program directly aimed to satisfy the right to food, which is now unprotected at the federal level. In order to understand how important women and gender equality are to the federal government, we calculated the proportion of the total federal budget allocated to these objectives. In addition, since 2008, an annex of each federal expenditure (PEF) details the specific resources labeled for women and gender equality: annex 10 or 13, depending on the year. These annexes are crucial because they materialize the obligation of the federal government to promote “in a transversal manner, substantive equality between women and men through the incorporation of the gender perspective in the design, preparation, application, monitoring, and evaluation of results of the programs of the Federal Public Administration” (OJF 2020: par. 21). Since 2018, the budget in this category has more than quadrupled, both in nominal and in real terms. Nonetheless, it does not include the entire universe of federal spending for interventions concerning equality between women and men, nor is 4  “Pensión para Adultos Mayores” is now called “Pensión para el bienestar de las personas adultas mayores”; “Fortalecimiento a la educación temprana y el desarrollo infantil” is now called “Expansión de la educación inicial,” and the “Programa Nacional de Becas” is called “Programa de Becas Elisa Acuña.” 5  Crédito Ganadero a la palabra; Programa de Mejoramiento Urbano, y el Programa para el fortalecimiento económico de los pueblos y comunidades indígenas. 6  Programa de apoyo a pequeños productores; Programa de coinversión social; Programa de atención a jornaleros agrícolas; Programa de empleo temporal and the Comedores comunitarios.

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5 4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 2015

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Program's budget in billion pesos

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Fig. 8.1  Evolution of the budget of two federal programs for the social protection of women (2015–2020). Source: Prepared by the authors with information from annex 10 or 13 of the PEFs, according to the year

there evidence to ensure that all the spending foreseen in the annex promotes gender equality, since there are general items such as “Administrative support activities,” “Relationship with society,” or “Information and communication technologies” that are not clearly linked to equality (Coneval 2014). Also, if we look closer into the distribution of budget into specific programs, the outlook changes. For example, the budget allocated to the “Programa de estancias infantiles para apoyar a madres trabajadoras” (Daycare to support working mothers) has been halved between 2018 and 2020. This is also the case for the “Programa de Apoyo a las Instancias de Mujeres en las Entidades Federativas” (Support for State Institutes for Women), see Fig. 8.1. This decrease should be placed in context. Before the pandemic, President López Obrador stated that “families are the most important social security institutions of Mexico” (López Obrador 2019). The president repeated the same idea in the Ethical Guide for the Transformation of Mexico (Gobierno de México 2020c), and before the G20 summit in November 2020 as a lesson learned from the pandemic: “The family needs to be considered the main social security institution, along with the need to prevent its disintegration and the abandonment of the elderly in nursing homes as they would never substitute the love given by their beloved” (López Obrador 2020). This is evidence of, rather than efforts being made to defamiliarize social policy in Mexico, it is actually being re-familiarized, using the concepts proposed by Martínez Franzoni (2005).

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 ctions to Promote Gender Equality in Mexico During A COVID-19 The pandemic hit Mexico on February 27, 2020, when the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed; the first two deaths occurred on March 18. The effects of the coronavirus crisis have been particularly acute in Mexico. Apart from the harsh impact on the health of the population produced by COVID-19, lockdowns and “stay-at-­ home” measures have deepened existing gender inequalities to an unknown extent so far. Mexican women spent 2.5 more times doing domestic work and 2 more times caring for others than men before the coronavirus arrived in the country (Coneval 2021). This gap has doubled or tripled during the pandemic (Inmujeres 2020b). The effects of the pandemic in deepening gender inequalities will have a long-­ lasting effect. The situation is even more concerning when we consider dimensions of inequality that may overlap and thus turn into deeper vulnerability for specific groups such as girls and teenagers, women with disabilities or VIH/AIDS, those of indigenous origin, migrants or refugees, and lesbians or trans women (El Colegio de México 2018). This section focuses on the social protection policies for women implemented by the federal and state governments to face the consequences of the pandemic. In general, and in contrast to the trends observed in other Latin American countries, the federal government in Mexico adopted few new actions to deal with the situation: the general approach was to expand existing programs. In the case of subnational governments, most of them implemented ad-hoc measures, that were reactive and with a short-term horizon. In both cases, however, few policies were explicitly conceived for women. Given that Mexico is a federal country, state governments have played an essential role in responding to the pandemic. However, previous studies have stressed the uncoordinated and conflictive relationship between federal and state governments during health and economic crises (Cejudo et  al. 2020; Giraudy et al. 2020). In line with the previous section, the interventions identified will be analyzed, exploring the same three elements included in the previous section: the right they seek to protect, the instrument through which each intervention is based, and the degree of incidence of the intervention in women’s lives. Moreover, we include an additional dimension in the analysis, considering to which extent the actions were built on previously existing programs or emerged on an ad-hoc basis to face the crisis. Before going deeper into the analysis, it is crucial to describe the universe of programs included in our research. Unfortunately, no all-compassing inventories of social protection interventions as the ones by Coneval exist just yet. Therefore, to identify the actions adopted as a result of the pandemic, we considered several databases and put them together. Considering information collected by ECLAC (2020), UNDP (2020), and ILO (2020), it is possible to identify 20 interventions implemented by the federal government that may be potentially included in our analysis. However, it is essential to

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remark that 6 of them are not public policy programs per se but efforts to generate and share information: the attempt to create a working group to establish indicators to track violence against women, the initiative to set up a helpline to inform women about pregnancy, childbirth, and puerperium, or the attempt to generate a diagnostic about the effects of COVID-19 on women. As a result, we decided not to include them in our analysis and worked with 14 interventions. The federal government implemented this limited number of programs to face the pandemic in the area of women’s protection in line with the general approach to the crisis and the less active role of the Mexican federal government in this scenario compared to other countries in Latin America. On the contrary, state governments responded in a faster and more vigorous way. Considering data collected by Cejudo et  al. (2020), we were able to identify 69 actions implemented by Mexican state governments as a result of the pandemic. An important finding was that 61 of them were new and adopted explicitly to deal with the crisis (compared to 6 out of 14 in the federal government’s case). This situation confirms what was observed in other Latin American countries concerning the active role played by subnational governments in the COVID context (VanDusky-­ Allen et al. 2020).

Social Rights Health protection became a central concern for federal and state governments during the pandemic. However, few new initiatives were designed to protect women specifically. Instead, federal and state governments attempted to assure economic well-being, either strengthening existing social programs or creating new ones. The former was the predominant strategy for the federal government, while the latter was common amongst state governments. The challenges generated by the emergency and the redistribution of resources observed at both the federal and state levels to deal with the crisis reveal a paradox as rights that were specially protected in the pre-pandemic scenario were relatively abandoned. In this sense, the emphasis on the right to health (understood as the chance to access medical services in case of contagion) implied that the attention to sexual and reproductive health became less critical. For example, access to contraceptive methods became harder for many women when locking down measures generated increased interactions among household members. As a result, the number of unintended pregnancies increased at a high rate, especially among teenagers. In addition, the stay-at-home measures have meant an increase in domestic violence, including sexual violence and barriers for women to access birth control methods, which leads to an estimated 145,719 unwanted pregnancies during 2021, in addition to 21,575 teenage pregnancies (CONAPO 2020). A similar situation was observed concerning the right to nondiscrimination. As we mentioned before, gender-based violence is a severe problem in Mexico.

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Lockdown measures made women living in violent households more vulnerable to being harmed by their husbands, boyfriends, or other relatives. Governmental responses to this situation were heterogeneous and, in most cases, implied the habilitation of a telephone “hotline” to denounce attacks or threats rather than promoting protection measures in women’s shelter or restraint orders (EQUIS Justicia para las Mujeres 2020).

Policy Instruments Concerning the instruments used in the policies for the social protection of women during the COVID-19 pandemic, we observe, first, a decrease in the use of services and, second, a general convergence to the utilization of cash transfers at the federal and state levels. The analysis of social policies for women in place before the pandemic showed that the one aimed for women was less monetized and much more service-oriented than the general social policy. Moreover, the fact that the governments provide services for women has been proven to be more effective than cash transfers, as cash decisions are susceptible to be negotiated according to intra-household relations (Campbell 2014; Simon 2019). During the pandemic, both the federal and state governments have ceased to provide services and instead focused on cash transferred widely. This type of instrument implied a redefinition of the social policy for women at all levels of government. In a sense, this is understandable, given that lockdown measures produced a reduction in household income for many families and resulted in that most venues where services were provided had to close. The case of the program PILARES in Mexico City was a clear example of this situation. Most services were suspended when PILARES centers closed in March 2020. Later on, a significant part of the program’s staff was assigned to help with the anti-COVID vaccination campaign in the city (Hernández 2021). Finally, the study reveals an increased heterogeneity in the instruments adopted (see Fig.  8.2). Both levels of governments adopted financial instruments such as credits and administrative and fiscal stimuli, like tax deferrals and deductions. However, these instruments were not in place before the pandemic. For example, the federal and state governments implemented programs to provide credit and fiscal stimuli to small or micro businesses conducted by women. In addition, many state governments created ad hoc initiatives to deliver food packages to low-income families. The multiplication of new instruments showed an innovative spirit due to the new challenges that emerged with the crisis. However, it is not clear to which extent this situation will be reversed once the crisis is over, especially regarding the overemphasis of cash transfers versus service provision.

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Federal government

State governments

Number of interventions

Number of interventions

12 10 8 6 4 2 0

Pre

Post

90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

Pre

Post

Fig. 8.2  Type of instruments for policies for women’s social protection. Source: Prepared by the authors with information from Coneval and Cejudo et al. (2020)

Incidence in Women’s Lives The arrival of the pandemic introduced essential changes in how women receive the benefits of those programs aimed to protect them. As stated in the previous section, in the pre-COVID scenario, women were indirectly benefited from most federal programs, while the opposite was the case with state initiatives. However, this situation experienced a substantive redefinition in the post-COVID scenario. Indeed, women became direct beneficiaries in most federal programs, while at the same time, new state-level initiatives began to target families rather than women as individuals. In the case of the federal government, 10 out of 14 programs were redesigned to have women as direct beneficiaries. Indeed, it can be argued that in this sense, the crisis produced a “positive” redefinition in the federal government approach since women began to be seen as central to policies aimed to protect them. Moreover, if this approach remains in place in the long term, it could be considered an improvement in how the federal government manages the issue.

Budget The COVID-19 crisis had a significant impact on public finances. On the one hand, a decrease in economic activity resulting from lockdown measures implied a reduction in tax collection. However, on the other hand, public budgets had to be

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reconfigured to fund new expenditures that were not forecasted when budget bills were passed. Regarding the first dimension, it is essential to mention that in the Mexican case, the decrease experienced in taxes collected by the federal government during 2020 (especially in the first semester of the year) directly affected state governments’ finances. This situation is because most Mexican states rely on intergovernmental transfers since local tax collection is slim. For example, in the case of Oaxaca, almost 96% of the total resources used by the state government to fund its activities come from federal transfers (CIEP 2020). As a result of the scenario presented in previous lines, the budget initially assigned to different governmental programs experienced substantial reductions during 2020, both at the federal and state levels. Some of these resources were re-­ channeled to fund emerging initiatives. For example, in Mexico City, the local legislature passed a bill giving faculties to the city’s Chief of Government to change the budget without asking for permission from the legislative branch (GOCDMX 2020a). In Jalisco, the Secretary of Equality between Women and Men suffered a 1.33% cut in its total Budget (POEJ 2020). At the state level, the consequences were clear in the realm of actions for the social protection of women. On the one hand, some central programs were reduced or put on hold. This was the case, for example, of the PILARES program in Mexico City discussed above. The city’s government reduced its total budget by ten million pesos (ca. USD 500,000), and the total number of beneficiaries experienced a 45% decrease (GOCDMX 2020b). On the other hand, the initiatives implemented to deal with the emergency have been mostly funded with state-level resources. Cejudo et al. (2020) show that state resources have funded 47% of the actions adopted since the pandemic, while 10% partially by state resources. 3% of them have not had state financing. The remaining 39% could not be identified. This has to do with the fact that some local transparency institutes suspended activities even before the national emergency was declared by the national government, which has limited information availability. To conclude this section, it is possible to argue that the COVID-19 crisis produced inevitable short-term changes in the social protection for women’s initiatives. For example, the popularization of cash transfers or food delivery seemed a sensible move to attend urgent needs. It was also reasonable to reallocate resources to fund ad-hoc initiatives. However, it is not clear to which extent these changes will become permanent. Maybe the most critical concern is that many of those transformations were done at the expense of existing initiatives. Going back to Martinez Franzoni’s conceptualization it can be said that, considering that there was already evidence of the re-familiarization of social policy in Mexico before the pandemic, the crisis has deepened and invigorated this trend, and it has also become more clientelized. The managing of both the economic and health crisis in Mexico has come at the expense of Mexican women.

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Conclusions As we documented throughout the chapter, women in Mexico still experience profound gender inequalities in the health, education, and labor arenas. The pandemic derived from COVID-19 has only exacerbated such inequalities. Social protection policies may be powerful tools to abate these inequalities; however, specific social interventions may indeed reproduce the sexual division of labor to the general disadvantage of women. What are the main characteristics of social protection policies for women in Mexico? Have they changed during the pandemic? Despite repeated campaign promises, it is still possible to characterize the Mexican welfare regime as incomplete, unequal, with low expenditure, and fragmented. Regarding horizontal fragmentation, the crucial issue is that access to social protection benefits depends on the type of employment. Thus, people employed in the formal labor market have access to much more generous benefits than those working independently or in informal jobs. Regarding vertical fragmentation, the Mexican federal system offers heterogeneous social protection depending on the place of residence. As a result, people with no social security have access to different combinations of social protection programs delivered by the federal and state governments. In addition, the two types of fragmentation have severe gendered effects because, as we mentioned, there are only 66 women per 100 men enjoying formal social security benefits. In order to characterize social protection policies for women before and during the pandemic, we examined different national and international databases to determine (1) the social rights explicitly protected by those actions, (2) the type of policy instruments they use, and (3) the degree of incidence in women’s lives. Social rights. Before the pandemic, the federal government focused on economic well-being while the state authorities concentrated on nondiscrimination, particularly in interventions directed toward preventing or abating gender violence. However, during the pandemic, both government orders placed most of their efforts regarding social protection for women in economic well-being. This change meant, in practice, that much less attention was directed to sexual and reproductive rights and nondiscrimination. Policy instruments. In Mexico, the most common instruments employed in social protection overall are cash transfers. In contrast, in the case of women, social programs before the pandemic at both the federal and state level mainly were services (60%). The health and economic crises derived from COVID-19 signified that governments switched to cash transfers and considerably diminished the availability of services because of confinement measures. We observed a multiplication of new instruments such as credits, tax deferrals, and reductions. Incidence. This characteristic is fundamental to assess the gender awareness of the social protection policies for women because interventions may only benefit them because they are mothers, carers, or in charge of households. For example, before the pandemic, the federal government favored indirect programs, while most interventions operated by state governments benefited women directly. The

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pandemic, of course, affected the approach, and the tendencies changed: the federal government switched to direct benefits while the state governments have tended to favor women via their families. Overall, both the pandemic and the orientation of the government headed by López Obrador (2018–2024) have meant that women’s social protection policies have become less mercantilized, more familiarized, and still profoundly clientelized. However, in general, we discover very few signs of gender awareness or sensitivity both at the federal and state levels.

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Part III

Intertwined Social Inequalities: Race, Class and Social Structure

Chapter 9

It All Happens (to Us) at Once: Youth, Precariousness and Policy in Argentina (A Multidimensional Approach to Inequality) Mariana Chaves

Introduction In this chap. I endeavor to analyze, using a multidimensional approach to inequality, processes (re)producing the inequalities lived by youth sectors in Latin America, focusing on urban areas in Argentina. To this end, I work with the three dimensions of the analytical model proposed by Reygadas (2004) – individual, interactional, and structural – studying situations in which different actors, resources and policies are brought into play to shape the way inequalities are perpetuated – or not (Tilly 2000; Kessler 2014; Therborn 2015). We assume a perspective of intersectionality which will enable us to conjugate categories to demonstrate and explain different experiences of precariousness (Lorey 2016) in the lives of these young men and women1 and their families. On the other hand, the diachronic perspective leads us to add further explanations on the processes by which disadvantages are accumulated, and by taking into account all of the above it is possible to understand the way in which networks of inequality are interwoven on different scales.

1  Please note that in the original Spanish text, male, female and neutral pronouns, suffixes and articles were utilized at times randomly and at others purposefully, with the objective of addressing the historical erasure of women and other gender identities in traditional patriarchal language. This translation has attempted to respect this gender-inclusive approach, although it is significantly less visible in English.

M. Chaves (*) National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), La Plata, Argentina Faculty of Social Work and Faculty of Natural Sciences and Museum, National University of La Plata, La Plata, Argentina e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Vommaro, P. Baisotti (eds.), Persistence and Emergencies of Inequalities in Latin America, Latin American Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90495-1_9

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Toward the end of the text, and in closing, we rethink these inequalities from the point of view that “power and conflict trump visibility” (Pérez Sáinz 2020), bringing to light the re-politicization of the social sphere occurring in Latin America, without losing sight of the dynamics offered in response by Reygadas (2020). Embedded into the sociohistorical construction of the issues of the State, Citizens, and Politics in Argentina, we offer our own commentary on recent, controversial collective actions concerning equality and the roles of youth within these struggles. These data were built using an ethnographic approach, drawn partly from collaboration on collective socio-community work in La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina (Barriach et al. 2021), and partly through the use of participant observations, interviews, and public policy documents linked to youth issues. The analysis was conducted using a search and identification of discursive axes, data matrices, discourse analysis tools and the life course approach (Elder 1994, 1998; Mora Salas, and de Oliveira 2014; Assusa and Chaves 2019), and any situations which could serve as analytical diacritic. The results of other researchers and statistical data from government and international agencies also provided the framework for fruitful dialogue on the construction of our interpretations. It should be mentioned that running through this whole text is the view that the current era lacks an absolute point of rupture between the before and after of the pandemic. Naturally, many new challenges and emergencies have arisen, but the unchanging fact is what has been stated by many: the pandemic affected us all, but differently, depending on our position, the unequal distribution of resources, the diversity of capacities, the strengths or weaknesses in the social fabric, community networks, and states. In this context, preexisting inequalities defined the experience of the pandemic, leading to suffering, grief, denial, protest, criticism, organization, rebellion, and the revelation that the capitalist world, and its universe of inequality, could become even worse. There is something about all of this that remains disquieting, leading us to ask, what is going on? What kind of capitalism are we living in? When will it be my turn to die? What future? What present? The historical continuity of the Coloniality of Power (Quijano 2014), capitalism’s seemingly infinite capacity to reinvent itself, the governments we choose to elect, the persistence of inequalities and our tolerance of them – and the pandemic! While it is true that we are all affected, above all it affects youth, women, indigenous, and Afro-descended peoples, having only increased the vulnerability of those already facing precarious circumstances. These realities have given way to protests, like sparks which grow into wildfires, leading us to imagine that it all happens to us, it all weighs on us can, through reimagining and organizing, give way to we can make it happen for us.

It All Happens at Once At this point in Western history, inequality is predominantly justified in terms of individual responsibility, blaming the poor for their own poverty and a lack of understanding with regard to the social side of communal well-being. This has led

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to the normalization of the current social order to the degree that it is seen as the only one possible. This narrative is passed off as common sense, while social representations and “world views” which shape subjectivity- and identity-forming processes often have their origins in supremacist ideologies. Competition is viewed as a normal part of life, based on the set of ideas surrounding asymmetrical typologies of people in which some are considered “worthy” while others are not. The perpetuation of ideological precepts such as the persistence of the notion that progress is the driver of existence; the discourse surrounding the value of the individual, or rather the elevation of the individual to the detriment of other forms of human existence; the rhetoric of meritocracy as a tautology of inequality; the concept of “empowerment” as a self-contained, individual pursuit; the exaggeration of the value of private property along with its consumption, wealth and prestige, to the detriment of other forms of ownership and of the planet itself – all of the above is what sustains the cultural norms of exclusionary capitalism, without economic, political, or ethical boundaries to rein in the accumulation of wealth through dispossession (Harvey 2004). Attempts by governments, political movements, organizations, and even individual people to end, fight, leave, and eradicate poverty take a myriad of forms, mechanisms, plans, and disparate investments. The one thing they have in common is their failure to abolish it. Poverty is perpetuated at the same pace as wealth. It is relational, not only as a categorical system, but also due to its many dimensions and intersections. The mechanism which creates both conditions is incessant, and this is not unique to Latin America or Argentina but is rather characteristic of the world’s productive and social centers, and their regime of accumulation under capitalism (Chaves 2020). As pointed out by OXFAM in “Five Shocking Facts about Extreme Global Inequality and How to Even It Up” (2021), or the UNDP in this year’s Regional Report on Human Development (2021) on “the trap” of high inequality and low growth, during the global crisis of COVID-19, a tiny sector of the population has continued and even boosted its own accumulation of wealth, while the immense majority of people are living near or below the poverty line. Mexican anthropologist Reygadas (2004) asks, what causes inequality? In response, he reviews, evaluates, and critiques the way the social sciences have addressed the issue, and proposes a multidimensional approach to inequality that follows three broad analytical channels: individual, interactional, and structural. Following this logic, the following section asks of each channel, what explanations does it offer? What does it help us to recognize? And, what can they make us believe? We take as our reference social situations experienced by young people – where it all happens at once. Individualist theories suggest that inequalities are caused by differences in individuals’ capacities. What explanations does this offer? According to Reygadas (2008), it means that an agent’s capacity to take ownership of a portion of wealth is produced within a society, and that it depends on many factors, which also implies the assumption that the individual distribution of resources is social in nature. The existence of unequal capacities is a product of the historical experience of living in unequal social orders. A person’s possibilities for ownership is linked to the

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trajectory of their social class, their ethnic and/or racial group, their gender, and their position in terms of relationships of hegemony, domination, and exploitation. In Latin America, the historical experience of inequality formed our identity. As a people, we are the diverse products of colonization, imperialism, independence struggles, revolutions, lost sovereignty, and invasions. Individual capacity for ownership of resources is conditioned – but not determined – by those historical processes of ownership of wealth and the creation of peoples. But there is also the consideration that there exists an unequal distribution of resources which are external to each person, but which are nonetheless indispensable for the productivity of their individual capacity. A large part of the public policy focused on or affecting youth in Latin America is based on an individualistic concept of inequality. But these are not just any policies, but rather those with the most relevance in terms of managing the population, due to being designed by states to distribute the accumulation of wealth or the possibilities of creating it. Three resources in particular stand out which are distributed based on the individualist perspective: education, minimal subsistence, and work. Education in Argentina is compulsory until the age of fourteen, starting with preschool (starting optionally at 3  years, then compulsorily at 4  years of age), through primary (for six years) until the completion of secondary education (another six years). The education system is public, and administered on both a state and private level. This means that its regulation is mainly in the hands of governments, as well as the responsibility for access, compliance, and content. The differences in policy between regions, unequal implementations across neighborhoods, the tendency in many local, provincial, and national areas for the State to neglect its obligation to ensure the right to an education, and the move toward privatization of systems, have led to fragmentation and/or segmentation in the educational system’s circuits. Any increases in individual capacities arising from education are deservingly applauded, and it is absolutely essential that they continue, but it is not possible to expect this kind of capital to convert automatically into another, such as economic capital through obtaining work. Perhaps the most urgent concern is that it is not possible to expect individuals who are still small children and adolescents to take charge of their own educational paths. They must be supported by a network of caring adults, families, institutions, and communities which can create the conditions for an optimal educational experience. A second set of resources which is often distributed individually are what I call minimal subsistence resources: food and clothing, either directly (given as actual clothes and food) or indirectly via cash transfer plans for food and/or clothes. One example is the Food Card (“Tarjeta Alimentar”) issued under the Argentinian Anti-­ Hunger plan (“Plan Argentina contra el Hambre”).2 It does increase the essential 2  National plan created at the end of 2019 under the government of Alberto Fernández (Frente de Todos) and run by the National Ministry of Social Development. One of its social policy components is the Food Card defined as “a delivery instrument of the State to ensure universal access to the basic food basket. Aimed at mothers or fathers with children under 14 years of age who receive the Universal Child Allowance (AUH). Also for pregnant women after three months’ gestation

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individual capacity to avoid death by hunger, and keeps a large percentage of the population from living in abject misery. These actions are diverse, and like work and education, are often unveiled amidst discourse regarding the reduction of inequality, but not always, because it is well known that the mitigation of situations of poverty and extreme poverty – the importance of which cannot be underestimated – nonetheless does not mean the same thing as reducing the gap between rich and poor. These are necessary measures, but taken in isolation, they not only fail to reduce inequality, but also contribute to the hardening of symbolic barriers between people who “make the effort” and “pull themselves up by the bootstraps” and others who “took handouts,” as if people were facing hunger due to a “lack of willpower” (Chaves 2016; Chaves et al. 2016). The third example is work and youth employment policy. Work as a resource could have an impact on redistribution by the state, but from the individualist perspective this is not what happens. Based on the notion that work and/or employment are opportunities that are freely available, the blame for its absence is laid at the feet of young people. Obtaining employment is an individual pursuit, and as such the main policy to combat youth unemployment tends to culminate in “training courses,” “young entrepreneurs,” “assistance to build your project,” and/or precarious forms of employment “to gain experience.” These actions sometimes do increase capacities, but they do not solve the problem of being able to work, let alone ensuring regulated conditions and decent salaries. For this, other things need to happen at the same time. The neoliberal or liberal position, and even at times the arguments of progressives and development advocates, center the notion of the person as an individual, life as a meritocratic competition and the possibility of a society without interconnectedness or only “between equals.” Despite the amount of evidence provided by science, politics, and lived experience that this is not how things work, the weight of the individual in explanations of social phenomena is hefty. As the established point of departure, it is tied to the possibility of a subjectivity – obviously highly subjective  – of superiority, of identification with the ruling classes, and the construction of a negating separation from others who may be in similar or worse objective conditions. In synthesis, if we use the notions of individualist theories to design policy, perhaps we can reduce certain symptoms of poverty, but without attacking inequality if they are presented as the only solution. A second broad category of theories on inequality seek the causes in analyzing social interaction by observing patterns in relationships and exchanges. This allows us to pay attention to categorical inequality and uncover the ways in which markets and other forms of exchange and interaction are based on entrenched power dynamics and cultural traditions (Reygadas 2004, 2008). Categorical systems organize our

receiving the pregnancy allowance, people with disabilities receiving the AUH. Mothers of 7 or more children receiving Non-Taxable Pensions. It allows for the purchase of all kinds of food, with the exception of alcoholic drinks.” Retrieved from: https://www.argentina.gob.ar/ argentina-contra-el-hambre.

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interpretation of the world, and this interpretation filters and takes ownership of perceptions of reality, which in turn directs our practices. In Latin America, this perspective enables recognition of the coloniality of power in the continued existence of categories such as black and white, the omnipresence of the patriarchy and its man/woman binary, and shining a light on the power relationships feeding the ageist tenacity of adult-centrism in its myriad forms. All the above interactions have been denounced as leading to asymmetrical power balances. Feminist movements and others who advocate for new, healthier expressions of masculinity question this domination most forcefully, demanding a rethinking of systems of categories into which the world is organized. Changes in language, humor, laws, or any conversation involving young people  – often without their involvement (at least as far as Argentina is concerned), nonetheless imply a reluctance to facing up to this asymmetry; at least one of them questions new, constructed typologies. The strength of intergenerational articulation between our foremothers, the first feminists, the “older generation” who are now in their 50s and 60s, and all those who came after in green and multicolored waves, represent an experience of subjectivization based on a more egalitarian horizon for categories of gender and sexuality (Elizalde 2018; Larrondo and Ponce Lara 2019). Borders and social distancing visible from the point of view of inequality in social interaction allow for discussion of the processes of legitimization. The normalization of categorical inequality in the ageist sphere can be found in the constant negative framing and stigmatization of practices engaged in by youth and young people in general, and the working classes in particular (Chaves 2005, 2013). When class and age also intersect with gender, territory and ethno-racial identities, the result is a cluster of pejorative stereotypes, rejection, devaluation, and criminalization which can sometimes be taken to the extreme of justifying extermination, and always overvalue repression and incarceration. Juxtaposed to this, the other side of the relational categorical coin, are the processes which positively frame and overvalue other sectors: white, male, adult, urban supremacy (Fuentes 2019), linked to an overvaluing of the west at the expense of Latin America. It is possible to identify policies which perpetuate these inequalities of interaction and/or do nothing to combat them. Foremost among them is the persistence in security policy of the figure of the delinquent youth, male and dark-skinned, who in his multifaceted symbolic function repeats the stigma of the “other” whose “facial expression” (as if it were possible not to have a face) is interpreted as a threat, enabling public (in)security forces to use practices of intimidation, bullying, and even taking lives. Everyone gets what they deserve, and in the distribution of merit, some will come out not deserving to live. The increase in violence and death among youth finds its highest expression in “youthcide” as explained by Mexican colleague Valenzuela Arce (2015, 2019). At the same time, this categorical inequality of the construction of enemies renews the undeniable condition of the protection and unjust distribution of private property. When attention is paid to the exchange between capital and work from a perspective of interactional inequality, it is possible to see the way in which youth working

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conditions conjugate different kinds of discrimination to drive greater exploitation.3 One such situation is seen when young job seekers are faced with the requirement for “good presentation.” How is one to understand the nature of good presentation? It would seem to mean having clothes, physique, and a face similar to the person telling you. Again, the social relationship operates based on a series of forms by which people are characterized and that organize the kind of relationship possible with each person based on these stereotypes. The creation, transformation, or perpetuation of these categories is the subject of constant debate. Another observation of situations of interactional inequality occurs during visits to health centers, where young people are treated with contempt, or given inadequate attention typified by phrases such as, “honey, why didn’t you just show up earlier?” upon requesting a place in line or an appointment, which in turn leads to an infringement of the right to healthcare, thereby perpetuating a categorical inequality (Chaves 2014). The third set of theories focuses on the structural causes of inequality. They allow for the explanation of the productive structure, the different positions we occupy within it, the different kinds of capital we have, the distribution of wealth and ownership, among other things. For Latin America, they point to an increase in inequality overall, the unequal distribution of wealth and especially consumption, as well as singling out the role played by states whose interventions either promote capital and/or further their own interests. One point worth noting about these explanations is that, essential as they are to understanding systemic dynamics, they have frequently led us to thinking that by changing structures we will end inequality. At least two consequences arise from this. Firstly, if entire systems cannot be changed or the attempt to do so appears difficult or futile, this leads to disillusionment, the perception of impossibility, and the notion that policy does not have the capacity to transform reality, leading people to isolate themselves in their own struggles (which in turn reinforces the individual perspective of analysis). On the other hand, while certain changes have been made in overarching structures despite the difficulties in achieving this, it is still not enough to eliminate inequality altogether; as we have already shown above, the unequal distribution of individual capacities and categorical systems which operate as mechanisms for the transmission of inequality will continue to operate. The complexity of social situations goes beyond an empty reference to the fact that people are complicated; rather, it is included to offer a stronger sense of the quantity and quality of factors at play. People are active agents of their own present; this alone forces us to acknowledge the impossibility of knowing whether everything will remain as it is or undergo widespread change. These theories have provided the basis for policy design, most visibly in the economic policy sphere. Depending on the macroeconomic design, policy leans toward certain sectors, usually financial capital, the productive sector (but which one? Large-, medium- or small-scale?), workers, including working youth, or else dependent members of working families. Another kind of policy showing the

3  For a deeper exploration of these youth working situations in Argentina I recommend Gonzalo Assusa (2017) and Eugenia Roberti (2018).

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influence of structural theories is social security policy. Decisions concerning the reduction or extension of coverage create immediate redistributions in favor of one group or another. In Argentina, the program PROGRESAR4 stands out as an example, not just with regard to young people but also for its impact on families to which they belong, where “grandmothers” may receive tax-free retirement income and “­homemakers” receive benefits, as well as the large-scale impact of the Universal Child Allowance (AUH)5 and the Pregnancy Allowance for Social Protection (AUE).6 The combination of the three dimensions of inequality produces an effect that further deepens inequality and helps to perpetuate it. Therefore, the analytical proposal which seeks to consider them simultaneously is a powerful way to define and understand social phenomena and situations. Consistent with the production of knowledge to design public policy with a greater impact on populations, we must design policy which considers all these dimensions. This may be achieved by including all perspectives in the same plan or program, or more likely by engaging collaboration between different areas of government and policy. Since inequality functions multi-dimensionally and intersectionally, any approaches to solving it must include the same organizational logic to increase the inequality-reducing capacity of any actions which are developed. In closing this section, we ask again, what is going on? Latin America has lived through processes which on a continental and historical scale look like waves of liberal, developmental, or sovereign reforms, to name just a few. More recently, these waves of reforms can be termed neoliberal, neodevelopmental, or post-­ neoliberal. But every country – and often simultaneously with others – has had its own cycles. These state-specific events are products of their own political processes and traditions, their own historical approach to social issues and the distribution of wealth in each, the relationship of their productive formats to their insertion into global markets and world geopolitics, and the particular characteristics of the state and citizenry. These “things which happen to us” are the framework for analyzing why we tolerate inequality (Dubet 2015), and for an “equality imperative” (Bárcena and Prado 2016) to develop political actions which cannot wait. Argentina possesses a heterogeneity in its productive structure which is reflected in the labor market and contributes to the creation of a range of social and political contexts (Bárcena, and Prado 2016). Inequality results from the productive structure, and flows from there into the work and social spheres, weaving itself into the fabric of gender, ethnicity, race, and age groups. All of this leads to different things happening to different people, but many of these are also similar in nature, and above all… it all happens at once. In the national context, the pandemic exposed a large part of the distribution mechanisms for resources and people. We quickly

 Further information available at https://www.anses.gob.ar/progresar.  Further information available at https://www.anses.gob.ar/asignacion-universal-por-hijo. 6  Further information available at https://www.argentina.gob.ar/solicitar-la-asignacion-familiarpor-embarazo-para-proteccion-social-aue. 4 5

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learned that the circulation of the virus was mostly through the air and that interpersonal proximity had to be avoided. We also learned that there was not sufficient equipment and connectivity in circulation to ensure that everyone could have equal access to the proposed model for educational continuity, including virtual access, and that the intervention of schools and local organizations (whether social, community, political, or religious in nature) was what restored the social fabric and enabled people to continue studying and eating, and also to tap into the potential of social support policies such as the Emergency Family Income (IFE)7 and track the well-being of community members. This was recorded and allowed further research efforts to learn more about what has unfolded8 (Kessler 2020). Protecting and investing in the lives of today’s children, adolescents, and young people makes their existence less unequal, makes their upbringing closer to a process of happiness and makes daily life more resistant to imposed precariousness. The projection of “growing up” with greater individual capacities, social interactions which legitimize their existence, respect for their practices and recognition of their experiences, aesthetics and identities, as well as a social structure which shifts the balance of the relationships of inequality toward those who have least, should be an ethical imperative. At the risk of becoming repetitive, it must be pointed out that the state cannot hope to solve inequality by attending to only one of these dimensions at a time, such as by focusing on increasing individual capacities, without creating policy addressing all kinds of social interactions and structural organization which leads to inequality. Without this approach, the focus on the individual will continue to run in repetitive circles without progressing to the next level. To achieve progress, the rules of the game must be changed, the game itself transformed or at least opened on a general level to enable other kinds of play and create more egalitarian conditions. And above all, the state cannot be expected to achieve this on its own; the classic trilogy of state, markets, “civil society” (which lumps together vast sections of the population including political, social, labor union and religious organizations, among others), is an indispensable coalition in the creation of answers.

7  Further information available at https://www.argentina.gob.ar/sites/default/files/ingreso-familiar-­ emergencia_lectura-facil.pdf. 8  The National Ministry of Science and Technology created the COVID Unit which coordinates research and promoted financing for a range of different projects, including in the social sciences. The author is participating in one of these on a national level, titled “Identities, experiences and social discourse thrown into conflict by the pandemic and the post-pandemic: a multidimensional study on uncertainty, hatred, solidarity, care and unequal expectations in all regions of Argentina” (“Proyecto PISAC-COVID- 19-0005”), directed by Javier Balsa. It is a public policy proposing the convergence of scientific research with design, monitoring, and assessment of other public policy.

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I t All Weighs on Us at Once: Precariousness and the Accumulation of Disadvantage In the previous section we took a multidimensional approach to inequality in analyzing public policy aimed at youth. This enabled us to identify the benefits of this approach and the shortfalls of these policies. Now we will use a diachronic perspective to show what “happens” over the course of the lifespan, and the way in which those situations, conditions and resources are accumulated or not, creating advantages or disadvantages in young people’s lives. The conceptual framework of the notion of precariousness proposed by Lorey (2016) will be another useful tool for reading new sociohistorical forms of capitalism. The author makes a distinction between precariousness, precarity as an effect and precarization as a means of governing.9 She opens one of her books with a story of how a situation that was once “peripheral” in her country has become widespread, proving that precarization itself has become a form of governing: If we fail to understand precarization, then we understand neither the politics nor the economy of the present. Precarization is not a marginal phenomenon, even in the rich regions of Europe. In the leading neoliberal Western industrial nations it can no longer be outsourced to the socio-geographical spaces of the periphery where it only affects others. Precarization is not an exception, it is rather the rule. It is spreading even in those areas that were long considered secure. It has become an instrument of governing and, at the same time, a basis for capitalist accumulation that serves social regulation and control (Lorey 2016: 17).

An analysis of the life courses of the working class youth who participated in this research showed paths in which the main activities were studying, working, caring for others, and socializing. Family conditions and class-based expectations led them to be socialized from a young age into a labor context which demands highly physical kinds of work, a lack of labor regulations, poor wages, and social divisions in the workplace based on traditional gender roles. This led to a dominance of work outside the home for men, while women worked predominantly in their own homes or the homes of their employers. The lack of job stability, reflected not only in the points mentioned above but also in a lack of job security – even in the worst jobs – point to the impossibility of using work as a means to escape poverty (Chávez Molina and Pla 2013; Bendit and Miranda 2015; Pérez and Busso 2015; Benza 2016; Busso and Pérez 2016; Rausky and Chaves 2019). As we have seen in our field work, the care economy forms a major part of the lives of women starting in childhood: the unequal distribution of domestic tasks between siblings based on gender broadens as children grown older, and while young boys may be involved in care and cleaning duties, in adolescence and young adulthood more traditional gender roles take over (Hernandez et al. 2015). The work undertaken by young women caring for their siblings often overlaps – and sometimes even overshadows  – the care of their own children and external care work 9  To expand on the “three dimensions of instability: unstable conditions, instability and destabilization as a governmental mentality” Lorey (2016: 27).

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involving children or the elderly. The practical experience accumulated by participating in domestic tasks in their own families is a resource that enables their incorporation into the labor force in the context of care work and cleaning duties. This individual capacity, as with young men working physically demanding jobs, functions as a kind of capital, but also perpetuates unequal, precarious positions within the labor force. Their home experience in construction and domestic service are essential as practical work experience, and fundamental to understanding both the intergenerational relationship which regulates and articulates the activities (work/ care) in their families and the systems which give a certain value to certain kinds of work. For this group, a positive value is given to manual labor and a negative one to more intellectual tasks and office work, and this is the inverse of the values held by other sectors from more dominant social classes: here, nonmanual labor is better, manual labor is worse. In another article, we showed that over half of low-income youth in 2019 worked in the informal economy, compared to only a fifth of high-­ income youth (Assusa and Chaves 2019). Not only young people, but also adults in low-income families are far more likely to be working in the informal economy with no access to social security. The life courses of low-income youth are a constant balancing act between “studying,” “working,” and “caring,” depending on the cycles of economic abundance and scarcity within their families. The autonomy of decision-making concerning these responsibilities is limited by the interdependence that is an unavoidable part of the survival strategies of the family system (Eguia and Ortale 2004; Eguia et  al. 2007). On the other hand, the possibility of combining work, care duties, study, and recreation creates tension, provoking categorical inequality along age lines between those who “are young” within the dominant model, and those who “have no time to enjoy their youth,” or those who “were denied their chance at youth” (from the dominant image of youth which is focused on study and work). Our research has shown that it is largely the academic sphere that loses most young people as a result of this incompatibility. Work, care duties, and socializing are firm fixtures in the lives of young people in marginalized communities. Furthermore, many young people are also involved in a second tier of activities including artistic expression, sport, religious activities, participation in social movements, community organizations, and, to a lesser extent, traditional political parties. Every child is born into a role within the history of a social class and the families to which they belong, which can function both as support structures and legacy capital, with the potential for both positive and negative effects on the outcome. The concept of the accumulation of disadvantage refers to situations that, over the course of the life cycle, burgeon into increased disadvantage originating from an initial obstacle, difficulty or unequal position, thereby tying in other difficulties. An analysis of the accumulation of disadvantages over the life courses studied reveals that from a young age, unfavorable conditions and experiences are reinforced, resulting in subjects and sectors becoming trapped in subordinate positions within the social structure. Of course, these pathways are not linear, there are swings and roundabouts, gray areas, “better” and “worse” moments; but the undeniable fact is that for most children, adolescents and young people interviewed, poverty begins in infancy

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and remains for the rest of their lives. When more and more disadvantages are accumulated, it becomes increasingly difficult to escape from a position of vulnerability. The history of the accumulation of disadvantages by the most vulnerable sectors (Mora and de Oliveira 2014; Saraví 2009, 2015), and growing awareness of this point, supports the claim that any public policy that seeks to increase access and improve quality of life must take into account all of the impossibilities, obstacles and preexisting and parallel conditions needed for people to achieve access to the rights, resources and devices generated by society. If we observe the intersections of class, gender, ethnicity and race, clear patterns emerge showing the existence of symbolic barriers (Lamont 2014), especially barriers to access contributing to the perpetuation of the accumulation of disadvantages by the sector studied: black, mixed race, women, poor, urban, pibe chorro, wacho (derogatory terms for marginalized, criminalized youth) – all this leads to stigmatization and rejection (Chaves 2014). Pathways fraught with disadvantage and the intersectionalities which worsen inequality weigh heavily on the life experiences of every young person and their families, and as such, inequality persists. Once again we turn to Lorey for her powerful explanation on how precarization is used as a strategy for governing, broadening our understanding of what is happening and how it weighs on us: Governmental precarization thus means not only destabilization through employment, but also destabilization of the conduct of life and thus of bodies and modes of subjectivation. Understanding precarization as governmental makes it possible to problematize the complex interactions between an instrument of governing and the conditions of economic exploitation and modes of subjectivation, in their ambivalence between subjugation and self-empowerment. (Lorey 2016: 28).

The world where these young people grow up is set in a context of precarization. Precariousness forms part of the background and is visible in the unstable conditions of everyday life: informal water sources, the fragility of school retention (including the shortfalls of virtual education during the pandemic), poorly paid work, with no health coverage for accidents or retirement savings, without social welfare, with slow, fragmented healthcare services, cold, heat, hunger at times, the impossibility of making certain choices, the forced adoption of others, the provisions of class, gender, roles to be fulfilled, violence, the frustration of being unable to save despite working and working, polluted neighborhoods, the spoliation of urban daily existence, and so on. This list should not only be read as a description but also, as Butler says, as “a new form of regulation that distinguishes this historical time” (Butler in Lorey 2016: 13). Precariousness is not just a temporary phase, but a structural element establishing the positions, situations, and experiences of many people, in this case young people, over the course of their lives, and forms part of government under our current version of capitalism. The precariousness we face cannot be solved via individual approaches to reducing poverty, nor in changes to social interactions, nor on a structural level, unless a multidimensional approach is taken to inequality, addressing the social systems for accumulation of wealth. A more egalitarian pathway will

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not be possible without touching on the nuclei of wealth, redistribution accompanied by fiscal changes and policy driven by solidarity.

Making It Happen for Us: Policy for Equality Finally, to the extent that it is possible to anticipate from this discouraging panorama the emergence of a fairer horizon with reduced inequality, an attempt can be made to propose an idea of what is possible, perhaps a list of actions to subvert the unequal order, as well to contribute just a little more toward the understanding of the kinds of inequality we face, and the reasons for their persistence. Is it possible to predict the future? Of course it is, although COVID-19 was one glaring example of the failure of predictions. But given society’s tendency to reproduce its most dominant forms, it is possible to hypothesize about possible futures. In the medium term, this will not include the ascendance to a higher social status for most. But this may still happen for some, if the job market is opened and stable jobs with health coverage and social security, union representation and work-related rights are made available, as has happened at different times (with several gaps) in the history of this country. Argentina has a centralized development state, where social rights are linked to employment. The access to rights, and the conception of rights have been historically debated in parallel with the debate on how to conceive and implement government. Reygadas (2020) reminds us that all inequality is political, while Pérez Sainz (2020) makes reference to the re-politicization of the social sphere. Modern class struggles, the battles of feminist movements, movements demanding respect for ethnic identity, succession disputes between young and old, conflicts over more sustainable ecological models  – all the above are struggles which advocate for a different approach to ownership and accumulation or a different way to reproduce wealth. The Regional Human Development Report for Latin America and the Caribbean 2021 explains the regional situation, which can be summarized in the four words of its title: high inequality and low growth. In response to the question of why this situation exists, the organization has developed explanations which consider several factors; one of these, highlighted here due to its relevance to this chapter, are the issues described as subjective, It is important also to consider subjective measures of inequality related to how people perceive it. This is essential because people’s perceptions of inequality shape their political attitudes (and thus their support for different policy approaches) as well as their aspirations (and thus their efforts to achieve them). Understanding what people think about inequality in LAC is particularly crucial at the current moment given the wave of social unrest that swept across the region in late 2019 and early 2020. While the protests were driven by a range of country-specific concerns, people’s grievances over inequality were among the largest common denominators (UNDP 2021: 7).

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From the political perspective, many people, including young people, have been unceasing in their attempts to make change through organized political action. The following are a small selection of the many actions involving young people in Argentina: unions demanding an increase in worker profit sharing through pay negotiations and better working conditions; feminist and LGBTQI+ movements in their struggles for recognition and increased participation in many spheres, as well as for equal rights such as equal marriage, voluntary abortion and a national identity document that includes a third, nonbinary category; young people participating in a people’s or nation’s struggle for sovereignty that includes the affirmation of community property and the demarcation and/or return of tribal lands; militancy in different political parties and social movements involving broad, uneven disputes about the distribution of wealth; militancy among secondary and university students; environmental activism challenging models of development; religious activism as spaces where members struggle to expand their beliefs and the defense of regulations based on the same (such as “the sky-blue handkerchiefs” in symbolic opposition to the Law on voluntary abortion); volunteer work and activism in social organizations linked to a range of different issues (children, the environment, poverty, disabilities, etc.). It would be impossible to list here the full gamut of participation and political commitments undertaken by young people, and it is also true that many do not feel that such transformational or defensive actions have much relevance to their lives. Social problems in Argentina in the current era seem to be heavily leveraged by political parties, at least as far as the public policy agenda is concerned. But young people have always been at the forefront of the creative expression of discontent, as exemplified by the words to the rap song transcribed under each subtitle of this chapter. Art, expression and the occupation of spaces are political acts in many cases, or are politically infused in others, but these kinds of action are not directly, or at all, aimed at the accumulation of power to occupy spaces in government. On the other hand, if we focus on the public policy sphere, the current government’s (2019–2023) response to peronismo (referring to the politics of the Perón era), both in terms of discourse and decision, seeks to produce greater equality, equity, and social justice. The latter term is key to the ideological project of the majority-holding party (Partido Justicialista or “Party for Justice”) which forms part of the People’s Front (Frente de Todos), the electoral name of the coalition which took power at the end of 2019. The impact of a political decision which leans toward equality is astronomical. The change in the power relationship between those who have most and those who have least, those who had no access to rights or property, who may now gain greater access; those who were erased from view and whose names have now been spoken, those who were affected by obstructive laws and regulations who are now enabled will be able to speak of a state which is present in their lives, functionaries who fulfill their functions, a community organized around solidarity. If we participate in the design of public policy, we are forming a part of the process of redistribution of the social product; therefore, to achieve a greater impact via distribution, it is essential to take into account the structure of inequality and the

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part played in it by each person; what mechanisms and strategies of inequality in interaction must we be aware of and/or attempt to transform; and there will probably also need to be interventions on the level of individual inequality. As has already been pointed out, if all three dimensions are considered at once, a greater impact will be achieved. Please note that, in this case, “at once” does not mean that every single action must take on all three levels, however planning must occur to ensure that they are taken into account, with other, parallel actions in place to address them. Inequality is immense, all-encompassing, and reproduces itself in a seemingly endless cycle. In the unlikely event of attaining the prize, it is like a call to “save yourself,” with meritocratic proposals taking the appearance of lining up for tickets without knowing that they have already been sold out. The sociocultural and state tendency to devalue and reject subjectivity (desubjectivization or destituting subjectivities), if incorporated into a neoliberal government, feed into inequality, support oppression and bolster the idea of identifying with the dominant classes. In contrast, the promotion of a respectful, humanizing narrative by society and the state of the notion of a working-class subject who can be playful, have rights and dignity, engage with politics, can promote the concept – and social practice – of the conditions for equality. People need to be convinced that equality is the preferable path (Dubet 2015). This symbolic struggle is important. In an era when dystopian images are everywhere (Chaves 2021), an egalitarian utopia would be a great collective accomplishment. In view of this panorama, the title of this section, “Making it happen for us,” can be considered a call to action as well as a brief description of how certain young people are involving themselves in politics, and the status of public policy addressing youth issues. We can shine a light on what can/needs to “happen” to create structural change, modifications to social interaction and individual transformations which reduce people’s vulnerability. We cannot hope for linear progress, nor maintain expectations which ignore the conditions at the point of departure. But we must know that if actions are not put in place to halt and change the conditions created by capitalism’s exploitation, there can be no projection of a reduction in the gaps of inequality, reduction in hunger, greater social justice, and respect for sovereign nations.

References Assusa, G. 2017. Jóvenes trabajadores. Disputas sobre sentidos, apropiaciones simbólicas y distinciones sociales en el mundo laboral. Buenos Aires: Grupo Editor Universitario. Assusa, G., and M. Chaves. 2019. Working lives of youth in poverty in urban Argentina. In Living and working in poverty: Trajectories of children, youth and adults in Latin America, ed. M.E. Rausky and M. Chaves, 71–97. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Bárcena, A., and A. Prado. 2016. El imperativo de la igualdad: por un desarrollo sostenible en América Latina y el Caribe. Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno. Barriach, C., Chaves, M. and Gareis, L., 2021. ¿Me ayudás con…? Experiencias de investigación etnográfica y militancia con jóvenes y organizaciones populares. Encuentro de etnografías colaborativas y comprometidas en Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo.

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Bendit, R., and A.  Miranda. 2015. Transitions to adulthood in contexts of economic crisis and postrecession. The case of Argentina. Journal of Youth Studies 18 (2): 183–196. Benza, G. 2016. La estructura de clases argentina durante la década 2003–2013. In La sociedad argentina hoy, ed. G. Kessler, 111–139. Siglo XXI/Fundación OSDE: Buenos Aires. Busso, M., and P. Pérez. 2016. Caminos al trabajo: el mundo laboral de los jóvenes durante la última etapa del gobierno kirchnerista. Buenos Aires: Miño y Dávila. Chaves, M. 2005. Juventud negada y negativizada: representaciones y formaciones discursivas vigentes en la Argentina contemporánea. Revista Última Década 23: 9–32. ———. 2013. Culturas juveniles en la tapa del diario: tensiones entre el margen y el centro de la hoja. In Políticas de infancia y juventud: producir sujetos y construir Estado, ed. M. Chaves and J.E. Fidalgo Zeballos, 111–137. Buenos Aires: Espacio. ———. 2014. Haciendo trámites con los pibes y las familias: barreras de acceso y micropolíticas públicas. Escenarios 21: 15–23. Retrieved from http://naturalis.fcnym.unlp.edu.ar/ id/20170926014832. ———. 2016. “El esfuerzo”: usos en la construcción de fronteras, lógicas de merecimiento y redes de desigualdad con jóvenes de sectores populares en un barrio de La Plata. Actas electrónicas III Foro Latinoamericano de Trabajo Social. Facultad de Trabajo Social, UNLP. Retrieved from http://www.trabajosocial.unlp.edu.ar/uploads/docs/chaves_gt_24.pdf. ———. 2020. Luchar por la igualdad: condiciones de un quehacer -académico sobre lo juvenildesde América Latina (en pandemia). Entredichos 9. Retrieved from http://entredichos.trabajosocial.unlp.edu.ar/wp-­content/uploads/sites/6/2020/09/3_CHAVES_FINAL.pdf. ———. 2021. Por-venires en tiempos distópicos (o acerca de juventudes, desigualdades, pandemia, utopías, Estados, la vida, la muerte, y… ¿algo más?). In Juventudes e desigualdades sociais em tempos de crise e radicalização política, ed. F.  Marcon and D.  Parfentieff de Noronha, 45–60. Criação Editora: Aracajú. Retrieved from http://www.gerts.ong.br/. Chaves, M., S.G. Fuentes, and L. Vecino. 2016. Experiencias juveniles de la desigualdad. Fronteras y merecimientos en sectores populares, medios altos y altos. Buenos Aires: Grupo Editor Universitario. Retrieved from http://biblioteca.clacso.edu.ar/clacso/gt/20171218041618/ Experiencias_juveniles_de_la_desigualdad.pdf. Chávez Molina, E., and J. Pla. 2013. Desigualdad y movilidad social en el mundo contemporáneo aportes empíricos y conceptuales: Argentina, China, España, Francia. Buenos Aires: Imago Mundi. Dubet, F. 2015. ¿Por qué preferimos la desigualdad? (aunque digamos lo contrario). Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI. Eguia, A., and S. Ortale. 2004. Reproducción social y pobreza urbana. Cuestiones de Sociología 2. Retrieved from https://www.cuestionessociologia.fahce.unlp.edu.ar/article/view/ CSn02a01/5792. Eguia, A., M.S. Ortale, J. Piovani, and D. Weingast. 2007. La pobreza en Argentina: nuevas realidades, nuevos conceptos. In La Argentina democrática: los años y los libros, ed. A. Camou, M.C. Torti, and A. Viguera, 241–280. UNLP-Prometeo: La Plata. Elder, G. 1994. Time, human agency, and social change: perspectives on the life course. Social Psychology Quarterly 57 (1): 4–15. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2786971. ———. 1998. The life course as developmental theory. Child Development 69 (1): 1–12. Elizalde, S. 2018. Hijas, hermanas, nietas: genealogías políticas en el activismo de género de las jóvenes. Ensambles 8: 86–93. Fuentes, S.G. 2019. Juventud positivizada en Buenos Aires: clase, moral y estética en la producción de juventudes contemporáneas. Última Década 51: 123–159. Harvey, D. 2004. El “nuevo” imperialismo: acumulación por desposesión. Socialist Register. Retrieved from http://biblioteca.clacso.edu.ar/clacso/se/20130702120830/harvey.pdf. Hernandez, C., J. Cingolani, and M. Chaves. 2015. Espacios con edades: el barrio y la pobreza desde los niños/as y jóvenes. In Hacerse un lugar. Prácticas, circuitos y trayectorias juveniles en ámbitos urbanos, ed. Chaves and Segura, 123–146. Buenos Aires: Biblos. Kessler, G. 2014. Controversias sobre la desigualdad: Argentina, 2003–2013. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica.

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Kessler, Gabriel, ed. 2020. Relevamiento del impacto social de las medidas del aislamiento dispuestas por el PEN. Buenos Aires: CONICET. Retrieved from https://www.conicet.gov.ar/wp-­ content/uploads/Informe_Final_Covid-­Cs.Sociales-­1.pdf. Lamont, M. 2014. Reflections inspired by ethnic boundary making: institutions, power networks. Ethnic and Racial Studies 37 (5). Larrondo, M., and C. Ponce Lara. 2019. Activismos feministas jóvenes: emergencias, actrices y luchas en América Latina. Buenos Aires: CLACSO.  Retrieved from http://biblioteca.clacso. edu.ar/clacso/gt/20191202034521/Activismos-­Feministas-­Jovenes.pdf. Lorey, I. 2016. Estado de inseguridad: Gobernar la precariedad. Madrid: Traficantes de Sueños. Mora, M., and O. de Oliveira. 2014. ¿Ruptura o reproducción de las desventajas sociales heredadas? Relatos de vida de jóvenes que han vivido situaciones de pobreza. In Desafíos y Paradojas. Los jóvenes frente a las desigualdades sociales, ed. M. Mora and O. De Oliveira, 245–312. Mexico: Colmex. OXFAM. 2021. Cinco datos escandalosos sobre la desigualdad extrema global y cómo combatirla. Retrieved from https://www.oxfam.org/es/ cinco-­datos-­escandalosos-­sobre-­la-­desigualdad-­extrema-­global-­y-­como-­combatirla. Pérez, P., and M.  Busso. 2015. Los jóvenes argentinos y sus trayectorias laborales inestables: Mitos y realidades. Trabajo y sociedad 24: 147–160. Una historia de la desigualdad en América Latina. La barbarie de los mercados, desde el siglo XIX hasta hoy. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI. ———. 2020. Las desigualdades y la re-politización de lo social en América Latina. Encartes 2 (4). Quijano, A., 2014. Colonialidad del poder y clasificación social. Buenos Aires: CLACSO.  Retrieved from http://biblioteca.clacso.edu.ar/gsdl/cgi-­bin/library. cgi?e=d-­11000-­00%2D%2D-­off-­0clacso%2D%2D00-­1%2D%2D%2D%2D0-­10-­0%2D% 2D-­0%2D%2D-­0direct-­10%2D%2D-­4%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D-­0-­0l%2D%2D11-­es-­ Zz-­1%2D%2D-­20-­about%2D%2D-­00-­3-­1-­00-­0%2D%2D4%2D%2D%2D%2D0-­0-­01-­00-­0ut fZz-­8-­00&a=d&cl=CL3.2&d=D9642.2 Rausky, M.E., and M. Chaves, eds. 2019. Living and working in poverty: trajectories of children, youth and adults in Latin America. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Reygadas, Luis. 2004. Las redes de la desigualdad: un enfoque multidimensional. Política y Cultura 22: 7–25. Retrieved from http://www.scielo.org.mx/pdf/polcul/n22/n22a02.pdf. ———. 2008. La apropiación: destejiendo las redes de la desigualdad. Barcelona: Anthropos. Reygadas, L. 2020. La desigualdad siempre es política. Encartes 2 (4). Roberti, M., 2018. Políticas de inclusión socio-laboral para jóvenes: Un análisis de las trayectorias de participantes de programas de empleo (Prog.R.Es.Ar y PJMMT) en el Conurbano Bonaerense. Memoria Académica. Retrieved from http://www.memoria.fahce.unlp.edu.ar/ tesis/te.1515/te.1515.pdf. Saraví, G. 2009. Transiciones vulnerables: Juventud, desigualdad y exclusión en México. Mexico City: CIESAS. ———. 2015. Juventudes fragmentadas: Socialización, clase y cultura en la construcción de la desigualdad. Mexico City: Flacso-México, CIESAS. Therborn, G. 2015. Los campos de exterminio de la desigualdad. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Tilly, C. 2000. Desigualdades persistentes. Buenos Aires: Manantial. United Nations Development Program. 2021. Regional Human Development Report. Trapped: High inequality and low growth in Latin America and the Caribbean. Retrieved July 15, 2021 https://www.latinamerica.undp.org/content/rblac/es/home/library/human_development/ regional-humandevelopment-report-2021.html. Valenzuela, A.J.M. 2015. Juvenicidio: Ayotzinapa y las vidas precarias en América Latina y España. Barcelona: Ned Ediciones. ———. 2019. Trazos de sangre y fuego: Bio-Necropolítica y juvenicidio en América Latina. Guadalajara: Calas.

Chapter 10

Racial Inequalities as a Structuring Axis of Social Inequality in Latin America and the Afro-Descendant Population Laís Abramo

Introduction Racial inequalities constitute one of the structuring axes of the social inequality matrix in Latin America. Racism is one of the central elements of the culture of privilege, a constitutive historical characteristic of societies, originating in their colonial and slavery past and which continues to reproduce itself to the present day. The Afro-descendant population in Latin America is 134 million people, which corresponds to 21% of the total population. Despite progress in recent periods, there is still significant statistical invisibility regarding various aspects of the living conditions of this population. However, the available data show the persistence of profound racial inequalities. Progress has been made in legal frameworks, institutions, and policies aimed at confronting racism and promoting racial equality, especially since the Third World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa (2001). These advances are not only the result of the actions of Afro-descendant movements and organizations that have managed to place the issue of their rights and the need for recognition on the public agenda, but also of the actions of progressive governments and international and multilateral organizations, particularly the United Nations System. The objective of this chapter is to analyze the inequalities affecting the Afro-­ descendant population in Latin America based on the conceptual framework of the social inequality matrix. It is also intended, based on this diagnosis, to point out some challenges for the deepening of the analysis of racial inequalities and their

L. Abramo (*) Perseu Abramo Foundation, Brasilia, Brasil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Vommaro, P. Baisotti (eds.), Persistence and Emergencies of Inequalities in Latin America, Latin American Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90495-1_10

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intersecting with other structuring axes of social inequality, as well as for the development of policies capable of confronting them and advancing toward equality and the guarantee of the rights of the Afro-descendant population.

 he Social Inequality Matrix in Latin America, Racism T and the Culture of Privilege The concept of the social inequality matrix has been developed by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC 2016a), within the framework of its historical tradition of analysis of the main problems and challenges related to economic and social development in the region, in which the issue of inequality has been present. In ECLAC’s original reflections, the deteriorating trend in the terms of trade between the center and the periphery was identified as one of the main obstacles to Latin American and Caribbean development and a factor in the reproduction of a peripheral and subordinated, and therefore unequal, international insertion.1 ECLAC has also devoted great attention to inequalities within the region, both between and within the countries that make up the region. Within the historical-structuralist tradition of ECLAC’s thinking (Bielschowsky and Torres 2018), attention has been directed primarily to the characterization of the productive matrix of Latin American and Caribbean economies, where the foundations of inequality have been found. Their analyses have highlighted the marked structural heterogeneity that characterizes this productive matrix (Pinto 1976; Di Filippo and Jadue 1976) and that would largely explain the high levels of inequality historically present in the region, as well as its structural nature and its persistence even in periods of economic growth (ECLAC 2012, 2014, 2018a). The poorly diversified productive matrix, with low capacity for technological diffusion and highly heterogeneous, in which most jobs are generated in low productivity sectors, would be at the basis of the high levels of social inequality, being the labor market the fundamental link that connects this productive structure with a highly stratified access to quality jobs and social protection, and therefore, to high income inequality in households (ECLAC 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016b). ECLAC’s concern with inequality gains centrality from 2010 onward, in a renewed reflection initially expressed in a series of documents known as the “equality trilogy”2 and in various technical–political commitments adopted in its subsidiary bodies, especially the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and  See discussion in Bielschowsky and Torres (2018).  The “equality trilogy” is made up of the following documents: La hora de la igualdad: brechas por cerrar, caminos por abrir (CEPAL 2010); Cambio estructural para la igualdad: una visión integrada del desarrollo (CEPAL 2012), Pactos para la igualdad: hacia un futuro sostenible (CEPAL 2014); these documents are followed by Horizontes 2030: la igualdad en el centro del desarrollo sostenible (CEPAL 2016c), and La ineficiencia de la desigualdad (CEPAL 2018a). 1 2

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the Caribbean, the Conference on Population and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Regional Conference on Social Development in Latin America and the Caribbean. There are two characteristics that deserve to be highlighted in the deepening of ECLAC’s thinking on inequality in the region during this period. The first is its consonance with the strengthening of the objectives of the fight against poverty, inequality, and social exclusion that have characterized the political agenda of a number of governments in the region since the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century. The second is a broadening of the concept of equality and concern with inequality, which for a long time in Latin America was focused on the analysis of income concentration (ECLAC 2014, 2016a). However, the notion of equality that guides ECLAC’s reflection in the “equality trilogy” is broader, and incorporates the recognition of the multidimensional nature of inequality. Thus, this notion refers not only to economic equality, or equality of means (current income and property of productive and financial assets), but also equality of capabilities (understood as the set of skills and knowledge of individuals to build their life projects), of autonomies, and, fundamentally, equality of rights (Bárcena and Prado 2016). These inequalities are manifested in all areas of rights and development, such as health, education, work, social protection and care, housing and transportation, access to basic infrastructure services, culture, leisure time, political participation, and the possibility of living a life free of violence (ECLAC 2016a). Despite significant progress in reducing inequality in Latin America between the middle of the first decade of this century and approximately 2015, its levels remain extremely high, and have increased in the recent period, especially after the onset of the economic and social crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This reaffirms that the structural and persistent nature of social inequality in Latin America requires a deeper analysis of the nature of this phenomenon, especially on the axes that structure and reproduce it. Social inequality in Latin America is not only based on an exclusionary productive matrix, but also on a culture of privilege. The culture of privilege is a constitutive historical feature of Latin American societies that has its origins in the colonial and slavery period, but continues to be reproduced to this day through actors, practices, customs, and institutions (Bárcena and Prado 2016; ECLAC 2018a). It is built on the denial of the “other” as rights holders; the “other” that has historically corresponded to the native indigenous population, the African population enslaved in the colonial period and their descendants, women, poor people, workers, and other discriminated and excluded segments of the population (ECLAC 2018a). In that culture, classism, racism, misogyny, sexism, and homolesbotransphobia are intersected and mutually reinforcing (ECLAC/UNFPA 2020). Differences are conceived as inequalities and are naturalized in the perception of people, both those who are in a position of privilege and those who are subordinate; hierarchies are naturalized according to criteria of class, gender, ethnic-racial condition, national or territorial origin, sexual orientation, which contributes to give a strong inertia to power and inequality (ECLAC 2018a; ECLAC/UNFPA 2020).

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Through the concept of the matrix of social inequality, it is fundamentally intended to identify the axes that structure and reproduce social inequality in Latin America, as well as the ways in which these are interrelated, which in turn enables a better and more integrated identification of its impacts in the various spheres of society. According to this formulation, the first structuring axis of the social inequality matrix is the socioeconomic stratum, or social class (ECLAC 2016a). The central elements of this axis are the structure of property and the distribution of productive and financial resources and assets, and one of its clearest manifestations is income inequality, which constitutes, at the same time, the cause and effect of other disparities in areas such as health, education and the labor market (ECLAC 2016a: 18).

However, there are at least four other fundamental axes in the structuring and reproduction of social inequality, which are ethnic-racial status, gender, territory, and age. These inequalities are considered structuring because of the weight they have in the configuration of social and power relations in Latin America and in the experience of individuals and social groups. In addition to these basic axes, sexual orientation and gender identity, disability and migratory status also play an important role in the configuration of social inequalities (ECLAC 2019b). The structuring axes of social inequality do not only coexist in a given time and space. They are intersected, mutually reinforcing, and interlinked throughout the life cycle, forming a complex web of hierarchies, exclusion and discrimination. One of the most relevant contributions of this perspective of analysis is to enable a holistic and integrated vision that contributes to the identification and diagnosis of the hard cores of inequality and exclusion, or, in other words, of those individuals, groups and population groups that experience the intersection of multiple axes of inequality and discrimination. This vision is fundamental both for the diagnosis of social inequalities and for the design and implementation of policies and strategies capable of overcoming them and advancing toward equality (ECLAC 2016a). With regard to the configuration and reproduction of ethnic-racial inequalities, which constitute the central theme of this article, it is essential to consider the weight of racism, an ideology that classifies, orders and hierarchizes individuals according to their phenotype, and which transforms diversity into inequality, shaping a society that is based on the existence, naturalization, and reproduction of inequality (Theodoro 2019).

I ntersectionality and Social Inequality Matrix Approaches: A Fruitful Dialogue The intersectionality approach, developed in the field of gender studies in the 1990s from black feminism, has gained increasing acceptance in Latin America. That strand starts from the realization that gender studies were not adequately

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considering issues related to Afro-descendant women and that the same was happening with the issue of women in race relations studies (ECLAC 2018b). There are several points of convergence between intersectionality and social inequality matrix approaches. The dialogue between these two perspectives is necessary and can be very fruitful to deepen and strengthen both the analyses on the forms and mechanisms of reproduction of racial inequalities in Latin America, and the design and implementation of policies capable of substantially reducing them (ECLAC/UNFPA 2020). For the purposes of this article, three contributions of the intersectionality approach stand out in particular, as pointed out in ECLAC/UNFPA (2020). The first is the need to abandon an “addictive” perspective in the analysis of the multiple dimensions of inequality, exclusion and subordination; this vision is very close to the emphasis attributed by the notion of the social inequality matrix to the idea that the inequalities of class, gender, race, ethnicity, age, territory, disability, sexual orientation, and gender identity, and migratory status, not only add up, but intersect and potentiate each other. The second is to reject an a priori hierarchization of the different axes or systems of subordination, inequality, and oppression, since, recognizing that one category may have primacy over others in a given time and place does not minimize the theoretical importance of assuming that race, class, and gender are categories of analysis that structure all relations (Collins 2015). The third idea is that intersectional analysis applies to society as a whole, not only to oppressed and excluded groups, since all people have an “ethnicity” (not only racialized minorities), associated with class and gender situations that condition their life experiences and their access to different resources and spheres of rights (Yuval-­ Davis 2011).

 isibility and Recognition of the Afro-Descendant Population V in Latin America: What Progress Has Been Made? Statistical invisibility is one of the most severe forms of discrimination. Despite the existence of, in a conservative estimate, 134 million people in Latin America, representing 21% of its total population in 2020 (ECLAC/UNFPA 2020), the incorporation of the self-­identification of Afro-descendants in the national statistical systems of the vast majority of countries is still very recent. For this reason, the demands of the Afro-­descendant movement for the inclusion of this self-identification in the instruments that make up the national statistical systems continue to be an important part of its recognition agenda (ECLAC/UNFPA 2020). The Afro-descendant population is present in all Latin American countries, although in different proportions and absolute magnitudes. However, the inclusion of self-identification questions for this population only became generalized in

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population and housing censuses in the 2010s, when this happened in 14 countries.3 It is expected that in the 2020 round all countries will incorporate them, with the exception of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. But much less progress has been made in other instruments, which are fundamental for analyzing various indicators related to the living conditions of the Afro-descendant population. The number of countries that included self-identification as Afro-descendant at least once in their surveys of employment, income, and living conditions can be summarized as nine,4 and in demographic and health surveys as 10. Likewise, there are few experiences in administrative records (health, education, births, deaths, social protection, social security, violence, and employment, among others), among which those carried out in Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, and Ecuador in health information systems stand out (ECLAC/UNFPA 2020). Despite these limitations, existing information shows the persistence of severe racial inequalities in Latin America, which affect to a greater extent, within the Afro-descendant population as a whole, women, children, adolescents and youth, the LGBTI population, people with disabilities, migrants, those living in rural areas or on the outskirts of large cities. The levels of poverty and extreme poverty of the Afro-descendant population are higher than those of the non-Afro-descendant population,5 as well as their deprivations in access to drinking water, sanitation, electricity, adequate housing, and information and communication technologies, particularly in rural areas. There are significant inequalities in guaranteeing the right to health, including higher levels of infant and maternal mortality and adolescent pregnancy, as well as the prevalence of disability, especially among the elderly.6 The world of work is also characterized by significant racial inequalities that are expressed in higher unemployment, informality and precariousness, in addition to significant gaps in labor income and social protection, which affect women and young Afro-descendants to a greater extent. Afro-descendants suffer more acutely from various forms of violence, and racism and xenophobia deepen the social and labor exclusion of Afro-descendant migrants (ECLAC/UNFPA 2020).7

3  In the 1990 round of population and housing censuses, the issue was present in only 3 countries (Brazil, Colombia and Cuba); in the 2000 round, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and partially Guatemala joined the survey (CEPAL/UNFPA 2020). 4  As will be seen below, and as analyzed in ECLAC/UNFPA (2020), it is only possible to make more systematic analyses of the Afro-descendant population based on multipurpose household surveys in 6 countries: Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru and Uruguay. 5  When reference is made to the non-Afro-descendant population throughout this article, it does not include the indigenous population or cases where ethno-racial status is ignored. 6  The Afro-descendant population is also at greater risk of becoming ill from the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and associated infections, and has less access to services for early identification and timely treatment of certain non-communicable diseases, such as arterial hypertension and cardiovascular accidents (CEPAL/UNFPA 2020). 7  For a detailed analysis of each of these issues based on the information available, see CEPAL/ UNFPA (2020), and CEPAL 2017a).

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Policies to Combat Poverty and Reduce Racial Inequality The significant reduction in poverty and extreme poverty that characterized the first decade and a half of the twenty-first century in Latin America has been accompanied by a significant decrease in various inequality indicators. These results are not only explained by a favorable economic context, but also by a political context in which the eradication of poverty and the reduction of social inequality gained unprecedented space on the public agenda and in which policies of a redistributive nature were implemented in the social and labor market spheres (ECLAC 2016b, 2019a). As a result, between 2002 and 2014, the regional poverty rate decreased from 45.5% to 27.8%, which means that 66 million people managed to overcome that situation. In turn, income concentration measured by the Gini index decreased in the same period from 0.538 to 0.477 (ECLAC 2019a) and the functional distribution of income is also reduced between the mid-2000s and 2014 in South America (ECLAC 2018c). However, from 2015 onward, there is a change in trend in these indicators, marked by the end of the commodity boom, the economic slowdown, and the decrease in fiscal space, as well as the deterioration of the labor situation, with rising unemployment and the interruption of the positive trend of employment formalization. Poverty and extreme poverty levels are once again on the rise in the regional average, a situation that will become much worse as of 2020 due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic (ECLAC 2021). In this context, this article is particularly interested in discussing how the Afro-­ descendant population has been affected by these trends. The figures indicate that the incidence of poverty and extreme poverty among the Afro-descendant population is higher than among the non-Afro-descendant population in the six countries for which information is available, with the exception of Panama. The highest incidence of poverty among Afro-descendants is recorded in Colombia (41%) followed by Ecuador (31%), Brazil (26%), Peru (20%), Panama (11%), and Uruguay (8%)8 (ECLAC/UNFPA 2020). In the weighted average of these six countries in 2019, more than one in four Afro-descendants (25.8%) were living in poverty, while for the non-Afro-descendant population this figure was 15.8% ECLAC (2021). Likewise, the largest ethnic-racial gaps in the incidence of poverty were found in Uruguay, Brazil, and Peru. It is important to note that it is precisely in Uruguay, the Latin American country with the lowest poverty rate, that this gap was the highest, since the percentage of Afro-descendants in this situation was practically three times that of non-Afro-descendants (ECLAC/UNFPA 2020). The analysis carried out in ECLAC/UNFPA (2020) also indicates that poverty rates were higher among Afro-descendant women and in rural areas, evidencing the intersecting of various axes of the social inequality matrix.

8  Data processed by ECLAC from the Household Survey Data Bank (BADEHOG) relating to 2018, with the exception of Ecuador, where the data are from 2017.

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There is no doubt that the Afro-descendant population has benefited from the important process of poverty reduction registered in Latin America between 2002 and 2015, exactly due to their overrepresentation in these situations. According to analysis by the World Bank (2018), between 2005 and 2015, more than half of Afro-­ descendant households living on less than US$5.5 per capita per day managed to overcome poverty in Brazil and Uruguay, while more than 20% did so in Ecuador and Peru. Likewise, the probability that a child born in a household where the head of household is of African descent is poor, when compared to people living in households with similar socioeconomic conditions, but with non-African descent heads, decreased significantly, being reduced by almost half in Brazil and Ecuador, and by more than a third in Uruguay (World Bank 2018). Campello (2017) and Jaccoud (2013, 2014) also provide indications in that sense for the case of Brazil. Between 2005 and 2015, poverty and extreme poverty rates decreased significantly, in the context of the expansion of income transfer and productive inclusion programs (such as the Bolsa Familia and the Brazil Without Extreme Poverty Plan, in which the Afro-descendant population represented the majority of beneficiaries),9 as well as the significant process of real increase in the minimum wage, decrease in unemployment, and generation of formal jobs. In that period, the income of people belonging to the first income quintile, in which the Afro-descendant population was clearly overrepresented, grew 84%, almost four times more than the increase experienced in the fifth quintile (23%) (Campello 2017), evidencing an association between the trajectory of poverty reduction and the decrease in income inequality that had a significant positive impact on the Afro-­ descendant population (Campello 2017; Jaccoud 2013, 2014). However, according to the World Bank study (2018), these advances have not been sufficient to close the ethnic-racial gaps10 in terms of poverty indicators, as improvements among the non-Afro-descendant population would have been higher. For example, the annualized decrease in poverty among the Afro-descendant population between 2005 and 2015 would have been 7% in Peru, and 10% in Uruguay, while for non-Afro-descendants that reduction would have been respectively 9% and 14.5%, which would have even resulted in an increase in the relative gaps in those countries. In turn, when the cycle is reversed, that is, when the levels of poverty, unemployment, and labor precariousness increase again, as in the case of Brazil since 2015, the Afro-descendant population becomes more penalized, a situation that will become even more acute in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. These data show that ethnic-racial inequalities can persist even in contexts of low poverty or marked reduction of this phenomenon. They also indicate the need for policies to reduce poverty and extreme poverty, in addition to being aimed at the 9  In April 2015, 75% of the people benefited by the Bolsa Familia Program were Afro-descendants (MDS 2015). 10  The term “ethnic-racial inequalities” is used in this article to refer to the inequalities and gaps existing between the Afro-descendant population and the non-indigenous and non-Afro-­descendant population.

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entire population in these situations (ECLAC 2016b), and to be linked to the strengthening and expansion of universal policies, especially in the areas of health, education, and social protection, must be accompanied by strategies, measures and actions aimed at populations that face multiple and aggravated forms of exclusion and discrimination and barriers to access to these policies, as is the case of the Afro-­ descendant population. These policies must be able to identify the differential causes of poverty in these groups and promote actions and interventions that could act on them (ECLAC/UNFPA 2020). In a context in which progress is being made in overcoming a conception of social policy that had been dominant in the 1980s and 1990s in most Latin American countries, characterized by a reductionist focus – concentrated on sectors of extreme poverty – as opposed to public policies of a universal nature and in which the objectives of universalization of social policies are recovered as opposed to the privatization tendencies that characterized previous decades, significant progress is being made in the inclusion of important sectors of the population (Jaccoud et al. 2013; IPEA 2010, ECLAC 2016b). However, in societies marked by high levels of poverty and deep and intertwined structural inequalities, such as those in Latin America, in order to ensure effective universalization and close gaps in the guarantee of rights, (like those affecting Afro-descendant populations), it is essential to advance simultaneously on several fronts. On the one hand, reaffirming the objective of universality, as a central mechanism for guaranteeing the fundamental rights of the population, and conferring on this universality “a strong distributive character” (Jaccoud 2013: x), which implies not only expanding coverage, but also guaranteeing the quality of services. On the other hand, it is also necessary to develop policies aimed at specific audiences in order to act on historical and largely naturalized inequalities, often reproduced even within social policies themselves, moving toward a universalism that is sensitive to differences. In other words, and as defined in the Regional Agenda for Inclusive Social Development, approved by the governments of Latin America and the Caribbean at the III Meeting of the Regional Conference on Inclusive Social Development in Latin America and the Caribbean in October 2019: In order to achieve universal access to income, assets, capabilities, public and social services fundamental to the guarantee of rights and high levels of well-being, policies must adopt a dual perspective. On the one hand, they must comply with the principle of universality in access to social services from a rights-based approach. In addition, they must be oriented towards actively overcoming existing gaps and inequalities [...] To this end, it is necessary to carry out affirmative actions aimed at breaking down barriers to access for individuals and groups that experience various types of inequality, discrimination and exclusion (ECLAC 2020a, b: 14).

The principle of universalism sensitive to differences also implies that the benefits and instruments of social policy should be prioritized and adapted to the various populations, according to the types of discrimination, exclusion, and vulnerability they face, their needs and characteristics, prioritizing those who suffer greater exclusion and access gaps (ECLAC 2020a, b).

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This means, for the particular topic of this article, the need to ensure, in the area of social policies, including those for poverty reduction, a specific approach and instruments aimed specifically at identifying, recognizing, and reducing racial inequalities. It also means identifying the multiple and intersecting inequalities that affect in particular, within the Afro-descendant population, women, children, adolescents and young people, those living in rural areas and backward territories, migrants, people with disabilities, and the LGBTI population. This is largely a pending issue that should be given more attention in the recovery strategies in the post-pandemic context of COVID-19.

 niversal Policies and Affirmative Action Policies in the Field U of Education The necessary combination of universal policies and policies aimed at population groups that experience multiple forms of inequality, exclusion, and discrimination is also evident in the field of education. Significant progress has been made in this area over the last three decades in Latin America. Illiteracy has been substantially reduced, on average access to primary education is now practically universal and secondary education attendance has increased significantly (ECLAC 2017b, 2019a, c; ECLAC/OEI 2020). These advances have contributed to the reduction of gaps related to the right to education between the Afro-descendant and non-Afro-descendant and non-­ indigenous populations. These gaps are practically absent in access to primary education if national averages are considered, although they may persist in certain regions within countries. Inequalities in terms of average years of study have also been reduced.11 But inequalities are still present in terms of school lag, dropout rates, and the quality of education, and they increase as the age of children, adolescents, and young people increases and the educational cycles advance (ECLAC/ UNFPA 2020). In secondary education, which constitutes a minimum floor for breaking the intergenerational reproduction of poverty and for access to decent work, the progress verified, although significant, is lower than that of primary education, more heterogeneous between countries and between rural and urban areas and marked by significant socioeconomic inequalities.12 It is also at this level of education that  The gaps between Afro-descendants and non-Afro-descendants in terms of average years of schooling have been reduced mainly among young people between 15 and 29 years of age, which has resulted in an intergenerational reduction of ethnic-racial inequalities in this aspect, which has also been accompanied by an intergenerational inversion of the gender gaps: if among older people the levels of schooling of women tend to be lower than those of their male peers, this gap is inverted among young people and among adults between 30 and 64 years (CEPAL/UNFPA 2020). 12  The percentage of young people aged 20–24 who completed high school increased from 44% to 62% between 2002 and 2018, and the gap between income quintile I and quintile V narrowed from 11

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inequalities between the Afro-descendant and non-Afro-descendant populations become more pronounced. Indeed, the percentage of Afro-descendant youth aged 20–24 years who finished secondary education is significantly lower than that of non-Afro-descendant youth in five out of the six countries for which recent information is available (Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, and Uruguay) (circa 2018), with the exception of Panama. The lowest secondary school completion rates among Afro-descendants in that age bracket are recorded in Uruguay (15.1%) and Ecuador (53.5%) and the highest in Peru (70.6%) and Brazil (67.4%). In Panama and Colombia, these figures are 60.9% and 63.4%, respectively (ECLAC/UNFPA 2020). When analyzing the intersection between gender and race inequalities, it is verified that in all the countries considered these rates are higher among women, both in the case of Afro-descendants and non-Afro-descendant youths (with the exception of Afro-descendants in Peru) (ECLAC/UNFPA 2020). In Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, and Uruguay it is possible to analyze the recent evolution of this indicator.13 Racial gaps remain quite high in all countries at the end of the period, but trends are heterogeneous. In Brazil and Uruguay, the percentage of completion of this educational cycle among young people of African descent increases significantly and, consequently, inequalities are reduced: in Brazil, the gap is reduced from 23.3 percentage points in 2002 to 11.6 percentage points in 2018, and in Uruguay it falls from 25.6 percentage points to 23.8 between 2012 and 2018. In turn, in Ecuador and Peru, the percentage of Afro-descendant youth who completed secondary education increased very little in the period analyzed and the gaps widened.

 he Challenge of Access to and Completion T of Tertiary Education Afro-descendant organizations and the Afro-descendant movement in Latin America consider access to and completion of tertiary education to be key factors in advancing toward social inclusion, access to decent work, and racial equality. Despite their efforts in this regard, and the need to advance in guaranteeing the right to education for the Afro-descendant population to be recognized in important international instruments, such as the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1968), and the program of action of the III World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa (2001), progress to date has 56 to 45 percentage points. Although that represents an important advance, it means that, almost 40% of young people in that age bracket in Latin America have not completed secondary school. Likewise, inequalities by socioeconomic stratum remain very high: in 2018, while 85% of young people in that age bracket had completed secondary school, only 40% of those in quintile I had attained the same educational attainment (CEPAL/OEI, 2020). 13  The data refer to the following periods: 2012–2018 in the cases of Peru and Uruguay, 2002–2018 for Brazil and 2012–2017 for Ecuador (CEPAL/UNFPA, 2020).

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been much more modest, and the challenges continue to be of great magnitude. Considering the total number of young people between 25 and 29 years of age, only 19% had attained at least four years of higher education (ECLAC/OEI 2020). Moreover, significant socioeconomic inequalities persist in the attainment of this educational level: in 2018, while 44% of 25–29-year-old in income quintile V had completed tertiary education, that figure was only 4% among young people in quintile I (ECLAC/OEI 2020). There are also significant inequalities between Afro-descendant and non-Afro-­ descendant youth. In the four countries (Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru) for which recent information is available, low tertiary education completion rates among Afro-descendant youth around 2018 are evident: 10.5% in Colombia, 13.1% in Ecuador, 15.6% in Brazil, and 23.35% in Peru. These figures are significantly lower than the also low completion rates among the non-Afro-descendant population, which range from 30% to 40% in Brazil and Peru to approximately 20% in Colombia and Ecuador. The highest racial gap is found in Brazil, where the proportion of Afro-descendants completing tertiary education is less than half that of non-Afro-descendants. However, it is important to note that in some countries, such as Brazil, significant progress has been made in a short period of time, related both to the expansion of enrollment in tertiary education and to the implementation of affirmative action policies.

Affirmative Action Policies in the Field of Education In recent years, several Latin American countries, such as the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Honduras, Peru, Uruguay, and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela have promoted affirmative action measures aimed at expanding the access of the Afro-descendant population to education, with the objective of reducing the historical inequalities existing in this area (ECLAC/ UNFPA 2020; ECLAC 2017a; Rangel 2016, 2019). These policies are mainly aimed at access to tertiary education, the educational level that most clearly reflects the ethnic-racial inequalities accumulated throughout the school cycle. However, in the case of Brazil, policies also include secondary and technical–professional education and, more recently, postgraduate education (master’s and doctoral degrees). Brazil has been the Latin American country that has made most progress in this type of policy. In response to the demands of the Afro-descendant movement, since the early 2000s several public universities have taken the initiative to implement affirmative action policies for the admission of Afro-descendants, through the quota system (reservation of quotas). These initiatives are progressively expanding, and, in the framework of the strengthening and expansion of public policies to combat racism and promote racial equality developed since 2003, with the creation of the Secretariat for the Promotion of Racial Equality Policies (SEPPIR), and in the context of an intense process of discussion and political dispute, Law No. 12,711 was

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approved in 2012, which establishes a system of social and ethnic-racial quotas.14 This law guarantees the reservation of 50% of the enrollment in all federal institutions of higher education (IFES) and secondary level technical education for students from public schools. Fifty percent of those quotas, in turn, are reserved for students from households with per capita income below 1.5 minimum wages, as well as for Afro-descendants, indigenous people and, as of 2016 also for people with disabilities, in a proportion equivalent to their share of the total population of the Federation unit in which the educational establishment is located, based on the latest demographic census.15 In addition, already in 2005, the University for All Program (ProUni) had been created, which consists of scholarships in private universities for students from low-income, Afro-descendant, and indigenous families16 and in 2016, the federal government, through the Ministry of Education approves a regulation (n. 13/2016) determining that all federal institutions of higher education should design proposals for the inclusion of Afro-descendants, indigenous, and people with disabilities also in graduate courses (masters and doctoral) (Venturini and Feres 2018). Several analyses evidence significant progress in reducing ethnic-racial inequalities in access to tertiary education in Brazil in the context of a process combining, on the one hand, the expansion and internalization of public institutions of tertiary education and secondary-level vocational training and, on the other, affirmative action policies (IPEA 2021; Silva 2020; Mercadante 2019).17 According to Silva (2020), between 2001 and 2017 the number of higher education institutions increased by 76% and the total number of enrollments in these institutions by 172.9%. Although this increase was greater in the private network, the expansion in the public network was also very expressive (61.7% in terms of the number of  For a more detailed analysis of that process see, among others, OIT (2005), Rangel (2016), Ribeiro (2014), Jaccoud et al. (2018), Theodoro (2008), and Silva (2020). 15  The provisions of Law No. 12,711/2012, which prior to a progressive implementation process until 2016, began to be applied in the selective processes of 2013. 16  Law No. 11,096 of 2005, which created the University for All Program (ProUni), determines the distribution of full and partial scholarships in graduation courses in private higher education institutions for students from families with a per capita income of less than 1.5 minimum wages. For those living in families with a per capita income below 3 minimum wages, scholarships cover 25–50% of the total cost of the private university. See: http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ Ato2004-­2006/2005/Lei/L11096.htm). 17  Between 2003 and 2016, the number of public technical and vocational training institutions in Brazil increased from 140 to 600, and enrollments in these institutions practically doubled, from 558 thousand in 2002 to more than one million in 2016, considering only those at the secondary level (Mercadante 2019). In the same period, the number of cities in which these institutions were located increased from 119 to 568 (Cassiolato and Garcia 2014). According to Silva (2020) in 2017, 64.3% of the existing higher education institutes in Brazil, both public and private, were located in the interior of the country, which has contributed to the reduction of regional inequalities in relation to access to tertiary education (Gusso et  al. 2014). It is also worth highlighting the importance of the Program to Support Restructuring and Expansion Plans of Federal Universities (REUNI), which included the increase in enrollment, evening courses and policies of inclusion and student assistance. For more details on this process, see Mercadante (2019), and Silva (2020). 14

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institutions and 117.8% in terms of the total number of enrollments),18 in addition to being practically equal in terms of the number of new admissions (114.5% in the public network and 115.9% in the private network). Despite this significant expansion, the author draws attention, citing Heringer (2018), to the fact that the country was still far from meeting the goal of insertion of 30% of the total number of young people between 18 and 24  years old in higher education by 2011, defined in the National Education Plan (PNE) of 2001, since in 2017 this figure reached only 19.7%. The data regarding the increase in the access of the Afro-descendant population to tertiary education and the decrease in racial inequalities in the composition of enrollment at that level are quite eloquent. According to data from the Higher Education Census (CES), consolidated by the National Institute of Educational Studies and Research “Anísio Teixeira” (INEP), the percentage of Afro-descendant students within the total number of people who entered public universities in Brazil increased from 15% in 2009 to 40.1% in 2016 (Oliveira et  al. 2019).19 In turn, according to Silva (2020),20 the participation of Afro-descendants in the total number of people enrolled in university education courses (public and private) increases from 21.9% to 43.7% between 2001 and 2015, while that of white people decreases from 76.8% to 55.4% in the same period. Considering the period from 2012 to 2017, the participation of Afro-descendants in higher education courses increases by 25%21 and the inequalities between the participation of Afro-descendants and whites in total enrollment are reduced from 23.1 percentage points to 4.4% percentage points in the short period of 5 years (Silva 2020).22 In turn, the percentage of Afro-descendants in the total number of people with completed higher education increases from 26.6% to 32% in the same period and the gap in relation to white people with the same level of education is reduced from 45.2 percentage points to 34 percentage points. In turn, information on the socioeconomic and ethnic-racial profile of students in federal institutions of higher education (IFES) from research conducted by the National Association of Leaders of Federal Institutions of Higher Education

 In the private network the increase was respectively 78.1% and 198.4% (number of institutions and of total enrollment) (Silva 2020). 19  In the same period (2009–2016), a total of 266,302 Afro-descendant and indigenous students entered public universities in Brazil through the quota system; in percentage terms, that represented an increase from 2.3% of total entrance enrollments in 2009 to 21.2% in 2016 (Oliveira et al. 2019). 20  In addition to an important literature review on the subject, the author analyzes data from the PNAD between 2001 and 2015 and from the PNADC between 2012 and 2017; the division between these two periods is necessary due to methodological differences between these two sources of information. 21  In that same period, according to PNADC data the share of Afro-descendants in the total population increases by 5% (Silva 2020). 22  The author also points out that, considering only the new enrollments occurred in 2017, 29.3% were of Afro-descendant women, 28% of white women, 22.4% of white men and 19.6% of black men. 18

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(ANDIFES 2019)23 brings other important evidence on the processes of decreasing racial inequalities, as well as class inequalities in these institutions. It is important to note that these two phenomena are related, both in terms of historical inequalities in access to higher education, since the Afro-descendant population in Brazil is markedly overrepresented in the lower income sectors, and due to the inclusion and affirmative action policies adopted, which, as noted, combine income criteria and ethnic-racial criteria. It is surprising to note that in 2018 70.2% of IFES students had a per capita family income of up to 1.5 minimum wage,24 and that 53.5% of them had a per capita family income of up to one minimum wage; likewise, only 35.3% had attended high school in private schools. In turn, the percentage of Afro-­ descendant students had increased from 34.2% to 51.2% between 2003 and 2018. Despite these important advances, the net attendance rate in higher education of the Afro-descendant population was still significantly lower in 201725 than that of the white population (approximately half) and only 9.3% of Afro-descendants aged 25 years and older had completed higher education, while for the white population that figure was 22.9%. In addition, among those who had completed higher education, Afro-descendants corresponded to less than half of whites (respectively 32% and 66%) (Silva 2020). With regard to postgraduate university studies (master’s and doctoral degrees), significant progress has also been made in the implementation of affirmative action policies. In an analysis conducted for the period from 2002 to 2018 in a universe of 2763 such programs at public universities, Venturini and Feres (2018) find that in 26.4% of these programs some type of affirmative action had been adopted. They also note the presence of such policies predominated in federal universities and that between 2015 and 2018 the number of such initiatives had increased fivefold. The concentration of initiatives adopted in the year of 2017 indicates the importance of the inducing role of the aforementioned Regulation 13/2016 of the Ministry of Education. According to the authors, there is a diversity in the format of the affirmative policies adopted, both in relation to the criteria and modalities of selection, as well as the audiences to which they are directed. Although those that adopt quota systems predominate, there are also those that allocate supplementary quotas to beneficiary groups.26 Among the target groups of these policies, the Afro-descendant population predominates (present in 92% of the initiatives), followed by indigenous people

 The research was conducted through a survey of 65 IFES, which sent information on a total of 1.2 million students who had entered between 2000 and 2018. 24  This percentage was 66.2% in 2014 and 44.3% in 1996 (ANDIFES 2019). 25  The net attendance rate in higher education refers to the ratio between students aged 18–24 years in that level of education (at an age considered appropriate) and the total population in that age bracket. 26  For a detailed analysis of the types of measures adopted, see Venturini and Feres (2018). 23

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(90.4%)27 and people with disabilities (78%). Socioeconomic criteria (household per capita income level) and originating from public secondary education are adopted by a much smaller percentage of initiatives (approximately 9%). Furthermore, 10.4% of them are aimed at transsexuals and transvestites and 0.5% at refugees or humanitarian visa holders. There is a higher concentration of initiatives in the areas of human and social sciences and a much smaller presence in the areas of engineering (Venturini and Feres 2018).

Final Considerations The analysis of the inequalities affecting Afro-descendant populations in Latin America in various areas, with emphasis on situations of poverty and the guarantee of their right to education, shows, firstly, the importance of strategies that combine the search for the effective universalization of public policies with specific policies for historically and structurally excluded and discriminated populations that suffer multiple and aggravated forms of exclusion and oppression. Secondly, they show the importance of consolidating and maintaining these policies over time and transforming them into State policies in order to achieve a substantial and sustained reduction of historical and structural inequalities of great magnitude, such as the inequalities affecting the Afro-descendant population. Thirdly, they also indicate the importance of continuing to deepen the analysis of ethnic-racial inequalities in the various spheres in which they manifest themselves and in Latin American countries as a whole, as well as their intersection with class, gender, age, and territorial inequalities; this in turn implies overcoming the great deficit of systematic and reliable information on these issues through the incorporation of Afro-descendant self-­ identification in all the instruments that make up the national statistical systems, such as population and housing censuses, agricultural censuses, multipurpose household surveys and administrative records, as well as making this information available to researchers, public managers, Afro-descendant movements and organizations and citizens in general. The persistence of ethnic-racial inequalities is a major obstacle to sustainable development in Latin America and to the construction of more just, inclusive and democratic societies. Systematic research on this issue and reflection on its results and the new emerging challenges can be an effective contribution to the visibility of this issue on the public agenda and to the design of policies capable of overcoming them.

 Furthermore, in 17.8% of the initiatives quilombolas (traditional Afro-descendant communities) are contemplated and in 7.2% of them also members of traditional peoples and communities (Venturini and Feres 2018).

27

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References ANDIFES. 2019. V Pesquisa Nacional de Perfil Socioeconômico e Cultural dos(as) Graduandos(as) das IFES – 2018. Brasília: Andifes/Fonaprace/Editora UFU. Bárcena, A., and A. Prado. 2016. El imperativo de la igualdad: por un desarrollo sostenible en América Latina y el Caribe. Buenos Aires: CEPAL/Siglo XXI. Bielschowsky, R., and M. Torres, eds. 2018. Desarrollo e igualdad: el pensamiento de la CEPAL en su séptimo decenio. Santiago: Naciones Unidas. Campello, T., ed. 2017. Faces da desigualdade no Brasil: um olhar sobre os que ficam para tras. Brasília: FLACSO/ CLACSO. Cassiolato, M., and R.  Garcia. 2014. PRONATEC: múltiplos arranjos e ações para ampliar o acesso a educação profissional. Brasília: IPEA. CEPAL. 2010. La hora de la igualdad: brechas por cerrar, caminos por abrir. Santiago: Naciones Unidas. ———. 2012. Cambio estructural para la igualdad: una visión integrada del desarrollo. Santiago: Naciones Unidas. ———. 2014. Pactos para la igualdad: hacia un futuro sostenible. Santiago: Naciones Unidas. ———. 2016a. La matriz de la desigualdad social en América Latina. Santiago: Naciones Unidas. ———. 2016b. Desarrollo social inclusivo: Una nueva generación de políticas para superar la pobreza y reducir la desigualdad social en América Latina. Santiago: Naciones Unidas. ———. 2017a. Situación de las personas afrodescendientes en América Latina y desafíos de políticas para la garantía de sus derechos. Santiago: Naciones Unidas. ———. 2017b. Brechas, ejes y desafíos en el vínculo entre lo social y lo productivo. Santiago: Naciones Unidas. ———. 2018a. La ineficiencia de la desigualdad. Santiago: Naciones Unidas. ———. 2018b. Mujeres afrodescendientes en América Latina y el Caribe: deudas de igualdad. Santiago: Naciones Unidas. ———. 2018c. Panorama Social de América Latina, 2017. Santiago: Naciones Unidas. ———. 2019a. Panorama Social de América Latina, 2019. Santiago: Naciones Unidas. ———. 2019b. Panorama Social de América Latina, 2018. Santiago: Naciones Unidas. ———. 2019c. Nudos críticos del desarrollo social inclusivo en América Latina y el Caribe: antecedentes para una agenda regional. Santiago: Naciones Unidas. ———. 2020a. Agenda Regional de Desarrollo Social Inclusivo. Santiago: Naciones Unidas. CEPAL, O.E.I. 2020b. Educación, juventud y trabajo: habilidades y competencias necesarias en un contexto cambiante. Santiago: Naciones Unidas. CEPAL. 2021. Panorama Social de América Latina, 2020. Santiago: Naciones Unidas. CEPAL, and UNFPA. 2020. Afrodescendientes y la matriz de la desigualdad social en América Latina: Un reto para la inclusión. Santiago: Naciones Unidas. Collins, P.H. 2015. Em direção a uma nova visão: Raça, classe e gênero como categorias de conexão. In Reflexões e práticas de transformação feminista, ed. R. Moreno. São Paulo: SOF. Di Filippo, A., and S.  Jadue. 1976. La heterogeneidad estructural: concepto y dimensiones. El Trimestre Económico 43 169 (1): 167–214. Freire, G., C. Diaz-Bonilla, S. Schwartz Orellana, J. Soler Lopez, and F. Carbonari. 2018. Afro-­ descendants in Latin America: Toward a framework of inclusion. Washington, DC: World Bank. Gusso, D.A., et al. 2014. Políticas Sociais: acompanhamento e análise, 22. Brasília: IPEA. Heringer, R. 2018. Democratização da educação superior no Brasil: das metas de inclusão ao sucesso acadêmico. Revista Brasileira de Orientação Profissional 19 (1): 7–17. IPEA, 2010. Boletim de Políticas Sociais – Acompanhamento e Análise, 17. ———. 2021. Políticas Sociais: acompanhamento e análise, 28. Jaccoud, L. 2013. Igualdade e equidade na agenda da proteção social. In Políticas Sociais, cidadania e desenvolvimento, ed. A.  Fonseca and E.  Fagnani. Editora Fundação Perseu Abramo: São Paulo.

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———. 2014. Aprendizados recentes no enfrentamento da desigualdade. In O Brasil sem miséria, ed. T. Campello, T. Falcão, and P. Vieira da Costa. Ministério do Desenvolvimento Social e Combate à Fome: Brasília. Jaccoud, L., et al. 2010. Entre o racismo e a desigualdade: da Constituição à promoção de uma política de Igualdade Racial (1988–2008). Boletim de Políticas Sociais – Acompanhamento e Análise 17. Mercadante, A. 2019. Educação e capacitação técnica e profissional no Brasil. Santiago: CEPAL. Ministério de Desenvolvimento Social e Combate à Fome. 2015. Programa Brasil sem miséria. Caderno de resultados da população negra, 2011-abril 2015. Brasília: Ministério de Desenvolvimento Social e Combate à Fome. OIT. 2005. Manual de capacitação e informação sobre gênero, raça, pobreza e emprego: guia para o leitor. Brasília: OIT. Oliveira, V., M. Viana, and L. Lima. 2019. O ingresso de cotistas negros e indígenas em universidades federais e estaduais no Brasil: Uma descrição a partir do Censo da educação superior. In Reafirmando direitos: Trajetórias de estudantes cotistas negros(as) no ensino superior brasileiro, ed. E. Jesus. Ações Afirmativas no Ensino Superior: Belo Horizonte. Pinto, A. 1976. Heterogeneidad estructural y modelo de desarrollo reciente de la América Latina. In Inflación: raíces estructurales, ed. A. Pinto. Ciudad de México: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Rangel, M. 2016. Políticas públicas para afrodescendientes: marco institucional en el Brasil, Colombia, el Ecuador y el Perú. Santiago: CEPAL. ———., 2019. Políticas de acción afirmativa para personas afrodescendientes en América Latina como instrumento de inclusión y cohesión social en el marco de la implementación de la Agenda Regional de Desarrollo Social Inclusivo. Unpublished. Ribeiro, M. 2014. Políticas de promoção da igualdade racial – 1986 a 2010. Río de Janeiro: Ed. Garamond. Silva, T. 2020. Texto para discussão 2569. Ação afirmativa e população negra na educação superior: Acesso e perfil discente, Texto para discussão 2569. Rio de Janeiro: IPEA. Theodoro, M., ed. 2008. As políticas públicas e a desigualdade racial no Brasil: 120 anos após a abolição. Brasília: IPEA. ———. 2019. A implementação de uma Agenda Racial de Políticas Públicas: a experiência brasileira. In As Políticas da Política: desigualdades e inclusão nos governos do PSDB e do PT, ed. M. Arretche, E. Marques, and C.A.P. Faria. Editora Unesp: São Paulo. Venturini, A.C., and J.  Feres. 2018. Ações afirmativas e cursos de pós graduação acadêmicos deuniversidades públicas. Boletim GEMAA 6. World Bank. 2018. Afro-descendants in Latin America: Toward a Framework of Inclusion. Washington, DC: World Bank. Yuval-Davis, N. 2011. Beyond the recognition and re-distribution dichotomy: intersectionality and stratification. In Framing intersectionality, ed. H. Lutz, M.T. Herrera Vivar, and L. Supik. Farnham/London: Ashgate/Routledge.

Chapter 11

The Most Unequal Region on the Planet? A Sociological Analysis of the Ideas, Evaluations and Attitudes Toward Inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean Gonzalo Assusa

Introduction: The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars? Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is labeled the “most unequal region on the planet” and this (debatable) sociological fact has given rise to a sort of unspoken agreement: If the social reality of inequality is “transparent” enough, then it will work as an objective basis for conflict, reactivity, and the political construction of equality prospects. At one point, this is the logic that prevailed in some trends of political theory, and has historically guided the strategies of a left-wing sector in the continent, under the slogan of the “sharpening of contradictions”: The worse, the better. Arguably, a deeply unequal society can only uphold a certain order and endurance at the cost of its population building consensus on the systemic need of inequalities or by considering them fair (Crutchfield and Pettinicchio 2009; Grimson 2015). However, available data show that at the beginning of the twenty-first century, 9 out of 10 Latin Americans considered income distribution in their country to be unfair or very unfair, and that this figure dropped to an all-time low of 7 out of 10 in the twenty-first century after a decade. Although in recent years there has been a significant narrowing of inequality gaps in the region, the consensus still leans toward a subjective evaluation of economic distribution in terms of unfairness; how come the social order is still maintained  – though not without conflicts and ruptures  – in the region? Does the perception of inequality always result in a feeling of unfairness and a spark for G. Assusa (*) Humanities Institute, National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (IDH-­ CONICET), Córdoba, Argentina National University of Córdoba (UNC), Córdoba, Argentina

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Vommaro, P. Baisotti (eds.), Persistence and Emergencies of Inequalities in Latin America, Latin American Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90495-1_11

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mobilization? Should the explanation of this process be sought in legitimation mechanisms or in normalization and resistance processes and, eventually, in the situational turning point or disruption of consensus? (Orellana et al. 2015). To the challenging approach of the political construction of inequality, we must add a methodological and epistemological problem: The “looking glass” assumption raised in the first paragraph: What happens if there is no such perceptual transparency? Does suffering inequality create a disruptive and unbearable experience or does lead to greater tolerance in the long end? Does the metaphor “the darker the night, the brighter the stars” hold true in this case? There is empirical evidence that the subjective assessment of distributive justice in a country is not random to the levels of objective inequality measured by statistical indicators such as Gini, Atkinson, Theil, or Wolfson (ECLAC 2012; Reyes and Gasparini 2017). In general, there is an expected relationship: The higher the objective inequality of a country, the more likely the income distribution will be considered unfair or very unfair. However, the statistical correlation between these dimensions is usually weak or relative. In most cases, it is required to resort to multicausal explanations and a series of mediations to account for the complex modalities assumed by the arrangements between “really existing” inequality, inequality perceived by the population, processes of legitimization, and construction of political attitudes toward inequality. When experiences of unfairness move toward processes of change, their main triggers are not objective conditions, but the way in which perceptions and evaluations of social experience are articulated (UNDP 2017). As an ECLAC report argues, “That would appear to indicate that discontent regarding income distribution might be linked to changes in an array of economic, institutional, political and public-opinion factors with an emphasis on specific situations in several countries” (ECLAC 2009: 78). One of the goals of this chapter is to describe these arrays in terms of moral economies of inequality (Sachweh 2012). The construction of inequality as a public problem insofar as being the object of research brings into play a series of dimensions: (1) “objective” and “measurable” social inequality, with an emphasis on the individual distribution of monetary income; (2) the perception of this inequality by the population (in terms of “levels” of inequality); (3) the political-moral judgment or evaluation of the inequality perceived in the population (what I call here subjective evaluation of distributive justice or equity); and (4) the attitudes or political positioning of the population toward inequality (what I call here political attitude toward economic inequality).1 Among the multiple statistical data sources available to address these phenomena, there are two that rely on key criteria to be included in this study: Latinobarómetro and World Values Survey have questionnaires that entail questions referring to the 1  Both ideas – that of evaluations and that of disposition – may resonate as rationalist theories, with undue emphasis on the idea of consciousness, to which I do not adhere. Nevertheless, to speak of subjective inclinations or narratives – concepts more akin to a sociologically more complex theory of practice – this chapter lacks an unfolding of methodological triangulation that remains pending for future publications.

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evaluation of distributive justice (the former) and attitudes toward inequality (the latter), and were applied in several LAC countries in different years of the twenty-­ first century. This chapter will therefore focus on the analysis of the last two dimensions of this sociological issue (points 3, and 4), probably among the least analyzed in the field of inequality studies. In the following pages, I propose a reading that articulates these different subject dimensions and definitions. First, I digress from the non-problematic assumption that LAC is indeed, by any standards, the most unequal region in the world. I thus show the discussions surrounding economic inequality of income, wealth, assets, and access to land. Undoubtedly, inequality has been one of the main topics in the social sciences and public policy in the region, and many of its gaps have been bridged at least during the first decade of the twenty-first century. However, it is also true that many others have shown opposite or erratic behavior. According to Kessler (2014), inequality presents opposing trends and it is necessary to account for dimensions and movements as much as possible in order to reach critical explanations. Second, I develop a reading of subjective evaluations of distributive justice (more precisely, of inequity) and political attitudes toward income inequality by country in the region: Which are the countries with the highest subjective evaluation of inequity? Do these countries match those with greater distributive inequality in an objective sense? How robust is this relationship? How can we explain the differences? The vast majority of existing studies on the subject have covered up to the period of exhaustion of the “pink tide” or post-neoliberal governments. In this chapter, I try to adjust the analyses and hypotheses to also entail the years before and after the post-neoliberal period in the region, and thus give another theoretical scope to my analysis. I conclude the chapter by proposing hypotheses or models for interpreting at the national level the array of factors that shape the perception, evaluation, and construction of subjective attitudes toward inequality in our region. Inequality, besides worsening the living conditions of the vast majority of the population, consumes the legitimacy of collective life and, under certain conditions and levels, leads to social fragmentation. Understanding these processes is key to analyzing the dynamics of social and political polarization in the region, as well as the strength and political legitimacy of progressive and emancipatory national projects in LAC, and that of their opponents or competitors.

 hat We Mean by the Perception of Inequity and Demand W for Equality In this chapter, I present analyses and interpretations based on two data sources. The first is the Latinobarómetro survey, in its 1997, 2002, 2013, and 2018 measurements. Due to the availability of official data and statistics to cross-check information and analyze arrangements and discrepancies between the “objective” and

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“subjective” dimensions of inequality, I will work with the following LAC countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, and Peru. The following countries (which are part of the Latinobarómetro survey) were left out of the specific analysis due to the discontinuity of official statistical information (such as the publication of distributive indicators or the incidence of poverty) in different periods: Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. The analysis focuses on the description of what I call “subjective evaluation of inequity” or distributive injustice based on a variable whose formulation in the survey questionnaire is the following: “How fair do you think the income distribution is in (COUNTRY)?” This variable has four categories: “Very fair,” “Fair,” “Unfair,” and “Very unfair.” Based on the processing experience of other studies (ECLAC 2009, Reyes and Gasparini 2017) and of my own work (Assusa and Kessler 2020), the description will be focused on the “Very unfair” category, which is the one that most clearly represents a more polarized position taking.2 The Latinobarómetro survey presents a probabilistic sampling design by stage, or stratified, with a number of 1200 cases per country and per year, with a margin of sampling error equal to or less than ±3.5% and a national representation in all countries. As for this chapter, I will work complementarily with data from the World Values Survey, whose Wave 7, conducted between 2017 and 2020, includes a significant number of LAC countries, which in turn match the Latinobarómetro’s list mentioned above: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru. For the same reasons mentioned above, I leave out of the processing the following countries: Guatemala and Nicaragua. On the other hand, the following countries are not part of the countries participating in the World Values Survey (WVS): Costa Rica, Honduras, Panama, and Paraguay. The analysis (complementary to that of Latinobarómetro) focuses on the description of the variable I call “political attitudes toward income inequality,” whose formulation in the survey questionnaire is the following: “Where would you place your opinion on this scale? Income should be more equal/There should be greater incentives for individual effort.” This variable has ten modalities: 1 corresponds to the position of greater subjective opposition to inequality, while 10 corresponds to the position of greater subjective ascription to meritocratic individualism. In this chapter, we regroup the variable taking into account its distribution, considering values from 1 to 4 as part of the attitude of opposition to inequality. 2  When performing a Multiple Correspondence Analysis combined with an Ascending Hierarchical Classification for the 2018 microdata base, we found, for example, that the “Fair” and “Unfair” modalities were included in the same cluster, given that they represented “moderate” options that worked on the scale as a sort of “continuum” of intermediate perceptions. On the other hand, the “Very fair” modality presents such low values in almost all the surveys that it is difficult to analyze and describe it.

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The WVS presents a multistage probabilistic sample design, covering rural and urban areas, with a number of approximately 1000 cases per country, with a margin of sampling error equal to or less than ±5%.

The Most Unequal Region on the Planet? Sociological and economic discussions on inequality in recent years have driven a wedge over the focus of classical approaches on individual income distribution. The limitations of population surveys to gather elite resources, the lack of data on other economic resources besides income (banked savings, property, stocks, etc.), and their concentration on secondary distribution (leaving the functional distribution between capital and labor in the background) (Pérez Sáinz 2016; Picketty 2015; Kessler 2014; Benza and Kessler 2020) are at the center of criticism of liberal or classical approaches. However, the “most unequal region on the planet” motto refers specifically to individual income distribution, as do the questions on subjective assessments of inequity and political opposition to inequality in the opinion polls in which the data analyzed in this research are produced. As of 2002, based on data available for 15 countries, LAC had a regional average Gini3 of 0.53, much higher than high-income countries for the same period (0.31), the Middle East (0.38), and Sub-Saharan Africa (0.45) (World Development Indicators, UN); the latter regions being more characterized by monetary poverty than by unequal income distribution. LAC, however, experienced a significant decrease in inequality during the first decade of the twenty-first century (López-Calva and Lustig 2011; Benza and Kessler 2020). Breaking with a trend sustained in the region since the democratic transitions in the twentieth century, many countries were able to overcome the situation of the “empty pigeonhole” (Filmus 2019), that is, to advance in articulated processes of economic growth and income distribution at the same time. The literature points out that the main transformations were based on the fall in educational returns or skill premium in a context of growth that demanded proportionally more low-skilled labor (López-Calva and Lustig 2011; Benza 2016), and by the institutionalization and massification of conditional income transfer policies in practically all countries in the region (López-Calva and Lustig 2011; Benza and Kessler 2020). Although the latter considerably reduced the population lacking any type of monetary income, as well as the population without access to social security in the region, it did not produce significant changes in the productive structure – in fact, these transformations disguise the lack of progress in the functional distribution of income (Busso and Messina 2020) – and therefore did not impact the main 3  The Gini index is a measure of the individual distribution of monetary income and reflects how far, in a given territory, the actual distribution deviates from a perfectly equal ideal distribution. Its values range from 0 to 1. The closer the Gini is to the value of 1, the more unequal (“imperfect”) the distribution is.

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inequality-producing core in the social structure of LAC (Kessler 2019; Benza and Kessler 2020). By 2010, the Gini index in the region had reached 0.48. It was still higher than all regions of the planet, including the most unequal ones such as North America and Sub-Saharan Africa (OXFAM 2015). Notwithstanding the relevant historical process of progress in socioeconomic matters, by 2017 the region presented an average Gini of 0.46: Its march of progress in distributive matters had stalled in many countries, the political process of the “pink tide” at the regional level had been exhausted, many of the progressive governments had suffered electoral defeats, and as many other processes of destabilization, impeachment or “soft coups.” Meanwhile, distributive figures were still higher than in the most socially disadvantaged regions of the world, such as Africa or the Middle East.4 According to UN Development Indicators data, LAC’s income distribution as measured by the Atkinson index (more sensitive than the Gini to the capture of the lowest incomes) is also the most unequal among the world’s regions, doubling the index of South Asia and Europe and Central Asia, but also exceeding the figure for Arab countries and Sub-Saharan Africa. In short, as Lustig (2020) states, LAC is the most unequal region on the planet: 1% of the population appropriates 21% of the income, twice as much the portion appropriated in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), but also two times the income of countries or regions with development equivalent or comparable to that of our region (Busso and Messina 2020). It is also the region where inequality dropped the most between 2000 and 2010; and although since 2013 it has shown signs of depletion, inequality has not cease to decrease. There are also other dimensions of the distributive issue that have been given much less academic and media attention: As the OXFAM report points out, LAC is also  – and by far  – the region with the highest concentration in access to land (OXFAM 2015), one of the basic markets in the dynamics of contemporary social inequality and in the historical configuration of our continent (Pérez Sáinz 2016). The same is not true if we look at the concentration of wealth for example, in which the region ranks only above China, being surpassed by Europe, North America, Africa, and Asia in inequality (OXFAM 2015). Its performance in educational inequality is also remarkable, an area in which significant progress has been made in the twenty-first century (Benza and Kessler 2020). Although LAC is the region with the worst performance in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests for 2018, it is also, together with Asia-Pacific, the region with the highest increase in the secondary schooling rate – a growth concentrated mainly in the lower income segments (Rivas et al. 2020) – and the one that most increased its education budget in relation to its GDP (UNESCO 2020). In the area of education, Latin America’s performance is close to a region such as South Asia, and considerably distant from lagging regions such as the Arab countries or

4  It is worth mentioning that there is less availability of official statistical data over time and by country in these other regions, so comparisons should be interpreted as relative.

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Sub-Saharan Africa. Something similar happens if we look at inequality in life expectancy. All of the foregoing is by no means intended to be presented as new data, and we can use Kessler’s words to begin to relativize the label that weighs on LAC: What we see are contrasting trends. It is undoubtedly a region marked by inequality, but also by strong socioeconomic transformations in the twenty-first century and by a political conflict that has made inequality a central public issue in recent years. Moreover, it is a region that can be thought of as a unit only in analytical terms (like all regions of the world), including diverse and heterogeneous situations, conditions, and dynamics within it.

Perceptions of Inequality in LAC: A Brief History As I stated at the beginning, most of the analyses in this area have focused on the problem of the objective arrangement and cognitive distortion in the perception of inequality  – in this case, specifically on the subjective evaluation of distributive injustice and the political opposition to inequality. Are these perceptions shaped by the objective level of inequality in each country? Different research has shown that the subjective evaluation of equity and economic and distributive changes in the region have had similar signs and directions, although this statistical correlation is relative or weak (ECLAC 2009, 2012; Reyes and Gasparini 2017), as well as heterogeneous across countries. In 1997, 82% of the Latin American population surveyed in Latinobarómetro considered income distribution in their countries as unfair or very unfair. By 2002, after many countries had gone through severe socioeconomic crises, this rate reached 85% of respondents, the floor or starting point of perceived inequity in the post-neoliberal period. In the following stage, between 2002 and 2013, we can notice a considerable turnaround in terms of the narrowing of inequality gaps in the region in this same period (Benza and Kessler 2020): The figure falls to 74% (a historic low in the twenty-first century). Reyes and Gasparini point out that in this period (2002–2013) the Latinobarómetro survey sample grew in age and educational level. Given that both variables present statistical correlation with the subjective evaluation of inequity, the percentage drop in the evaluation of distributive injustice could have been more important than what is recorded with these data (Reyes and Gasparini 2017). Since 2013 we can speak of a new turn in the opposite direction, driven by the exhaustion of post-neoliberal political processes, the electoral or para-electoral revival of the Right in different Latin American countries, the halt, reversal or stagnation of economic growth and the distributive process in the region (depending on the country considered) (Busso and Messina 2020). Thus, the evaluation of income distribution in terms of unfair or very unfair increased again to 81% for 2018. In this sense, two global trends arise. First, we can argue that, in regional terms, there is some objective arrangement between the evolution of income inequality and

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the subjective assessment of fairness. However, this is not a mirror relationship in terms of ratio, nor in the sense of that relationship (i.e., not every time inequality goes down, the evaluation of inequity also goes down). Let us take an example: In many countries, timid or insufficient improvements and signs of exhaustion in distributive terms are perceived by the population as stagnation, a feeling that leads to an increase in the evaluation of distributive injustice. This is the case with the evolution of the Gini index at the regional level in the last period. Second, even considering the changes in the subjective evaluation of inequity, the fluctuations are always at high levels. In other words: In the entire period considered (the two decades between 1997 and 2018) between 7 and 9 out of 10 Latin Americans believe that income distribution is unfair or very unfair in their country. It would be difficult with these data to speak of legitimization of inequalities, so it seems more reasonable to lean toward the hypothesis of tolerance, naturalization, or pragmatic acceptance of inequality (ECLAC 2009). Lustig points to this discordance between distributive progress and significant demonstrations of political unrest or discontent as an incongruence, which in recent years has led to “protest votes” in national elections (also driven by the loss of purchasing power in certain regions) (Lustig 2020). But even more important for our discussion is that subjective evaluation of inequity and political conflict are far from being correlated according to a linear causality between the two. There are different hypotheses regarding the functional acceptance of certain levels of inequality in the population (Grimson 2015) as long as they do not affect community integration (Sachweh 2012). I do not have sufficient data to establish at what point inflections or breaks occur for this functional acceptance. However, I will explore some explanations to identify how political conflict and subjective evaluation of inequity are related in some of these countries.

Perceptions of Inequity at the National Level For the region, the countries with the highest Gini indices in 2018 are Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Panama. The first three are among the countries with the highest subjective evaluation of distributive inequity, while countries such as Argentina, with lower income inequality, surpass Costa Rica or Panama in subjective evaluation of inequity (see Table 11.1). Although some work has shown a statistical correlation (relative or weak) between Gini and distributive injustice assessment at the national level (regardless of the historical succession of data collection), it probably makes more sense to undertake a diachronic approach: What functions as the benchmark for population judgments or assessments? The data from the rest of the LAC countries or the changes over time experienced in each country? Although it is possible to think of a “regional effect” at certain political situations (as I have shown in the previous

31% 15% 31% 20% 33% 28% 26% 29%

15%

“Very unfair” income distribution 54% 23% 38% 34%

Source: SEDLAC and Latinobarómetro

Gini Argentina 0.46 Bolivia 0.56 Brazil 0.57 Chile 0.54 Colombia Costa 0.43 Rica Ecuador 0.55 Honduras 0.49 Mexico 0.49 Panama 0.55 Paraguay 0.53 Peru 0.51 Uruguay 0.39 LAC 0.51

1997 “Very unfair” income distribution 63% 22% 32% 30%

0.52 0.49 0.46 0.51 0.49 0.51 0.51 0.52

36% 17% 48% 45% 39% 27% 29% 32%

Gini 0.54 0.52 0.57 0.53 0.55 0.47 14%

2002

0.46 0.46 0.48 0.47 0.43 0.45 0.5 0.48

Gini 0.45 0.44 0.53 0.5 0.52 0.48

2009

18% 27% 31% 17% 29% 20% 9% 23%

“Very unfair” income distribution 43% 14% 24% 27% 26% 16% 0.47 0.49 0.49 0.47 0.46 0.41 0.44 0.47

Gini 0.43 0.41 0.52 0.5 0.51 0.49

2013

23% 34% 33% 21% 42% 17% 11% 25%

“Very unfair” income distribution 18% 11% 32% 52% 35% 34%

Table 11.1  Gini index and subjective evaluation of distributive inequity in Latin America. 13 countries in LAC 1997–2018

0.44 0.45 0.45 0.46 0.43 0.41 0.44 0.45

Gini 0.43 0.35 0.54 0.49 0.49 0.49

2018

24% 28% 33% 29% 27% 28% 18% 30%

“Very unfair” income distribution 39% 13% 45% 41% 35% 25%

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section), the observation focused on changes and inflections enables clearer interpretations of national trends. I establish three analytical periods that combine both political and structural criteria. In these periods, the identification of trends does not result from the negative or positive sign of the change in the indicators  – that is, whether the subjective evaluation of inequity or income distribution increases or decreases, or becomes more or less unequal in relation to the previous measurement considered by country – but from their relationship with the regional (average) trend. In this sense, a relatively small decrease in income distribution gaps (i.e., less than the Latin American average) would not be considered a “distributive improvement” in the period, strictly speaking, just as not improving or worsening less than the regional trend would be considered a relatively positive situation for the corresponding country. Between 1997 (the first year of measuring distributive justice evaluations in the Latinobarómetro survey) and 2002, the last years of the neoliberal process as the region’s hegemonic project took place, a stage that, at the Latin American level, is characterized by a worsening of distributive indicators as well as of the subjective evaluation of equity in the continent. Between 2002 and 2013, there is a period of rupture of neoliberal hegemony, and of rise of the so-called “pink tide” in post-neoliberal political processes. This rupture began in each country at different points in the first decade of the twenty-first century. As we know and has been pointed out by different studies (Benza and Kessler 2020; Lustig 2020; Feierherd et al. 2021), with nuances and complexities, the period can be characterized as a time of decreasing inequalities (essentially – but not exclusively – those related to the distribution of monetary income in the population), as well as a regional improvement in the subjective evaluation of equity. As I mentioned earlier, between 2013 and 2015, most of the progressive political processes in the region began to show signs of exhaustion, together with the slowdown in economic growth and the stagnation in the distributive improvements that had been shown in the first years of the century. By 2018, the downward trend in the Gini had stagnated and the assessment of distributive injustice had worsened again in relation to 2013, still without reaching the critical levels of 2002 (in the midst of the crisis of the neoliberal project). In this sense, we can identify different historical trajectories of inequality by country. Argentina and Uruguay follow the regional trend (the subjective evaluation of inequity increases toward the end of the neoliberal project, decreases in the post-­ neoliberal period, and increases again post-2013), and constitute the national processes whose political turns to the Right in recent years have been mediated by electoral contests (in 2015 and 2019, respectively). They are also countries with a long history of egalitarian moral economies (Sachweh 2012) in the repertoire of their respective political cultures (O’Donell 1984), and therefore both countries are part of what Garretón will call the “political path” of building redistributive pacts (Garretón 2014). It should also be considered that, beyond this, Argentina is one of the countries with the highest evaluation of distributive injustice in the entire region in most

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measurements, and Uruguay, on the contrary, a country with a certain stability in low inequity evaluations. In this regard, the fact that Argentina is one of the countries with the highest intergenerational social mobility (Busso and Messina 2020) suggests that, as some research has pointed out (McCall 2013), the perception of inequality and the subjective evaluation of inequity are favored by high living conditions, by access to some collective goods (such as education) and by a high structure of status expectations (UNDP 2019). The Uruguayan case, however, is a reminder of the provisional and complex nature of this explanatory scheme, as it adds other factors such as its high institutional confidence and the level of its wages in international terms, among others. To a lesser extent, Panama shows a similar behavior of its indicators (with the particularity of having maintained a process of distributive improvement even when the region tended to stagnate) (Busso and Messina 2020). Bolivia, on the other hand, is the emblematic case of constant improvement and objective adjustment of its trends (Gini and subjective evaluation of equity), while at the same time showing a robust continuity in its political process. The coup suffered by President Evo Morales in 2019 and the subsequent immediate victory of his party (MAS) in the national executive elections in 2020, shows the strength of this continuity. Other studies have pointed out as relevant factors for this national case, not only the decentralization of income and the reduction of poverty, but also the specific weight of social movements and the state recognition of their demands, the strong ideological definition of its progressive governments and even the social origin of its (then) president (ECLAC 2009). In other words, what Garretón called a redistributive pact based on the recomposition of the polis from society (Garretón 2014). With a situation of continuity (constant improvement of indicators), although with an ideological shift in recent years, because of a rupture within the ruling alliance, Ecuador is a similar case to Bolivia (ECLAC 2009). The shifting nature (between objective evolution of inequality and subjective evaluation of inequity) of this country in the first period (1997–2002) could be explained, in part, by the political conflicts in this stage, which include the removal of a president, a deep economic crisis and the dollarization of the economy. Both are also the countries that most reduced the incidence of poverty in the entire continent (Busso and Messina 2020). However, it is also necessary to point out that both countries had relatively low values of subjective evaluation of inequity throughout the period, so it is feasible to add the hypothesis of populations that are less critical or sensitive to inequality (for example, thinking comparatively in reference to the data from Argentina). Peru, completing a marked trend in the Andean region – the subregion with the largest Gini decrease between 2002 and 2018 (Busso and Messina 2020) – has also presented a dynamic arrangement of improvement in distributive indicators and in the perception of equity in all periods. However, it is worth noting that these three countries saw their institutional stability interrupted or threatened in the course of the last year.

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Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Honduras, and Paraguay are cases in which the dynamics of each period in these countries do not coincide with the regional trend, although in many of them their governments have taken turns in line with the progressive trend in Latin America (except, probably, Colombia and Costa Rica). Different reports have characterized Costa Rica as a relatively exceptional national case, given its economic stability, its feeble distributive and perceptual variations, and its strong and historical social and health protection network (ECLAC 2009). Their high level of institutional trust in almost the entire period also seems relevant, given its statistical correlation with the subjective evaluation of equity (Valle Luna and Scartascini 2020). In the cases of Brazil and Chile, both among the countries with the highest income inequality in the Southern Cone (ECLAC 2010) and with Gini almost unchanged in the twenty-first century according to the recalculation proposed by Lustig (2020), their societies experienced processes of high political conflict that brought the thematization of inequality to the forefront of public debate. In relation to this point, Reyes and Gasparini (2017) posit that the evaluation of distributive injustice and the willingness to participate in social protests are statistically correlated, although not linearly. Chile evolved differently from the regional norm in the twenty-first century. From 1990 to 2011, it kept a process of sustained decline in poverty, although with a relatively stable distributive structure. The presidential elections particularly thematized the issue of inequality in 2013, in relation to both the “ethical wage” and the access to university education (Segovia and Gamboa 2015). In 2019, a new cycle of political mobilizations with demands related to access to public services would lead to a referendum that voted overwhelmingly in favor of constitutional reform in the country. This year, the mobilizations coincided with cycles of protests in Colombia (another of the countries in this group) and Ecuador (where the political rupture in the ruling alliance had already been noted) (Lustig 2020). A UNDP study with its own survey shows that between 2000 and 2016 in Chile the intensity of the perception of inequality increased, raising again the difficulty to find an automatic objective arrangement between “objective” inequality and “subjective” perception. Instead, the research shows that since the cycle of student protests in the country opens the emergence of a critical context of inequalities combined with a greater media presence of the topic. On the other hand, the study points out that the greatest criticisms are not focused on the distributive issue or on the behaviors of the elite, but on access to education, health, rights, dignity and interpersonal respect (UNDP 2017). Brazil experiences a very important cycle of protests in 2013 in the run-up to the Men’s World Cup, added to which it is one of the few countries in the region in which the Gini increases again from that date (Lustig 2020) (in general, decelerations in the decrease or mere stagnation of distributive indexes were observed). On the other hand, Brazil, Honduras, and Paraguay at different times (2009, 2012, and 2016) saw the electoral succession interrupted to experience more or less “soft” coup processes, more or less institutional, all of them against governments that adopted the “progressive” line at the regional level.

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Finally, Mexico appears as a divergent case in line with what has been said about Costa Rica. When the region as a whole was tending toward a narrowing of the gaps, Mexico saw its Gini index grow and remain relatively high and stable during almost the entire period, except between 2013 and 2018 when it dropped by a few points. In contrast, its subjective assessment of inequity grew abruptly between 1997 and 2002, and remains stable since 2009 around 32% (even when its Gini fell in the last 5-year period analyzed). This last national case raises important questions, firstly, about its inclusion in the Latin American region given its particular (subordinate) integration in North America. On the other hand, its political dynamics and party system did not experience the impacts of the “pink tide” in the region until the arrival of AMLO to the presidency, with a different discursive and ideological tone. As we will show with the complementary data that we observe in the last section, there are indications to think that Mexico presents a different “moral climate” than many of the countries with higher levels of subjective opposition to inequality.

 oes the Feeling of Injustice Translate into Political D Opposition to Inequality? If the analysis is complemented with the data provided by the World Values Survey (WVS), I can confirm some trends (see Table 11.2). For the sake of space, we will analyze only the five countries with the highest opposition to income inequality in the survey conducted between 2017 and 2020: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. While Argentina presents a case with a high sensitivity to inequality (given that it is not among the countries in the region with the highest Gini and, however, it did rank as one of the countries with the highest subjective assessment of distributive injustice), Mexico is positioned above average in Gini, although below average in assessment of injustice. Brazil and Chile, meanwhile, show a certain “expected” arrangement: High levels of objective inequality would produce a high subjective evaluation of inequity and a high political opposition to inequality. These same countries present the highest percentages of belief in public responsibility (statism or interventionism), data that reinforces the hypothesis of the political (rather than merely economic) reading key in relation to the subjective evaluation of distributive injustice (Rodriguez 2014). Although much of the literature points to elective affinities between the perception of economic inequality and adherence/rejection to liberal-meritocratic morality, to certain positions of the tax culture and to certain representations of the social structure, the national configurations of the subjective evaluation of distributive injustice and political opposition to income inequality take different forms. In the case of Argentina, for example, political opposition to income inequality is based on a progressive tax consensus, although in the subjective social status of the respondents the lowest categories of the social scale do not prevail. In some

Source: WVS

Political opposition to inequality Mexico 34% Colombia 28% Ecuador 28% Peru 29% Brazil 44% Bolivia 25% Chile 56% Argentina 35%

“Equality is more important than freedom” 45% 46% 48% 59% 52% 56% 60% 38%

Support for progressive taxation 36% 36% 40% 44% 25% 44% 39% 50%

“Low” category on “Working” subjective or class or perceived “lower” class identity income scale 35% 41% 44% 38% 30% 28% 40% 23% 65% 40% 33% 22% 58% 31% 41% 18% “Left” political ideology 21% 17% 15% 9% 21% 19% 18% 11%

Privatist economic ideology 28% 28% 27% 29% 42% 23% 28% 23%

Statist or interventionist political stance 42% 35% 41% 40% 63% 35% 49% 42%

Table 11.2  Opposition to income inequality and associated political factors in Latin America. 8 countries in LAC 2017–2020 Strong agreement that “people who do not work become lazy” 45% 20% 35% 28% 0% 25% 30% 0%

Attachment to the value of “hard work” 55% 43% 57% 67% 49% 54% 47% 47%

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sense, this could indicate that both the evaluation of distributive injustice and opposition to income inequality could constitute elements of the discursive repertoire whose political subject is based, in this country, in the middle sectors. In the case of Brazil, on the other hand, opposition to income inequality would be associated with an ideological self-position (identification with the “left”), the centrality of the value of “equality” and the “low” subjective social status of the surveyed population (in terms of both income scale and subjective social class). Somehow, the discursive repertoire of equality finds its subject, in this case, in the subaltern sectors (or in their image and imaginary). In the case of Mexico, opposition to income inequality is based on components similar to those of the Brazilian case, although with conservative-liberal elements: adherence to the values of “hard work” (protestant ethic) and a lesser presence of the “left” as a political identification. The case of Chile is the soundest in the combination of subjective evaluation of inequity, political opposition to income inequality, belief in public responsibility, valuing equality over freedom, adherence to progressive tax policy, identification with the popular classes and with the left. Except for the belief in the stigmatization of the unemployed under the category of “laziness,” Chile is the clearest model of a critical moral economy of inequality (remember its high level of conflict and thematization of the issue). While Colombia was one of the most unequal countries in terms of its perception of inequity, with a high proportion of its respondents perceiving themselves to be in the lowest positions of the social scale and social classes, its high adherence to the belief that those who do not work are “lazy,” its low support for tax progressivity and its low ideological identification with the left would have diluted its potential political opposition to income inequality.

 inal Remarks. Toward an Approach to the Moral Economies F of Inequality in LAC The processes of production and reproduction of social inequality in our continent have experienced contrasting trends. LAC is undoubtedly marked in every aspect of its social reality by profound inequality, but its dynamics are complex, contradictory, dissimilar, persistent, and, at the same time, in motion. Understanding this characterization is our starting point: The lay perception of this inequality cannot but be as or more dynamic and synthetic than the social structure it seeks to capture. As I stated at the beginning of the chapter, it is not possible to speak of “linear” objective arrangements between structural inequality and subjective perception, evaluation, and attitudes toward inequalities. If the judgments, discontent, criticism, and demands regarding inequality are configured in a multidimensionality of arrays in the perceptions of the population, it is necessary to explore the idea that it is the different moral economies of inequality that guide the process of mediation between

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objective inequalities, subjective perceptions and judgments, and political attitudes, and conflicts for equality.5 These moral economies can operate at different scales, among which this chapter has been devoted to a comparison at the regional and national level, although in future publications it will be necessary to investigate what happens at the level of individuals and groups, sectors or social positions. Through these final reflections, I construct a set of hypothetical models that, as Weberian ideal types, serve to advance and accumulate in the production of knowledge on the political problem of inequality in LAC. These models of moral economies are not intended to constitute laws or empirical phenomena in themselves. Rather, they seek the formulation of heuristic conceptual tools to give meaning to the narratives on the complex relationship between social inequality and its perception, evaluation and understanding in the nonspecialist population. In the first set of countries (among which Argentina and Uruguay stand out, nations with very different levels of subjective evaluation of inequity, although with similar distributive indicators), I find moral economies with a historical tradition of egalitarianism. The combination of elements that characterizes this model includes relative institutional stability (with electoral processing of political turns around inequality), statist, interventionist, or progressive consensus, with a high sensitivity to inequality, and with high expectations of egalitarianism and social mobility. A second set of countries would be included in what I call reactive moral economies (among which Chile and Brazil stand out, but could also include Colombia and, to a lesser extent, Honduras and Paraguay), which combine more unequal social structures with a high perception of and social conflict over inequality, with a state-lead consensus and strong political opposition to inequality, as well as an explicit thematization of inequality in the public arena. In addition to the greater institutional instability of these national structures in the twenty-first century, they are differentiated from the first model by the greater weight of the left-wing ideological-­political self-positioning and the greater weight of subjective poverty in the population’s class self-perception. A third group of countries, concentrated in the Andean region, rounds off the picture with what I call moral economies of rupture (among which Bolivia stands out, to a lesser extent Ecuador, and to a lesser extent Peru). These are countries with strong ruptures in their societal dynamics in the recent past, with lower sensitivities, expectations, and political opposition to inequality (in their traditions of political culture), as well as with precarious democratic institutional stability, but with powerful social movements and popular organizations leading progressive political processes in the twenty-first century, as well as with some strong leaders at the center of the public scene.

5  Under no circumstances can it be thought that this implies a definitive or final proposal. For example, from a political psychology perspective, it is necessary to analyze the influence of emotions, causal attributions about poverty, prejudices, and the perception of the political climate, among other factors, in order to comprehensively understand the processes of construction, reproduction, legitimization, tolerance, contestation, and resistance to social inequalities in LAC.

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It should be noted that, for the purposes of this chapter, both Mexico and Costa Rica are special cases that will require further study in order to construct better classifications that include them in a comprehensive manner. However, it is also necessary to point out that both are political processes that are understood neither in the norm nor in the central tendency of the region in the twenty-first century. It is within the framework of these symbolic universes that, I understand, it will be possible to explore in greater depth the possibility of constructing explanations of perceptions of social inequality in ours, the most unequal region in the world. In the future, the scheme will gain in power if the definition of these models is supplemented by a characterization of the welfare regimes or distributive agreements of each country, understanding that if the subjective evaluation of inequity results from a synthetic manifestation of political and economic evaluation of access to public goods (such as education and health), of the structure of public spending, of tax policy, as well as of other subjective or political factors (such as institutional trust, interpersonal respect or crises and emergencies of political conflict), these are central to understanding this phenomenon.

References Assusa, G., and G. Kessler. 2020. ¿Desigualdades injustas? Transformaciones y continuidades del contexto pos-progresista en América Latina. In Ecuador. Debates, balances y desafíos post-­ progresistas, ed. C.M. Stalin Herrera and V.H. Torres Davila, 443–472. Buenos Aires: CLACSO. Benza, G. 2016. La estructura de clases argentina durante la década 2003–2013. In La sociedad argentina hoy. Radiografía de una nueva estructura, ed. G. Kessler, 111–140. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI. Benza, G., and G.  Kessler. 2020. La ¿nueva? Estructura social de América Latina. Cambios y persistencias después de la ola de gobiernos progresistas. Buenos Aires: Siglo XX. Busso, M., and J.  Messina. 2020. Panorámica de la desigualdad del ingreso. In La crisis de la desigualdad. América Latina y el Caribe en la encrucijada, ed. M.  Busso and J.  Messina, 19–29. Washington: BID. ECLAC. 2009. Panorama social de América Latina. Santiago de Chile: Naciones Unidas. ———. 2010. América Latina frente al espejo. Dimensiones objetivas y subjetivas de la inequidad social y el bienestar en la región. Santiago de Chile: CEPAL y Latinobarómetro. ———. 2012. Panorama social de América Latina. Santiago de Chile: Naciones Unidas. Crutchfield, R.D., and D.  Pettinicchio. 2009. “Cultures of inequality”: ethnicity, immigration, social welfare, and imprisonment. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 623: 134–147. Feierherd, G., P. Larroulet, W. Long, and N. Lustig. 2021. The Pink tide and inequality in Latin America. Tulane Economics Working Paper Series. Tulane: Tulane University. Filmus, D. 2019. ¿Es posible crecer y distribuir al mismo tiempo? La experiencia de los gobiernos latinoamericanos en la primera década del nuevo siglo. In Las sendas abiertas de América Latina. Aprendizajes y desafíos para una nueva agenda de transformaciones, ed. D. Filmus, 23–50. Buenos Aires: CLACSO. Garretón, M. 2014. Las ciencias sociales en la trama de Chile y América Latina. Estudios sobre transformaciones sociopolíticas y movimiento social. Santiago de Chile: LOM. Grimson, A. 2015. Percepciones sociales de la desigualdad, la distribución y la redistribución de ingresos. Revista Lavboratorio 26 (15): 197–224.

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Kessler, G. 2014. Controversias sobre la desigualdad: Argentina 2003–2013. Buenos Aires: FCE. ———. 2019. Algunas reflexiones sobre la agenda de investigación de desigualdades en Latinoamérica. Desacatos 59: 86–95. López-Calva, L.F., and N.  Lustig. 2011. La disminución de la desigualdad en América Latina: cambio tecnológico, educación y democracia. In La disminución de la desigualdad en América Latina ¿Un decenio de progreso? ed. L.F. López-Calva and N. Lustig, 11–42. FCE: México. Lustig, N. 2020. Desigualdad y descontento social en América Latina. NUSO 286: 53–61. McCall, L. 2013. The undeserving rich. American beliefs about inequality, opportunity, and redistribution. Nueva York: Cambridge University. O’Donell, G., 1984. ¿Y a mí, qué me importa? Notas sobre sociabilidad y política en Argentina y Brasil. Working Paper. Kellog Institute, 9. Orellana, N., C. Maldonado, and M. Castillo. 2015. Presentación. Apuntes sobre los conceptos de desigualdad, legitimación y conflicto para el análisis de las sociedades latinoamericanas. In Desigualdades. Tolerancia, legitimación y conflicto en las sociedades latinoamericanas, ed. M. Castillo Gallardo and C. Maldonado Graus. Santiago de Chile: Ril Editores. OXFAM. 2015. Privilegios que niegan derechos. Desigualdad extrema y secuestro de la democracia en América Latina y el Caribe. Buenos Aires: OXFAM. Pérez Sáinz, J.P. 2016. Una historia de la desigualdad en América Latina. La barbarie de los mercados, desde el siglo XIX hasta hoy. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI. Picketty, T. 2015. La economía de las desigualdades. Cómo implementar una redistribución justa y eficaz de la riqueza. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI. PNUD. 2017. Desiguales. Orígenes, cambios y desafíos de la brecha social en Chile. Santiago de Chile: Naciones Unidas. ———. 2019. Informe sobre Desarrollo Humano 2019. Más allá del ingreso, más allá de los promedios, más allá del presente. Desigualdades del desarrollo humano en el siglo XXI. Nueva York: Naciones Unidas. Reyes, G., and L. Gasparini. 2017. Perceptions of distributive justice in Latin America during a period of falling inequality. Buenos Aires: CEDLAS. Rivas, A., M. Scasso, et al. 2020. Las llaves de la educación. Estudio comparado sobre la mejora de los sistemas educativos subnacionales en América Latina. Buenos Aires: CIAESA— Instituto Natura—Universidad de San Andrés—Fundación Santillana. Rodríguez, S.A. 2014. Percepciones de la desigualdad socioeconómica. Un estudio exploratorio para el caso argentino. Revista de Ciencias Sociales 27 (34): 93–118. Sachweh, P. 2012. The moral economy of inequality: popular views on income differentiation, poverty and wealth. Socio-Economic Review 10: 419–445. Segovia, C., and R. Gamboa. 2015. Imágenes de la desigualdad en Chile. El impacto de factores económicos y políticos. Papel Político 20 (2): 481–500. UNESCO. 2020. Inclusion and education: all means all. París: Naciones Unidas. Valle Luna, J., and C. Scartascini. 2020. ¿En quién confiamos? Una cuestión de percepciones y desigualdad. In La crisis de la desigualdad. América Latina y el Caribe en la encrucijada, ed. M. Busso and J. Messina, 348–372. Washington: BID.

Part IV

Historical and Economic Dimension of Inequalities

Chapter 12

Youths and Inequalities: Persistent and Emerging Trends, and Public Policies, in the Time of the Pandemic Pablo Vommaro

Foreword If we consider youth experiences in Argentina and Latin America over the last decade, we can highlight two processes. On the one hand, the enfranchisement and acknowledgment of diverse identities, driven mostly by public policy. On the other hand, the growth of social inequalities in a multidimensional sense (Reygadas 2008; Saraví 2015), a process wherein the generational aspect is particularly important. Both processes can be analyzed in terms of opposing or ambivalent trends (Kessler 2014). For example, modern-day youths are increasingly educated and politically active, while educational inequalities and ignorance, or suppression, of youth activism are also on the rise (Vommaro 2019; Rodríguez 2012). Furthermore, young people are gaining ground in the labor market, but their working conditions are more and more degraded and precarious (Vommaro 2019). According to various reports, conditions such as unemployment or poverty are twice or three times more frequent in this social segment, which is subject to both socioeconomic inequalities as well as those related to race and ethnicity, sex and gender, territory, culture, education, employment, human mobility, politics and religion, among others.1 Moreover, to understand these processes from a generational perspective, one must take into account the prominent role attained by young people in the social and political dynamics of Latin America over the last few years, which has increased the

1  For instance, see ECLAC (2012, 2013, 2014). Social Panorama of Latin America. Available on www.cepal.org.

P. Vommaro (*) University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Capital Federal, Argentina National Council for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICET), Buenos Aires, Argentina © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Vommaro, P. Baisotti (eds.), Persistence and Emergencies of Inequalities in Latin America, Latin American Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90495-1_12

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visibility of the projects and demonstrations of a variety of youth collectives. This contentious, generationally biased involvement has contributed to the aforementioned process of enfranchisement and acknowledgment of diversity observed across the region over the last few years. Many such public policies embodied victories achieved through youth-led demonstrations and collective actions. In addition, a majority of the most active youth collectives of the last decade outlined plans which sought to create equality through an acknowledgment of diversity. This is a notion of equality not as a monolithic process of homogenization, but rather one created on the basis of difference and plurality. In this context, the COVID-19 pandemic caused a widespread crisis which brought attention to, and intensified, existing social dynamics. In other words, the pandemic originated and propagated in a world marked by social dynamics and logics which the pandemic itself exposes, accelerates, amplifies, and aggravates. In this chapter, we shall focus on the dynamics of production and reproduction of social inequalities from a generational perspective. Therefore, we will analyze multidimensional social inequalities by means of an intersectional approach which includes generational and territorial dimensions juxtaposed with others such as gender, labor, and education. We will approach the circumstances of young people in major Latin American cities through some of the qualitative and quantitative studies available. This generational focus will constitute the basis of our interpretive approach to the processes of production and reproduction of inequalities, in keeping with our previous research (Vommaro 2019, 2020a, b). Taking the experiences analyzed as our starting point, we will seek to identify regional trends in order to ascertain the dynamics of persistence and emergence of territorially situated generational inequalities in the time of the pandemic. We aim to contribute to the understanding of current cartographies of the social inequalities faced by Latin American youths, from a reading of youth diversity as a powerful driver for the promotion of equality. We shall deploy the generational focus as our interpretive approach to the processes analyzed, following the framework established in Vommaro (2014a, b) and the proposals of authors like Mannheim (1993 [1928]) and Lewkowicz (2004a, b). This chapter offers a synthesis of a series of research studies completed over the last few years (Vommaro 2014a, b, 2015, 2017a, b, c, d, e, 2019, 2020a, b) as well as an analysis of documents produced by national and international organizations, whose data and statistics were cross-referenced with the results of our own research.

 nequal and Diverse: An Approach to Youths U from a Generational Perspective As we have mentioned in this chapter and developed in previous research (Vommaro 2015, 2017a, b, c, d, e), inequality as a precondition and diversity as a generational marker are fundamental traits of contemporary Latin American youths.

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We propose to study diversity not as fragmentation or vulnerability, but as a trait to be homogenized or unified, but rather as a precondition of the present, which can be read as a sign of strength and potential. One of the challenges facing and underlying the purpose of this article can be stated as follows: How can we approach diversity while taking into account the processes of creating equality, aimed at counteracting inequalities? By tackling these issues from a generational perspective, we encounter a dilemma linked to the question of how we see the tension between difference and inequality. Or, if we paraphrase this in proactive terms, how do we build equality on the basis of diversity? A few years ago, during an interview, a 24-year-old woman told me: “Our goal as a collective is to prevent difference from turning into inequality”.2 Similarly, one of the phrases found in a pamphlet by one of the collectives contained in Mexico’s #YoSoy132 movement read: “We are equal because we are different”.3 These two statements can be said to summarize the issues analyzed here, as well as spark questions which help us to move forward with our analysis. Indeed, when analyzing present-day youth associations, we come across the challenge of how to conceptualize equality on the basis of diversity: a kind of equality which does not homogenize, which is not monolithic or totalitarian, and which embraces difference, but without perpetuating inequality. This entails embracing difference in order to enable the construction of equality. In our view, the challenge lies in accepting difference as a precondition of the present, as a generational marker, instead of a sign of fragmentation or vulnerability. That is, understanding equality as commonality, as that which unites us and allows us to build further “ways of being together” (Martin Barbero 2002: 10). Paraphrased as a question, is it possible to conceive of a “togetherness,” a commonality, an equality built from difference and diversity? Authors such as Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2010) propose the notion of pluriversity as an attempt to articulate diversity and universality, difference and commonality, and to transcend the notion of universal as synonymous with monolithic or homogenizing, which implies the erasure of difference. As for the study of social inequalities, we hereby propose a multidimensional and situated perspective (Vommaro 2017b, c; Reygadas 2008). Within this multiple, plurally configured perspective, this chapter will focus on the generational intersections of the social devices of production and reproduction of inequalities, while simultaneously acknowledging other dimensions such as gender, migrations, ethnicity, culture, education, labor, and territory. This is the approach adopted by a variety of authors currently working in the field (Reygadas 2004; Kessler 2014; Perez Sainz, Juan Pablo 2014; Dubet 2015; Therborn 2015). It would be inaccurate

2  Interview conducted in September 2010 in a neighborhood located in the south of Greater Buenos Aires (Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina). 3  Phrase found in a pamphlet printed by one of the collectives contained in the #YoSoy132 movement, based in Mexico City, in November 2015.

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to speak of a unilateral or one-dimensional inequality which is exclusively socioeconomic in nature and based on income levels, revenue, or class affiliation. Structurally, we can pinpoint class positions which signal, articulate, and in some way engender inequalities. However, there is no question that the time has come to broaden our perspective and embrace the multidimensionality of the concept (Reygadas 2004, 2008; Dubet 2015). Further, the subject has undoubtedly moved to the forefront of the public agenda, both in the media and in politics and academia. As a result of the emergence of inequalities as a national problem and a focus of public attention and activism (Vázquez 2013), we are interested in reflecting upon two different questions. On the one hand, how a social issue develops and enters the public agenda, both for the media as well as for research and public policy. On the other hand, how that issue, now part of the public agenda, is taken up by youth collectives, movements, and organizations as a cause for activism.4 In other words, we are interested in interrogating the ways in which youth collectives embrace inequalities as a political cause or a focus of their activism and develop practices to counteract them, which in many cases inform proposals for equality in diversity. Before delving into the proposals of youth collectives, let us review analyses such as those submitted by Gentili (2015) or Dubet (2015) in order to ponder the devices of public production of the conceptual pairs inequality/poverty and inequality/exclusion. According to these authors, while the notion of poverty is rather static, binary and fixed, that of inequality enables a more dynamic and relational approach because it always refers to a link between factors. Inequality is not a fixed state, but a relationship between at least two components. Focusing on that “between” results in analyses with consequences for political action and public discourses (Gentili 2015). The pair inequality/exclusion behaves in a similar fashion. Partly for this reason, over the last few years, the approaches based on the inclusion/ exclusion paradigm—which in previous decades led the way for both social studies and public policy—have debilitated. The increasing salience of the social inequality paradigm, in turn, fostered studies which interpreted current social processes linked to these dynamics by means of the notions of “exclusive inclusion” or “inclusive exclusion.” This is how authors such as Ezcurra (2011) depict the social ambivalences and paradoxes of the processes of inclusion and enfranchisement promoted by State programs over the last few decades, which nevertheless failed to reduce inequality. In some cases, they even increased it or were unable to counteract the demarcation of unequal, differentiated circuits. When it comes to diversifying school admissions or expanding the public subsidization of education, as well as to the so-called conditional transfer5 4  To complement these analyses, we suggest reading authors such as Bourdieu (1990, 2007) or Lenoir (1979, 2000), who partially follows and furthers the former’s proposals. 5  We are referring to what ECLAC calls conditional transfer programs, also called conditional cash transfer programs (CCTP) by IADB-WB, which adopted specific forms in each of the aforementioned countries. Among the most noteworthy in each case, we can mention the Universal Child Allowance (Asignación Universal por Hijo), created in 2009  in Argentina; the Juancito Pinto

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programs, this type of analysis allows us to identify opposing tendencies and ­discontinuous, sinuous, often opaque processes. Though we will not elaborate on them in this article, we consider these perspectives fruitful and productive, as they have been used to study public policies in countries like Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, and Bolivia. To recap, we are proposing to conceptualize inequalities as dynamic, situated, relational, multidimensional, and intersectional, as an expression of social-­historical processes rooted in spatiality, rather than being self-centered or self-defined (Vommaro 2017b). To build on this approach, we can incorporate proposals by Dubet (2015), who believes there are three types of inequalities: those stemming from access or lack thereof (to certain goods or services, to healthcare, to leisure, to recreation); those linked to opportunities (derived from the starting point of an individual or group); and those linked to positions (a more structural kind of inequality caused by the socioeconomic status of individuals and social groups). From a structuralist, materialistic point of view, we might think that this latter form of inequality is the most significant. Nonetheless, on the basis of our research, we propose to incorporate the multiple dimensions arising from the point of view of opportunity. Following Dubet, and provided that we accept the multidimensional nature of inequality, we could examine the intersection of these three types in order to build a complex approach which accounts for this multidimensionality. Several Latin American authors, such as Kessler (2014), Reygadas (2004), Gentili (2015), and Perez Sainz (2014), have argued that in this region, inequalities appear as paradoxes or opposing tendencies. In other words, by conceiving them as relational, they suggest studying their ambivalences and tensions as well. In keeping with figures by ECLAC (2012) and the IADB-WB (2013), these authors suggest that over the last few decades, Latin America has seen considerable economic growth which coexists with differences and inequalities both between and within countries. In fact, according to ECLAC’s 2012 Preliminary Overview of the Economies of Latin America and the Caribbean, the regional GDP grew 3.1% in 2012 and 4.5% in 2011, both above the global average for this figure, which was 2.2%. This confirms the trend observed since 2004: the regional GDP has been growing at a rate of over 4% (except in 2009, when the GDP dropped by 1.9%). Some countries have grown at a rate of 6.7% or 8%, others at 3% or 4%, but the region’s economic growth has been steady, at least between 2003 and 2012. This combined with a relative decrease in poverty and an improvement across various social indicators such as educational levels, access to healthcare, and employment. For instance, in 2013 the IADB-WB published a report which highlights that “the size of the middle class in Latin America and the Caribbean recently expanded by 50%—from 103 million people in 2003 to 152 million (...) in 2009,” Bonus (Bono Juancito Pinto), implemented in 2006 in Bolivia; the Family Bursary (Bolsa Familia), launched in 2003 in Brazil; and the Human Development Bonus (Bono de Desarrollo Humano), active since 2003 in Ecuador.

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and simultaneously underscores that the population considered to be poor decreased from 44% to 30% in the same period. Therefore, the report claims that “the middle class and the poor now account for roughly the same share of Latin America’s population,” a sharp contrast to periods in the past “when the share of the poor hovered around 2.5 times that of the middle class” (IADB-WB 2013). Concurrently, ECLAC’s Social Panorama of Latin America shows that poverty decreased in the region from 48.4% in 1990 to 43.9% in 2002 and 28.8% in 2012, while extreme poverty fell from 22.6% in 1990 to 19.3% in 2002 and 11.4% in 2012. Additionally, in terms of income distribution, for the first time in decades, notable improvements have occurred in many countries in the region over the last few years. Those improvements have manifested in higher participation in income distribution for the poorest 40% of the population and decreased participation for the wealthiest 10%. This a phenomenon which has been particularly conspicuous in Argentina, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and less so in Brazil, Chile, and Mexico, while Colombia and Honduras underwent the opposite process. Indeed, the aforementioned panorama has not been equally favorable for all countries and social groups. In many aspects, Latin America is still characterized by social inequalities which transcend income levels, and which affect segments of the population enduring particularly critical conditions, such as women—whose quality of life improved, but to a lesser degree than men’s—young people—similarly disadvantaged vis-a-vis adults—and various ethnic groups (such as indigenous people, people of African descent, or Black people) whose living conditions, thought relatively improved in contrast to previous periods, are still poor compared to the white and mestiza (mixed ancestry) population (Vommaro 2017a). In this article, we are especially interested in the status of young people, one of the most vulnerable social groups when it comes to inequality, according to our own studies (Vommaro 2017b, c, d) and those by Gonzalo Saraví (2015), among others, backed by data published by institutions such as ECLAC (2012, 2016). The studies reviewed still show a complex and worrying set of paradoxes and contrasts which we will partially outline here, alongside a deep-seated social unrest, articulated by the emergence of youth movements which until recently had little visibility in the public space, and which over the last few years have taken to the streets and public squares to fight for various causes, not always pertaining specifically to young people, such as demanding public, free, democratic, and high-quality education; resisting institutional, State, and State-sanctioned violence and degraded working conditions; gender, diversity, and sexuality advocacy; disputes over urban spaces; challenging the tax structure; and defending nature and the environment, among others. Thus, a particular juncture arises wherein, despite the above mentioned improvements, the decrease in poverty and the progress of other indicators, social inequalities persist. For instance, as we said, while the relative social position of women is better than it was fifty years ago, gender inequalities remain. To put it another way, the improvement of social indicators is not enough; instead, it is often necessary to adopt a different approach in order to explain the process whereby, despite the

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improvements in many indexes, social inequalities endure and, in some cases, even worsen. We can see a similar pattern in the status of young people, who have gained prominence in society, the education system, the labor force, and participatory spaces in general. Nevertheless, generational inequalities are among the most acute and persistent in the region (ECLAC 2014, 2016). Clearly, approaches based on inclusion and fighting poverty are not sufficient to understand nor remedy them. As we have said, we believe that, in the face of these conceptual and political limitations, and considering the empirical evidence presented, research approaches must be rendered more complex, and inequalities must be studied on the basis of their paradoxes, their opposing and ambivalent tendencies (Reygadas 2004; Kessler 2014). To continue elaborating on this perspective, the authors quoted help us to consider the social mechanisms of production, reproduction, and perpetuation of inequalities. Rather than following the visible, emerging factors in indicators and data, we must concentrate on the forms of social production and reproduction (Reygadas 2004) and on the various ways in which people experience inequalities, in this case through a generational framework (Dubet 2015; Chaves et al. 2016). Generational inequalities shape the conditions in which the everyday lives of many young men and women unfold, and the way they experience these inequalities and build their experiences informs their modes of adaptation and resistance (Vommaro 2017c; Chaves et al. 2016).

 enerational Experiences of Inequality Before and After G the Pandemic Available figures show Latin America to be the most unequal subcontinent in the world. If we turn to the Gini index (which, despite its many limitations—it only measures income and revenue distribution—is recognized by various international organizations), we can see that between 2003 and 2015, there has been an overall improvement, which was more pronounced in some countries than others.6 As we have said, this improvement has not reversed inequalities; in fact, some of them appear to grow starker if we cross-reference them with the generational perspective. Among young people, social indicators are worse. For example, youth unemployment doubles or triples the overall unemployment rates, youth poverty in many cases doubles the general rate, and similar patterns are observed in healthcare and housing. Once again, inequalities are shown to affect young people far more deeply than other social groups. And they are even more critical among young women,

 For more on this subject, see the Social Panoramas issued by ECLAC (2014, 2015).

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especially rural young women, those of African or indigenous descent, and those who live in the peripheral areas and barrios populares7 of large cities. The intersectional reading coined in feminist studies as a byproduct of the study of social identities can be useful for our analysis. Indeed, inequalities are also produced intersectionally, integrating and combining dimensions such as gender, generation, territory, class, education, labor, ethnicity, or race.8 Responses to the two problems outlined earlier—the social modes of production and reproduction and the varying ways of experiencing inequalities—have often revolved around the individual’s ability to overcome certain situations, or equality of opportunity seen through an individualistic lens. In contrast, our perspective is relational, holistic, collective, aware of social structures and based on multidimensionality and the opposing trends, paradoxes, and ambivalences that make up social inequalities. Following our multidimensional and intersectional approach, if we zero in on the status and experiences of young women, the scenario is comparatively worse. While young people, as we have said, are the hardest-hit in the most unequal subcontinent in the world, women are the most unequal demographic within the most neglected groups in the region. Consequently, we could say that while inequalities in Latin America are widespread, they are mostly young and female.9 Taking these multiplicities as its starting point, the notion of “experiences of inequality” proposed by Dubet (2015) argues that we must consider not only the relational and structural dimensions, but also the subjective aspect: the ways that individuals experience inequalities and the ways in which events integrate inequality into one’s life experience and subjectivity, as well as into the development of individuation and social subjectivization. In more recent research, Jelin et al. (2020) updated and enriched this approach, centered on subjective dimensions and collective ideas about the dynamics of inequalities. Thus arise youth subjectivities shaped by inequality, which give rise to practices, speech patterns, and modes of peer-to-­ peer and intergenerational social relationships. As we have said, the COVID-19 pandemic brought to light, accelerated, amplified, intensified, and deepened existing social dynamics, including those of social inequalities. Accordingly, we can class inequalities as either persistent (which predate the pandemic) or emerging (triggered by the pandemic), a distinction which proves particularly meaningful if we focus on generational inequalities. In this chapter, we shall study generational inequalities in the context of the pandemic on the basis of three dimensions: territory, education, and labor.  Translator’s Note: Barrio popular is a commonly used term in Latin American academia and public policy which is difficult to translate into a single English word because it can encompass heterogeneous terms such as ‘slum,’ ‘working-class neighborhood’ and ‘land occupation’. 8  For more on the subject of intersectional perspectives, see the work of authors such as Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw (2000), Leslie Mc Call (2005) or Angela Davis (1981). 9  A similar point could be made about violence and insecurity, but we will cover this in future articles. 7

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In a recent study, Benza and Kessler (2021) performed a sociopolitical and economic assessment of the paradoxical process of improvement in indicators and growth of inequalities which took place in Latin America over the last few decades, and argued that this phenomenon would only grow starker as a result of the pandemic. The increasingly unequal Latin American societies currently taking shape during the pandemic, and which will crystallize in its aftermath, will present new challenges for public policy and spark emerging social unrest and conflicts. Indeed, most young people experienced a degradation and deterioration of their living conditions during the pandemic. This phenomenon intensified for young people from barrios populares, who have been living with inequality since before 2020, as shown by the following data. According to figures by Argentina’s INDEC (National Institute of Statistics and Censuses),10 in 2020, 49.6% of people between the ages of 15 and 29 lived in poverty (while the same was true of only 37.4% of those between 30 and 64) and almost two out of every ten young people were unemployed (19.3%).11 A recent study by Universidad Nacional de Tierra del Fuego found that 37% of people aged 18–29 reported that their nutrition deteriorated during the pandemic, 27% lost their job, and 31% suffered a reduction of their salary or the compensation they earned, compared with their earnings in 2019.12 Similarly, a report by the International Labor Organization (2020), which surveyed more than 12,000 young people from 112 countries, concluded that one in every six young people (17%) who were employed before the pandemic stopped working completely, in particular those between 18 and 24 years of age and those employed in administrative support roles, services and sales, or as craftsmen. In contrast, those currently employed saw their working hours decrease almost by 25% (that is, by an average of 2 h a day) and four out of ten (42%) reported a decline in their income. Inequalities thus intertwine and intensify, since, according to the ILO, young people living in countries with lower income levels are more exposed than any other group to reductions in working hours, and the subsequent contraction of their income. Employment has been considered the main factor shaping the different ways in which the crisis has affected young men and women. Young women have reported a larger loss of productivity compared with their male counterparts. The same ILO study shows that 17% of young people are likely to suffer from anxiety and depression during and after the pandemic. Mental wellbeing is lower among young women in general and among young men aged 18–24. Young people whose education or employment was interrupted or ceased completely are almost twice as likely to struggle with anxiety or depression than those who were able to continue working or studying (ILO 2020).

 Data extracted from Mahmud (2021) and INDEC (2020).  In 2019, INDEC statistics showed that 42.5% of people between 15 and 29 years of age were classed as poor, compared to 30.5% of the group aged 30–64 (INDEC 2019). 12  Preliminary data from a survey conducted by the Culture, Society and State Institute with Universidad Nacional de Tierra del Fuego between September 2020 and February 2021.

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 erritorially Situated Generational Inequalities in Times T of Pandemic As a result of the confinement, isolation, or quarantine measures adopted in all Latin American and Caribbean countries in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, what used to happen in the public space started happening inside the home. This intensified the process whereby the private or intimate space of the home in the barrios populares becomes public as it is appropriated and resignified by the community. This was the case of the homes of certain community leaders of the barrios, which were converted into headquarters for territorial and community organization. In the time of the pandemic, the retraction of social life into the domestic space reinforces overcrowding and precarious housing conditions as triggers of inequalities expressed in a variety of dimensions, such as the possibility of completing school homework and following the dynamics of remote learning or being able to telecommute. On the other hand, restrictions on the use and appropriation of public space reinforce the processes of spatial and territorial segregation which characterize most large cities today, albeit with different expressions. These segregation processes are more keenly experienced by young men and women, whose ability to move freely through various city areas or sectors is restricted (even before the pandemic). The symbolic and geographical separation between neighborhoods creates invisible borders which are very difficult to cross, especially for young men and women from barrios populares. These borders and separations weave networks of inequality (Reygadas 2004) which are generationally experienced and configured, and which deepened during the pandemic. The closure of public space, and/or the increased control over its use, also made it less likely for young men and women in general to meet in person, but especially for those from barrios populares, who lost the corner, the park, and the square as places of socialization and connection between peers. According to accounts from various young people and polls conducted by different institutions (for example, the SES Foundation, the School of Psychology of the University of Buenos Aires (2020), and the Argentine Society of Pediatrics (2020), all three Argentine institutions), the socializing nature of public space as a source of support and belonging cannot be entirely replaced by virtual means. The segregation experienced by young men and women from barrios populares coexists with a second dynamic: stigmatization. The stigmatizing device produces “discredited social identities” (Goffman cited in Valenzuela 2015) which deny, render invisible or criminalize certain ways of being and presenting themselves as young people in the presence of others. Furthermore, the stigma drifts away from the recognition of the various youth lifestyles and blames on one of those forms the entirety of social ills, negatively labeling a subset of young people as the source of a particular social problem (insecurity, the spread of coronavirus) and disqualifying, nullifying or persecuting their practices and bodies. For example, it is well-known that in Brazil, young people from favelas and Black youths were met with hostility

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when passing through residential neighborhoods in large cities, as they were seen as sources of contagion and dissemination of the virus. Spatial segregation and subjective stigmatization are two of the main features of generational inequalities expressed and produced in the territory. Both dimensions converge in cases of police harassment and institutional violence against youths, which have increased in recent months in various countries across Latin America and the Caribbean. Persecution, criminalization, arbitrary arrests, harassment, humiliation, torture, and cases of disappearance, and murder of young people grew alongside the pandemic, especially in barrios populares (but also in rural areas), hand in hand with the greater powers granted to security forces to enforce compliance with isolation and confinement measures. According to a study by Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento (Argentina), between April and May 2020, 40% of the residents of barrios populares believe that conflicts did not increase, but neither did police presence during isolation, while 20% reported an increase in harassment from law enforcement, to varying degrees of intensity (UNGS Report 2020). On the other hand, the crisis fueled by the pandemic seems to have favored the organizational consolidation of barrios populares. Community leaders from different districts of Greater Buenos Aires report that since quarantine—or, more accurately, the Social, Preventive and Obligatory Isolation (Sp. acronym ASPO)—was decreed, there has been a significant reactivation of local and communal organizations (clubs, neighborhood associations, community centers, food banks, soup kitchens, cultural centers) and increased support, solidarity, and commitment among neighbors (UNGS 2020). This strengthening of the territorial and communal organizational fabric in barrios populares (led mainly by women and young people) provides a possible answer to some recurring questions: Is it possible to maintain mandatory social isolation in economies which are between 40% and 50% informal? Are isolation and quarantine really implemented in barrios populares? Does the call to stay home imply a degree of class privilege? Undoubtedly, these questions will be answered in practice, with experience, but it would seem that this is possible through an expansion of social policies aimed at supporting people who work in the so-called informal economy, or in the popular or social economy, as well as the residents of barrios populares. Perhaps it is time to consider a Universal Basic Income or Citizens’ Basic Income, as the proponents of the Tobin Tax and the Association for the Taxation of Transactions and Citizens’ Action (ATTAC) have been recommending for the last few decades. Furthermore, I would like to discuss the belief that self-isolation is the purview of the middle or upper-middle classes and that preventive measures are not followed in barrios populares because poverty generates chaos or anomie. Firstly, it is worth highlighting that the resistance to comply with social isolation manifested more keenly, and indeed continues to grow, among the wealthier segments of the population. In contrast, throughout our experience with the residents of barrios populares, we have seen these neighborhoods, communities, and territories deploy care strategies in other ways and modes. Thus, there is little empirical basis

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for the claim that isolation and prevention against the pandemic are the exclusive purview of the middle or upper-middle classes. Of course, overcrowding makes social distancing difficult; of course, informal and precarious workers need a daily source of income. However, the persistence and power of communal social organization should not be underestimated when it comes to ensuring prevention, if necessary, through isolation or distance. The residents of barrios populares comply with these measures by creating alternative forms of support and prevention, such as implementing social distancing and community healthcare strategies in shared spaces like schools, clubs, and soup kitchens. They also collectively control circulation within the neighborhood and care for individuals at higher risk as a community. Likewise, in many instances, the community leaders in these neighborhoods track case numbers and close contacts, with a capillarity and management capacity that the State rarely achieves.

 outh Labor in the Context of the Pandemic: Between Y Unemployment and Degraded Working Conditions The patterns and intersections of inequality experienced by young men and women in barrios populares within large Latin American cities include work and labor relations. During ASPO, telecommuting appears as a solution both to carry on with activities in a lockdown scenario and to ensure basic productivity for companies. But can all workers telecommute? Evidently not, and this depends both on the type of activity and the worker’s working and living conditions. Thus, telecommuting can increase precariousness and social and labor inequalities, further weakening employment opportunities for young men and women in barrios populares. Inequalities are reinforced and reproduced for precarious workers (home delivery, supermarkets, platform economies), who tend to be young people and who often continue to work during quarantines, even without access to adequate precautions or protection. As job insecurity increases, these types of employment multiply. In this way, both during and after the pandemic, a paradox could occur: youth unemployment (currently between 2.5 and 3 times higher than overall unemployment rates) might decrease, but these jobs might be increasingly precarious, with fewer rights and degraded working conditions. This was shown by a recent study on work for digital home delivery platforms, conducted by the Ministry of Labor of the Province of Buenos Aires (Argentina), whose findings are consistent with data from the ILO (2020a). According to the data, almost two thirds of people employed in these kinds of activities (62%) are under 30 and work an average of 9 h a day on their bikes or motorcycles. Moreover, 70% of these workers are active 7 days a week (i.e., they have no clear-cut off days) and 97% lack insurance for healthcare and occupational hazards.

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Speaking of labor inequality may be redundant under capitalism. However, Harvey talks about a “new working class” (the precariat that Standing, Bauman and Mezzadra speak of) which is bearing the brunt of the crisis, both because it is the workforce facing the most significant risk of exposure to the virus at work and because it can be fired without compensation, due to the economic downturn and the instability of its rights. Faced with the prospect of telecommuting, who can work at home and who cannot? Who can afford to self-isolate or quarantine (with or without receiving pay) in the event of contact or infection? All this exacerbates multidimensional inequalities which intersect with gender, territory, class, race/ethnicity, and generation. For this reason, Harvey calls this pandemic “a class, gendered, and racialized pandemic” (Harvey 2020). Following our analysis, we could also add the “generational” label. In this context, how can we remedy the increasing precariousness of the lives of the majority of young people? How do we keep the policies implemented as a response to the pandemic from accelerating the processes of production and reproduction of multidimensional social inequalities? Thus arise dilemmas and crossroads whose resolution will depend on social and political disputes, many of which the youth are already grappling with. On that point, Judith Butler argues that this pandemic demonstrates the speed with which radical inequality and capitalistic exploitation find ways to reproduce and consolidate themselves. Butler also points out that the intensification of inequalities will become manifest in the disputes over vaccines and medications to fight the virus. In an unequal world dominated by competition, commodification, racism, xenophobia, segregation, and stigmatization, the distribution of vaccines and medications will follow these prevailing logics. Barrios populares could thus lose access to their right to health and life. The closure of borders, segregation, and reinforced control of circulation would result in the exacerbation of what Foucault and Deleuze have discussed as the dynamics of the societies of biopolitical control and domination: the politics of making live and letting die.

 ducational Inequalities from a Generational Perspective, E Before and During the Pandemic The last dimension tackled in this article is that of educational inequalities, which have deepened and expanded with the virtualization of learning at all levels. One aspect of these inequalities may be derived from the generational factor, given that students’ circumstances vary, and therefore not all of them are equally able to carry out their schoolwork in the home. Inequality pervades housing conditions, parents’ ability to support students through their schoolwork, technological resources, connectivity, access to devices and other materials and shipments from schools. In this way, educational inequalities reinforce generational inequalities and illuminate the coexistence of several simultaneous generational experiences shaped by class, territory, and gender, among other variables.

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Furthermore, not all schools and universities share the same technological resources or access to digital platforms with adequate support; this reinforces inequalities already manifest in their students, their staff, and their environment, such as the divide between State-run and private schools. In recent research, Pedro Núñez delved into the experiences and trends of educational inequalities, highlighted and heightened by the era of remote learning. This author emphasizes that the lower number of actual lessons per school term impacts students differently depending on a host of dimensions such as the institution where they study, their social environment and their cultural and economic circumstances. Relatedly, he criticizes the social and governmental emphasis on ensuring that students don’t “miss lessons” or “compensating” for lost time in ways which sometimes lack forethought, contextualization, and significance (Nuñez 2020). Some data points to educational inequalities brought on by remote learning. For instance, according to a study by the IADB, only four out of ten homes in Latin America has a broadband connection and 72% of young people and children (aged 5–17) lack a computer or smartphone with which to access digital modes of instruction. Similarly, the Argentine Observatory of Social Debt (ODSA, April 2020) found that almost half of the country’s children and teenagers lack computers and access to broadband to use for their schoolwork: to be precise, 48.7% of them don’t own PCs and 47.1% have no WiFi in their homes. For the poorest communities, this ratio rises to seven out of ten youths. Further, two out of ten young people live in overcrowded conditions and a similar ratio sleep in a shared bed or mattress, which makes it extremely difficult to designate an appropriate space for schoolwork or telecommuting. According to the same source, 80% of these young people have access to a smartphone, but in 60% of the cases, this phone belongs to an adult, who needs it as well and therefore can only lend it for a limited amount of time. Moreover, the majority of homework is meant to be completed digitally, and in some barrios populares, owning a computer is the exception, rather than the rule. To continue reviewing data from Argentina, among recipients of the Universal Child Allowance (Sp. acronym AUH) the technological gap is even more critical: 28% have no Internet and 53% studies without a computer (UNICEF 2020). Educational inequalities also affect teachers, who are expected to meet growing demands and supply new resources, an expenditure which is rarely acknowledged or compensated.

 istening to Youth Voices as a Way of Counteracting L Generational Inequalities Following our analysis here, the reality of youths in Argentina and Latin America is riddled with multidimensional and intersectional social inequalities which the pandemic has intensified and foregrounded.

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These inequalities are reinforced by adult-centric dynamics which organize intergenerational relationships in contemporary societies. Adultcentrism was defined by Claudio Duarte Quapper as a system of domination which enables the control and subordination of young people at the hands of older generations (Duarte Quapper 2002). One example of this is the fact that the youths are discussed and conceptualized by the adult world, while being mostly neglected and unacknowledged as active participants. During the pandemic, this took the form of a lack of attention, acknowledgment, consideration, and visibility given to young people’s voices in the public conversation, evidenced in at least two aspects. One, the fact that students (especially at secondary-school level and in higher education) were rarely consulted when it came to making decisions about education vis-a-vis virtual, on-site and hybrid dynamics. Two, the habit of blaming young people or making them feel responsible for spikes in infection rates in different countries and at different points in time. In this respect, a report by UNICEF (2021) found that young people “express anger and uneasiness at being held responsible for the neglect of precautions and the spread of infection,” and they also “feel unheard, as if they had no say, and they demand more participation and a more active role in the safety protocols for schools” (UNICEF 2021: 22). The same report argues that “stigmatization, together with [young people’s] sense that they are not recognized as subjects, with the agency to transform their living conditions and their environment and contribute to their improvement, are two factors driving discredited identities which do not favor the construction of citizenship” (UNICEF 2021: 22). Relatedly, we believe that during the pandemic, young people did what they could to cope with the virtualization of education; most of them endured the deterioration of their living and working conditions; and many of those who live in barrios populares were criminalized and persecuted by law enforcement. Many other youths also played a major role in communal and grassroots strategies of care and protection. However, these diverse, unequal realities become invisible when we focus exclusively on young people from urban, middle-class, or upper-middle-class backgrounds who flocked to beaches, rivers, and holiday destinations or gathered for unauthorized parties. In the face of these adult-centric social dynamics plagued by disregard and neglect of young people’s voices, the alternative might involve appealing to young people, listening to them, acknowledging them, sharing a dialog. Preventing and anticipating, rather than acting after the fact, when acts of negligence might have already occurred. This dialogic, argumentative dimension is crucial, because evidence shows that merely appealing to one’s sense of responsibility to other people and especially to the elderly, based on an adult-centric rhetoric, does not achieve the desired effect on young people. The role of affection, interpersonal bonds, sociability, and connection has received little attention during public debates about youths in the time of the pandemic. This dimension has been underestimated since the very first few months of lockdown. In this respect, the pandemic has revealed its ambivalence: while it bolstered relationships and communication through digital channels (mainly frequented

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by young people), this expansion of the digital world simultaneously underscored the necessity of in-person contact. When it comes to young people’s emotions and sociability, the virtual world is not enough. The physicality and closeness of meeting in person is still fundamental, potent, and highly valued by young people. Once more, the generational perspective is missing when it comes to examining how we can enable spaces of in-person contact between youths, be it at school, in leisure environments or in public spaces. Prohibitions, punitive measures, and restrictions (necessary to mitigate the effects of the pandemic) prevail, with no thought given to complementary alternatives. If some things are forbidden, what is allowed? What is possible and offered as an option, as something that can be done? Assuming that prevention is fundamental at this time and perhaps in the years to come, it seems that social responsibility and solidarity, together with comprehensive, situated, territorialized, unique, and effective public policies (not only State policies), present a possible path for a change of logic and the development of alternatives. We are referring to a new kind of public policy to counteract the social devices of production and reproduction of multidimensional social inequalities, and to advance toward producing diverse equality, which recognizes, and is shaped by, difference. Equality-oriented policies centered on listening, acknowledging, and making visible the diversity and varying lifestyles of young people (especially those who live in barrios populares) to counteract stigmas and segregation. Without a doubt, young people also resist, dispute meanings, deploy alternative practices every day, and reaffirm their ways of being and producing themselves daily. As indicated by a recent report developed by the Politics and Youths Study Group at the Gino Germani Research Institute of the University of Buenos Aires (GEPoJu 2021), it is time to implement more effective, comprehensive, interdisciplinary, situated, and unique promotion and prevention public policies which incorporate young people’s perspectives, and whose message focuses on the preventive measures needed and the alternatives to restrictions, rather than on guilt and punishment. It is only with young people, and on the basis of their contributions—rather than in spite of them—that we will be able to address the current pandemic more effectively and to plan for a better world in its aftermath. To close this chapter, we propose to address some issues related to the processes of formulation, implementation, and evaluation of youth-oriented public policies, read from a generational perspective aimed at counteracting inequalities. Firstly, these public policies must be developed with a generational perspective. To achieve this, we must transcend adult-centric political concepts, denaturalizing the notion that youth-oriented public policy should always be formulated by adults, and think of young people as protagonists, not only as subjects of human rights, but also as producers and agents of their own policies. Secondly, it is necessary to overcome the State-centric paradigm and shift to an acknowledgment of the expansion of the concept of “public,” incorporating the public-communal, the public-social, the non-State-run public (Virno 2005). These perspectives would allow us to harness young people’s potential, already manifest in the territory, and would counteract the fragmentation and juxtaposition typically found in current policies.

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Thirdly, generational issues must be examined through a far-ranging lens, whereby young people are seen as participants not only in youth-oriented public policies, but in the entirety of legislation; moreover, all public policies must be comprehensive and multidimensional, and conceive of young people as active subjects, capable of fostering, producing, and leading policies. Lastly, we would like to see youth-oriented public policies which seek to rectify inequalities in one of the most unequal—and diverse—groups within the most unequal subcontinent: It is imperative to generate equality while acknowledging difference. To build common ground as a way of being together, embodying new logics, without denying differences or trying to suppress them. This means seeing diversity as potential, rather than as a lack or fragmentation. It seems that equality—interlinked with the acknowledgment of diversity—can indeed be at the center of the public conversation. Let us imagine it as the starting point for the times to come.

References Argentine Observatory of Social Debt (ODSA). 2020. La pobreza más allá de los ingresos. Nuevo informe sobre pobreza Multidimensional 2010–2019. Introducción de datos fundados en un Enfoque de derechos. Buenos Aires: Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina. Retrieved from http://wadmin.uca.edu.ar/public/ckeditor/Observatorio%20Deuda%20 Social/Documentos/2020/2020-OBSERVATORIO-DOCUMENTO-TRABAJO-NUEVO-­­ INFORME-PM-ENFOQUE-DERECHOS.pdf. Benza, G., and G. Kessler. 2021. La ¿nueva? Estructura social de América Latina. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI. Bourdieu, P. 1990. La “juventud” no es más que una palabra. In Sociología y cultura. Mexico: Grijalbo. ———. 2007. Espíritus de Estado. Génesis y estructura del campo burocrático. In Razones prácticas. Sobre la teoría de la acción. Barcelona, Anagrama. CEPAL. 2012. Balance preliminar de la economía en América Latina y el Caribe 2012. Santiago de Chile: CEPAL. ———. 2013. Panorama Social de América Latina. Santiago de Chile: CEPAL. ———. 2014. Panorama Social de América Latina. Santiago de Chile: CEPAL. ———. 2015. Jóvenes que no estudian ni están empleados en América Latina y el Caribe. Santiago de Chile: CEPAL.  Retrieved from http://www.cepal.org/es/infografias/ jovenes-­que-­no-­estudian-­ni-­estan-­empleados-­en-­america-­latina-­y-­el-­caribe. ———. 2016. Panorama Social de América Latina. Santiago de Chile: CEPAL. Chaves, M., S. Fuentes, and L. Vecino. 2016. Experiencias juveniles de la desigualdad. Fronteras y merecimientos en sectores populares, medios altos y altos. Buenos Aires: Grupo Editor Universitario. Crenshaw, K. 2000. Gender-related aspects of race discrimination. In United Nations expert meeting: Gender and racial discrimination. Zagreb, Croatia. Davis, A. 1981. Women, race and class. New York: Vintage. De Sousa Santos, B. 2010. Descolonizar el saber, reinventar el poder. Montevideo: Trilce. Duarte Quapper, C. 2002. Mundos jóvenes, mundos adultos: lo generacional y la reconstrucción de los puentes rotos en el liceo. Una mirada desde la convivencia escolar. Última década 16: 99–118. Viña del Mar: CIPDA.

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———. 2021. Salud mental en tiempos de coronavirus. Universidad de Buenos Aires  – Facultad de Psicología. 2020. Salud Mental en Cuarentena. Relevamiento del impacto psicológico a los 7-11 y 50-55 días de cuarentena en población argentina. Universidad de General Sarmiento (UNGS). 2020. El Conurbano en cuarentena I y II. Valenzuela Arce, J.M., ed. 2015. El sistema es antinosotros. Culturas, movimientos y resistencias juveniles. Mexico: UNAM/COLEF/GEDISA. Vázquez, M. 2013. En torno a la construcción de la juventud como causa pública durante el kirchnerismo: principios de adhesión, participación y reconocimiento. Revista Argentina de Estudios de Juventud 1 (7): 1–25. Virno, P. 2005. Ocurrencia y acción innovadora. Por una lógica del cambio. Buenos Aires: Ed. Tinta Limón. Vommaro, P. 2014a. Juventudes, formas de participación política y generaciones: acercamientos teóricos y debates actuales. In En busca de las condiciones juveniles latinoamericanas, ed. S. Victoria Alvarado and P. Vommaro. Tijuana (Mexico) and Manizales (Colombia): COLEF-­ CINDE Manizales-CLACSO. ———. 2014b. La disputa por lo público en América Latina. Las juventudes en las protestas y en la construcción de lo común. Revista Nueva Sociedad 251: 55–69. ———. 2015. Juventudes y políticas en la Argentina y en América Latina. Tendencias, conflictos y desafíos. Buenos Aires: Grupo Editor Universitario. ———. 2017a. Territorios y resistencias: configuraciones generacionales y procesos de politización en Argentina con perspectiva latinoamericana. Iztapalapa. Revista de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades: 101–133. ———. 2017b. Hacia los enfoques generacionales e intergeneracionales: tensiones y perspectivas en las políticas públicas de juventud en América Latina. Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios de Familia 8: 121–137. ———. 2017c. Juventudes latinoamericanas: diversidades y desigualdades. Temas 87–88: 4–11. ———. 2017d. Juventud y desigualdades en América Latina y el Caribe. Buenos Aires: CLACSO. ———. 2017e. Juventudes latinoamericanas: vidas desplegadas entre las diversidades y las desigualdades. Revista Argentina De Estudios De Juventud: 11. Retrieved from https://perio. unlp.edu.ar/ojs/index.php/revistadejuventud/article/view/4505. ———. 2019. Desigualdades, derechos y participación juvenil en América Latina: acercamientos desde los procesos generacionales. Direito e Praxis magazine 10 (2): 1192–1213. ———. 2020a. Juventudes, barrios populares y desigualdades en tiempos de pandemia. In Múltiples miradas para renovar una agenda urbana en crisis, ed. M. Dammert, L. Bonilla, and P. Vommaro. CLACSO: Buenos Aires. ———. 2020b. Las dimensiones sociales, políticas y económicas de la pandemia. Observatorio Pensar la pandemia. Buenos Aires: CLACSO.  Retrieved from https://www.clacso.org/ las-­dimensiones-­sociales-­politicas-­y-­economicas-­de-­la-­pandemia/.

Chapter 13

Comparative Analysis of Social Inequalities in the Latin American Labour Market Pedro López-Roldán

and Sandra Fachelli

Presentation In this chapter we propose a comparative typological analysis of the labour markets of Latin America and the Caribbean, focusing on the cases of Argentina and Chile, with the aim of applying an analysis model from the perspective of labour market segmentation and structural heterogeneity to explain the processes of social inequality occurring in the labour sphere. One of the main concerns of social research is to account for the inequalities that persist and recur over time. Although a longer-term view might reveal certain tendencies towards social improvement in the populations of different countries, disparities and social injustice continue to be pending issues in our societies, particularly in Latin America, given its unequal and heterogeneous capitalist development model, as well as the many internal differences. In the framework of labour markets, such dynamics can be observed in a context of globalisation and technological and organisational changes that lead to flexibilisation strategies and precarious labour conditions, generating low quality employment, labour poverty and unemployment for large sectors of the population, all of which falls far short of the Decent Work standards established by the International Labour Organisation and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Significant socio-economic inequalities (in terms of conditions and results) are thus reproduced, leaving little room for

P. López-Roldán (*) Sociological Research Centre on Everyday Life and Work, Institute for Labour Studies, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Bellaterra (Barcelona), Spain e-mail: [email protected] S. Fachelli Department of Sociology, Pablo de Olavide University, Seville, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Vommaro, P. Baisotti (eds.), Persistence and Emergencies of Inequalities in Latin America, Latin American Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90495-1_13

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compensation and reduction of these inequalities through socio-political action and the creation of opportunities for all individuals, households and social groups. The full crudeness of this is especially apparent in times of crisis such as the current Covid pandemic. The trade-off between economic efficiency and social justice remains unsolved. The analyses presented in this text seek to explore these dynamics in order to provide new elements of diagnosis from a comparative perspective. We therefore set out two objectives. This first is to perform a comparative analysis of the main characteristics of the labour markets of a group of 28 Latin American and Caribbean countries. To this end, we use a set of indicators on the functioning and structure of the labour market in these countries to identify the main differences and similarities in order to subsequently produce a typology of the general structure of labour markets. Second, we propose a model to comparatively analyse the processes of labour inequality from the theoretical perspective of labour market segmentation and structural heterogeneity, analysing the cases of Argentina and Chile. Following these theoretical approaches, an analysis model is constructed and a general hypothesis is formulated that, despite the existing differences in terms of economic structures, social models and degrees of development, with specific institutional frameworks and socio-historical processes, common dynamics can be observed in the structures of capitalist labour markets. From the confluence of demand and supply factors, similar typification of employment segmentation form a fundamental division between a primary segment of quality employment and a secondary segment of precarious labour. This division is in line with what has been theorised from the perspective of structural heterogeneity by differentiating between two large sectors of the economy, one with low productivity and informality and another with high productivity. Using equivalent databases on the labour force in each country and harmonising the information for comparative analysis, we will construct a typology of employment segmentation in each country that will show the similarities in the structuration of the labour market and its expression in terms of employment and social inequality.

 omparative Analysis of Latin American and Caribbean C Labour Markets The labour markets of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) are the result of socio-economic processes that generate labour inequalities with particular characteristics that can be used to establish specific features of the structuration of a social space in which to situate the countries of the region. Factors regarding productive structure, level of development, historical processes and the institutionalisation of labour relations explain these differentiated positions. We shall begin with an account of this differentiation in order to show the socio-economic distances between them in terms of the characteristics of their labour markets and, at the same

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time, to show the groups of countries with similar profiles, thus configuring a general descriptive typology. To compare countries, we will use a set of indicators based on the proposal developed by the International Labour Office, choosing 20 variables from the 17 Key Indicators of the Labour Market -KILM- (ILO 2016) that appear in Table 13.1, which provides a set of attributes that offer a general and basic overview of the reality of the labour market in 28 countries in the region.1 A recurrent problem with international statistics is the absence of information and/or indicators on certain countries, which makes detailed comparisons difficult, especially with poorer and/or smaller countries. This is also the case here, so, based on the available data, we also had to make a selection that we will report on below. As far as possible, we have sought to maximise the information available to us, although we had to reduce it for two reasons: lack of information and relevance of the indicator. In the first case, the lack of data meant that some indicators (such as those relating to labour relations or dependency) were not considered. For the second reason, some of the indicators (such as labour costs and unemployment rate) did not generate significant differences between countries and are not correlated Table 13.1  Key indicators of the labour market (KILM) No. 1a 2a 3a 4a 5a 6a 7 8a 9 10 11 12 13a 14 15a 16a 17a 18 19 20

KILM Indicator Employment-to-population ratio Status in employment: employees Employment by sector: agriculture Employment by sector: services Employment by occupation: managers, professionals and technicians Employment by education: advanced level Hours of work Informal employment Unemployment rate Labour underutilisation Youth not in employment, education or training (NEET rate) Time-related underemployment Monthly earnings Labour costs Labour productivity Employment by economic class: extremely poor Higher economic class Labour dependency ratio Industrial relations: trade union density rate Collective bargaining coverage rate

Source: International Labour Office (2016) a KILM variables considered in the final analysis which characterise 28 LAC countries  The complete data matrix is attached in the appendix.

1

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Fig. 13.1  Social space of the Latin American and Caribbean labour market. Source: Own elaboration with KILM variables (ILO 2016)

with the other indicators. Therefore, in our comparative analysis we considered 11 indicators for the 28 countries, as highlighted in Table 13.1. These datasets, albeit to a much lesser extent, still contain some missing values for some countries. To validate the consistency of the results, the analyses presented below were replicated by eliminating the countries with missing information in order to check the stability of the content of the results achieved and thereby ultimately consider all 28 countries and impute the missing data with the value of the mean. In order to synthesise and structure the set of information on the 11 variables for the 28 LAC countries, we performed a principal component factor analysis with the aim of obtaining the most important patterns of differentiation between countries, together with a cluster analysis to group the countries that are most similar in a general classification of labour market typification. Figure 13.1 shows the results obtained from the two main factorial axes that accumulate 68% of the information or explained variance. Factor 1 accumulates the largest share (56%) and reveals a latent dimension associated with a higher or lower quality labour market, partly linked to the level of development and wealth of the countries. This main dimension contrasts, in the polarity on the left, high levels of extreme poverty, the prevalence of occupation in the agricultural sector and high rates of informal employment, against the polarity on the right, which is characterised by low levels of these variables, as well as the importance of the service sector, a higher proportion of high income, high productivity, high occupational levels and high salaries. Factor 2 is less important, with 12% of the explained variance, and expresses a secondary dimension associated with education and employability. It fundamentally

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contrasts the countries that have higher or lower levels of higher education and is thus a relatively independent feature of the first quality factor, which is why we find countries with a high percentage of higher education (upper space in the graph), but that vary in terms of higher or lower quality labour markets. Higher education is associated with a higher proportion of employed persons in a country’s population and thus generates economies that create employment, and, in particular, lower proportions of informal employment. The bottom part of the graph shows how informal work is more strongly associated with countries with lower educational levels and less development (in some Central American countries). However, in other cases, lower levels of education correspond to higher development and salary rates (in some Caribbean and Central American countries). Thus, a social space is drawn (Bourdieu 1979; Blasius et al. 2019) that structures and typifies the social reality of the labour market in Latin American and Caribbean countries. The different countries are located in this space, and the distance between them reflects the similarity or dissimilarity of their profiles. As shown in Fig. 13.1, and taking into account the centrality of the first factor obtained, we can establish a clear distinction between three groups of countries according to their position on the axis, and which are identified in red, green and blue. On the extreme left are the countries with the lowest quality labour markets and levels of development, with characteristically low income, high informality and a large proportion of agricultural work. This group includes Central American (El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras) and Andean countries (Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador), together with the extreme case of Haiti. In contrast, on the extreme right are the countries with the best labour market indicators, which tend to have high income, productivity, occupational levels and employment in the service sector. This group includes countries that are distributed throughout the entire continent: The Southern Cone (Argentina, Uruguay and Chile), the Caribbean (Cuba, Barbados, Costa Rica, Trinidad and Tobago and Bahamas), along with Brazil, Panama and Suriname, with Puerto Rico being an exceptionally extreme case. The intermediate countries between those with low and high relative labour quality are also diverse: from the north of South America (Colombia, Venezuela and Guyana), Central America (Mexico and Belize), the Caribbean (Dominican Republic and Jamaica) and Paraguay. These three groups of countries also present an internal diversity that is particularly expressed by the second dimension of education and employability. Especially noteworthy is the division between low and medium quality employment groups: in the former case, the Andean countries are separated from the Central American ones, and in the latter, Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Guyana are separated from the rest. There is therefore diversity in the general structuration of the main features of the labour market in Latin America and the Caribbean, giving rise to three particular types according to the confluence of higher or lower levels of quality. This typification proposal could be validated in the light of new analyses and better information in the future, but it does offer a synthetic overview of labour markets to facilitate comparison and determine the relative position of the different countries, while at

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the same time offering a global scheme for the structuration of labour markets that can be used to guide adequate socio-political improvement actions. This will also require examination of the specific reality of each country, contemplating historical and institutional elements, productive changes and longitudinal visions of changing trends over time in light of each particular context and its interrelation with the dynamics of globalisation that also affect the reality of work and employment. One way to account for such advances is to choose representative countries of each of these general types to serve as models or case studies from which to derive conclusions that can serve as a reference and contrast for similar labour realities elsewhere. This presents the possibility of developing common theoretical explanations involving the development of comparative analysis methodologies (López-Roldán and Fachelli 2021). In what follows, we perform a detailed comparative study of Argentina and Chile based on the analyses carried out within the framework of the INCASI project (López-Roldán et al. 2020, 2021). As we have just seen, these two countries share the same general profile of higher labour quality, although the reality is profoundly unequal within each. This is shown, in particular, by the theoretical perspectives of structural heterogeneity and labour market segmentation. Based on these theoretical approaches, we formulate a comparative analysis of these two cases in order to test the extent to which similar labour markets are structured. In the future, it will be of interest to extend this type of comparative study to other labour realities in the region in order to build a general explanatory framework.

Labour Market Segmentation in Argentina and Chile This analysis serves a dual purpose. The first is to investigate labour market segmentation, as a peculiar characteristic of contemporary economies. We follow the well-known hypothesis in the socio-economic literature, and in contrast to neo-­ classical economics, that there is no single labour market based on pure exchange between supply and demand. On the contrary, we can identify a range of segments in which employment positions are differentiated hierarchically, in correspondence with their individual characteristics and professional profiles. In order to structure and measure different types of labour market segmentations, multivariate techniques (combining multiple correspondence and cluster analysis) were adopted and applied to multidimensional socio-economic indicators. The second objective is to verify, from a comparative perspective, the extent to which the dynamics of labour market segmentation and the social aspects of inequality are similar or dissimilar in different national contexts. The comparative analysis is between Argentina and Chile, two Southern Cone countries with relatively high levels of labour quality, albeit with different social models, as commented below. The interest of this contribution lies precisely in shedding both theoretical and methodological light on the structure of occupational inequalities. We are able to use transnational comparative analysis to demonstrate that there are strong and

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unexpected similarities between the contexts considered, both in the trends and configuration of occupational segmentation. This means that despite the presence of somewhat different levels of socio-economic development, conformations and weights of activity sectors and models of labour regulation, the intrinsic logic that is so functional for the needs of global capitalism means that inequalities are similarly structured in both countries.

Theoretical Perspective To explain how the labour market works and the persistent labour inequalities that arise from it, we take the theoretical perspective of segmentation and structural heterogeneity. From the point of view of segmentation theory, it is argued that the adjustment between supply and demand – as a result of competitive allocation based on wage productivity, technological changes and trends in economic growth—is an insufficient explanatory mechanism to account for differences in wages and career paths, and the unequal positions that are generated in terms of labour conditions and job quality. From this perspective, we stress the need to consider the institutional aspects that affect the labour market: the strategies of the parties involved taking into account the system of labour relations, with its regulatory framework and collective bargaining, different social and welfare policies, the social characteristics of the workforce, the sexual division of labour, as well as contextual elements of national production structures, of the global economy and of economic cycles, in a capitalist system dominated by neoliberal policies. These different elements affect the configuration of common general dynamics regarding the division of work and employment in terms of segmentation, beyond specific local or national configurations. Following Grimshaw et al. (2017), we propose the adoption of a multidimensional perspective involving factors that explain how the labour market works and how labour inequalities are generated. This proposal combines three theoretical traditions to account for inequalities in work and employment: labour market segmentation, comparative institutionalism and the feminist socioeconomic approach. Based on the foregoing, we propose a specific analysis model that is adapted to the study of employment as illustrated schematically in Fig. 13.2. First, from the perspective of segmentation, and in contrast with the traditional postulates of neoclassical economics, the demand side must be viewed as fundamental. At the centre of the analysis are the business strategies for the organisation of production and labour (especially flexibilisation, outsourcing and subcontracting) that, seeking to maximise profits by minimising costs and controlling the workforce, generate unequal labour conditions and opportunities for the salaried working population, and consequently for their career paths. However, inequalities are also reproduced and arise in interaction with the supply side. Certain social characteristics of workers hired both formally and informally, such as class, gender, age, immigrant origin and race, are unevenly distributed and overlapped according to the

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Fig. 13.2  Labour market segmentation. Analysis model. Source: López-Roldán and Fachelli (2019), López-Roldán et al. (2020, 2021)

configuration of segmented jobs, thus benefitting the ultimate goals of employers. Inequalities are thus constructed, creating a hierarchy of greater or lesser quality employment segments and career paths, filled by people from different social profiles. The segmentation literature has identified this as the duality of the labour market, differentiating between a primary and a secondary segment. This idea has been raised, in general terms, in numerous contributions since the 1970s, including among many others Doeringer and Piore (1985), Rubery (1978), Gordon et  al. (1982), Wilkinson (1981), Craig et al. (1982), Recio (1991), Grimshaw and Rubery (2005), Rubery (2005, 2007), Gibert (2011) and López-Roldán and Fachelli (2019). Secondly, from comparative institutionalist theory, the societal effect derived from the role of institutions and the power relations between stakeholders is considered a fundamental issue for explaining the configuration and workings of the labour market. In this regard, we may speak of varieties of capitalism or social models. In particular, the regulatory regime of each state establishes a specific framework for modulating the labour market and its effects in terms of labour inequalities. Studies along such lines include those by Esping-Andersen (2000), Hall and Soskice (2001), Menz (2008), Vaughan-Whitehead (2015), Burroni (2016), Del Pino and Rubio (2016), Doellgast et al. (2018), and Martín-Artiles et al. (2021). Thirdly, the tradition of feminist socioeconomics has focused the study of segmentation processes in terms of gender inequality, broadening the perspective and breaking away from androcentric views focused on the productive sphere. From this perspective, a broad vision of the concept of work – taking into account the interaction between productive and reproductive spheres and revealing the segregation and discrimination of women in the labour market  – serves to explain the different career paths of men and women (Bettio and Verashchagina 2009; Bettio and Plantenga 2004; Simonazzi 2009; Borrás et al. 2012; Torns et al. 2013; Carrasquer and Amaral 2019; Rubery 2014). These three core areas of segmentation theory can also be framed in an analysis of patterns and trends in the global economy, as well as in the specific context of a

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territory’s productive structure and level of economic development. It is particularly in this regard that we also contemplate the perspective of structural heterogeneity (Prebisch 1949; Pinto 1970; PREALC 1978; CEPAL 2012). This approach takes the perspective of historical structuralism to understand the economic and social workings of Latin American countries. According to this theory, in capitalist economies subject to an unequal, combined and dependent development model, we can distinguish two types of sector. Modern, high productivity sectors that are integrated into world markets, with similar labour organisations and relations to those of the most developed countries, coexist together with very low productivity sectors that are mainly focused on the domestic market, linked to social subsistence needs and informal economic units or activities. The existence of an absolute surplus of labour and labour segmentation would be a consequence of these productive constraints whose corollary would be the segmentation of jobs into the typical subsistence activities of the secondary segment and similarly typical formal jobs in the private and public sectors of the primary segment, and hence inequalities in living conditions that are persistent over time (Salvia 2012). Salvia (2021), analysing 19 countries of Latin America, considers different ways in which the economic growth model (primary income distribution) and social policies (secondary income distribution) are associated with inequality in the distribution of household income. The author assesses how the different paths can be explained by more structural factors affecting each region-country, namely the productivity of the capital-labour ratio (in terms of structural heterogeneity, institutional regulation models and ways in which these factors segment the demand for labour), and the role of social expenditure in the gross domestic product (as an expression of the level of coverage and redistribution of the income provided by social policies). On a macro-level, he presents three patterns of Latin American countries as opposed to European ones: low GDP per capita and high rate of poor population associated with a high Gini index, and low GDP per capita associated with a high rate of poor population. At the meso-level, the author also presents three patterns for Latin American countries: low average productivity per worker and low social spending associated with a high Gini index, and low social spending and low average productivity per worker. The conclusion is that the behaviour of inequality in Latin American countries is more related with the roles of labour productivity and social expenditure, than the relationship between social expenditure and Gini. Compared to European countries, Latin American countries appear at the lower extreme of the “Development and Equity” axis and nearer the top of the “Redistribution-inequality” axis, thus revealing an increase in inequality, lower redistributive efficiency and reduction of productivity. Martín-Artiles et al. (2021) sustain that the concept of structural heterogeneity is more complex and is not only defined by the segmentation of the labour market, but also by the coexistence of vestiges of pre-capitalist economies of an informal and non-mercantile nature in sectors whose productivity is lower than others, which in turn generates greater social inequality.

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In that sense, and following these authors, we can contextualise Latin American countries as belonging to a social model in which labour relations and the welfare state are were interrelated regulatory institutions that correct social inequalities from the pre-distributive or post-distributive point of view. In general terms, we can class Latin America as an “Uncoordinated Informal economy” that is characterised by: a low level of social expenditure; a very low number of workers with unemployment benefits; very high inequality rates in the pre-distributive and post-distributive Gini indexes; and a very high rate of informal employment that hinders coordination between pre and post-distributive policies.

The Contexts of Labour Markets According to the analysis by Martín-Artiles et al. (2021), not only do Latin American countries all share the phenomenon of Structural Heterogeneity, but we can also distinguish two different social models. Three countries, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, have an “Uncoordinated Informal Economy”, while Chile is a peculiar case that belongs to the Liberal Cluster, called “Uncoordinated Economies”, sharing characteristics with the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic and Bulgaria. In Argentina, four aspects can be underlined: a low level of social expenditure; a very low number of workers with unemployment benefits; very high inequality rates in the pre-distributive and post-distributive Gini indexes; and a very high rate of informal employment that hinders coordination between pre- and post-distributive policies. Informal employment makes it difficult to govern wages through collective bargaining, so structural heterogeneity leads to inequality in Latin American countries in a similar way to that of liberal countries, despite the fact that they have intermediate systems between coordinating wages at the sector level and collective bargaining. In fact, Argentina has certain sector-type neo-corporatist elements (Marticorena 2014), with a system of collective bargaining at the sector level combined with a large amount of informal employment and very low coverage of unemployment. Then there are major labour inequalities between the formal and informal sectors. This model has led to the construction of fragmented, stratified protection systems (OIT 2018) that can be classified as an uncoordinated economy. Martínez Fronzoni and Sánchez-Ancochea (2018) define the trend among Latin American regimes as a struggle between universalisation and segmentation: universalisation due to the increase in welfare policies and segmentation because of the formal/ informal (and therefore protected and unprotected) dualisation of the labour market. Chile has gone from a state protection model to the radically liberal capitalisation regime that was instated in 1980, with liberal labour relations, a decentralised collective bargaining system at the company level and low coverage of collective bargaining with low social expenditure that influences inequality in the labour and post-distributive Gini indexes. Its unemployment protection rate is also low, and informal employment is more moderate in volume. It is a liberal country that

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usually has micro-economic type policies and weak unions with little political influence for pre- and post-distributive coordination (Martín-Artiles and Semenza 2021). Both the decentralisation of collective bargaining at the company level (typical of uncoordinated economies), and informal employment (widespread in Latin America) generate strong dualised segmentation of labour relations, with a clear difference between protected (insider) and unprotected (outsider) workers. In this sense, Latin American countries have very similar results to liberal ones due to the large amount of informal employment and weak social protection institutions.

Analysis Model and Methodology In our comparative analysis of Argentina and Chile from the perspective of labour market segmentation and structural heterogeneity, we establish the general hypothesis that there is no single market that adjusts supply and demand, but that different and hierarchized segments are configured, which depending on job quality are placed in two main groups, namely the primary segment and the secondary segment, where people are positioned unequally according to job conditions and social characteristics such as gender, age, nationality (immigrant origin) and education, as a result of the interaction between factors of supply and demand and a regulatory social model. We also expect to find a similar structuring of labour markets in both countries in terms of employment and the generation of labour inequalities resulting from structural and institutional processes that act as specific mechanisms in each social model, but which lead to similar general results in terms of the structure of inequalities in the labour market. To test our hypothesis, we designed an analysis with a quantitative methodology that we present below. First of all, this is a static comparative study of the two countries with data for the years 2014 (Chile) and 2016 (Argentina) for the entire wage-­ earning population (72% of the employed population in Argentina, 74% in Chile). Labour survey data is used to examine the labour market from an employment perspective2 and to obtain a macro-social snapshot of an aggregate structuring of the segmentation of employment. This measure is expressed in terms of the results or effects of segmentation processes. Other factors are involved, such as institutional aspects, activity sector patterns, the framework of labour relations, the link with the reproductive sphere and other meso-social matters, as we explained in the theoretical perspective, but these are not explicitly measured here. Those elements of our model are captured partially or indirectly. Our model of labour segmentation and its operationalisation are conditioned by the information available in the sources and by the need for comparable data 2  We refer to contract conditions and the quality thereof, and we do not specifically capture the characteristics of labour from the demand side contextualised the way production and labour are aorganised, with effective functions and qualifications that are observable in the micro-social realities of jobs.

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Table 13.2  Dimensions and indicators of the employment segmentation modela Dimension Labour market demand 1. Security

2. Qualification

3. Salary 4. Characterisation of the company

Labour market supply 5. Gender 6. Age 7. Immigration 8. Education

Indicators/variables Type of contract and duration: Open-ended, >6 months, 59 years Nationality: National, Foreign Educational level: Primary, Secondary, University

Source: Own elaboration a For some variables, the categorisation will differ slightly depending on the source of information in each country

between the two countries. Following the proposal formulated in López-Roldán (1996a) and López-Roldán and Fachelli (2019) indicators are distinguished from the points of view of both demand and supply, with a set of 8 dimensions that give rise to a total of 13 variables (Table 13.2). The dimensions that define the demand side are security, as a dimension of job stability and instability; qualification, which differentiates between formal occupational levels or professional categories; wages, as an indicator of job quality; and, finally, various characteristics of companies that contextualise the social and organisational frameworks in which jobs are offered: company size, sector and ownership. From the supply side, four dimensions of the workforce are considered: gender, age, immigration and education. For Argentina we use data from the fourth quarter of the Encuesta Permanente de Hogares (Permanent Survey of Households) published in 2016 by the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos (INDEC), with a sample of 17,798 members of the wage-earning population. The data from Chile come from the 2014 Encuesta Nacional de Empleo, with a sample of 34,664 individuals. From the methodological point of view, we pursue a dual objective. On the one hand, we seek to compare the factors that structure inequalities in the labour markets of Argentina and Chile and to determine the degree of similarity or dissimilarity of labour segmentation between the two countries. On the other, we seek to

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obtain a variable for the segmentation of the labour market in each country and thus compare the degree of similarity or dissimilarity between the labour segments that emerge from the analysis. Formally, the idea is to obtain a typology of employment segments defined in the form of 13 original variables and 74 associated categories. To this end, we apply a typology-building methodology that we call structural and articulated (López-Roldán 1996b), which principally involves sequentially combining two multivariable analysis techniques: multiple correspondence factor analysis, to analyse the relationship between the variables and synthesise them in a reduced set of factors of differentiation that define the structure the labour market, and classification analysis, to group individuals into a number of employment groups or segments that are most internally homogeneous or heterogeneous from each other. In this process, the main factors obtained, synthetic and measured on a quantitative scale, are then used as classification criteria in the cluster analysis that combines Ward’s method of ascending hierarchical clustering with an optimisation of the initial classification applying the mobile centres method (Lebart et al. 1997; López-­ Roldán and Fachelli 2015).

Results of the Comparative Analysis The results of the analysis show one main finding, namely the very similar structuration of the labour markets in the two considered countries. Figure 13.3 presents the correspondence analysis for Argentina and Chile. In all cases, with small variations, we find the same pattern of differentiation of positions in the labour market. The first factor explains 62–71% of the variance, while the second explains around 13–15%. The fact that the first factor accumulates the largest amount of variance reveals an important one-dimensional reality. On the basis of the positions of the variables in the Cartesian plan (labour market social space) the x-axis can be deemed to characterise the quality of occupation: The first factor is a dimension of employment quality. It expresses the opposition between bad and good jobs in terms of instability (on the left, temporary employment and part-time contracts), associated with low qualifications, low wages and smaller-size companies. On the other side, the profile is related to permanent contracts, seniority, higher qualifications and well-paid jobs, particularly in the public sector. This is a general segmentation factor that accumulates, in a single component, all the considered variables. The second factor mainly differentiates the industrial and construction sectors from the service sector, characterised by intermediate qualifications and medium wages, and full-time and permanent contracts. This factor distinguishes the intermediate positions from the extreme poles, and also the traditionally male-dominated sectors from the service sectors, where women are the majority. This is a dimension of occupational segregation, which contributes to a division between the Lower and Upper Primary sectors. Regarding social profiles (gender, age, immigration and education), we can associate young people, immigrant workers and the less educated with the social space

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Fig. 13.3  The social space of labour market segmentation. Source: Own elaboration with EPH 2016 for Argentina and ENE 2014 for Chile

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of the Secondary segment on the left. The right side is the space of the Primary sector that is associated with higher education, older people and being of national origin. Women are distributed across both the precarious and quality segments, while men are mainly associated with the Primary segment. The findings on typological segmentation, based on the cluster analysis, are shown in Fig. 13.4. Taking into account both factors and classifying employees we obtain three main clusters in both analyses, with similar general profiles. We identify these clusters as segments of the labour market labelled “Secondary”, “Lower primary” and “Upper primary” segments. These can be profiled by crossing the occupational characteristics with the clusters. The secondary segment, which is larger in Chile (both 29%) and smaller in Argentina (both 19%), is characterised by non-standard employment (part-time jobs, short and recent contracts), elementary occupations, being employed by households and lower education levels. The most frequent occupational categories in this segment are service and sales workers without supervision, and the most frequent economic sectors are accommodation and food services, administration and support, primary sector, other service activities, wholesale, retail and repair of vehicles. The companies are small, and incomes are low, while the proportion of immigrants, youth and women is higher. The lower primary segment is larger in both countries (46% in Argentina and 47% in Chile). This segment is characterised by permanent full-time jobs and seniority in such occupations as craft and related trade, plant and machine operators without supervision and short cycle labour. Employees in this segment generally have differing levels of education (from tertiary to secondary or less). The typical activity sectors are manufacturing, construction, transport and storage, wholesale, retail and repair of vehicles in medium-size enterprises with intermediate wages.

Fig. 13.4  Employment segmentation typology. Source: Own elaboration with EPH 2016 for Argentina and ENE 2014 for Chile

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The proportion of natives is high, the most frequent age range is from 30 to 44 years old, and men are more present than women. The upper primary segment is larger in Argentina (35%) and smaller in Chile (24%). Contracts in this segment are most frequently permanent full-time jobs and with greater seniority, typically concerning professionals and managers, technicians and associate professionals, with supervisory responsibilities and high education levels. The most common sectors of activity are education, public administration, information-financial sectors, health and social work, professional areas, and scientific and technical activities. Companies here are large, salaries are higher, and the workers are more likely to be native, older than 45 years, and without significant gender differences. Despite some differences, the profile of the clusters is very similar between both countries, and the different sizes of the three segments could suggest both different levels of inequalities in the salaried labour market and different social models. They could also suggest the presence of a more homogeneous labour market in the Argentinian case, with an important part of workers employed in higher quality jobs (better paid and protected). In Chile, on the contrary, the most advantaged segment is smaller.

Final Remarks With this type of research and analysis, we aim to show the extent to which the structuration of inequalities in the labour market in different countries follows similar patterns in terms of segmentation that generate similar classifications of employment segments. The theoretical perspective we adopted is to consider the segmentation of the labour market and structural heterogeneity in order to explain the structure of social inequalities. In our empirical analysis we considered a set of market (the characteristics of the demand-side and supply-side) and extra-market factors, such as the role of institutions, the social model and employment relations. Argentina, as a typical Latin American country, is characterised by a large informal and uncoordinated economy, with major public balance problems, a relevant role of trade unions and a weak industrial sector. Chile, in turn, has had a radical neo-liberal regime since 1980. Its uncoordinated economy features liberal labour relations, and a decentralised and poorly covered collective bargaining system at the company level that influences inequalities in the labour market. Empirical evidence has shown that, despite the specific institutional configuration of each country, a similar picture can be traced in terms of the segmented structure of the labour market. In other words, the hypothesis is confirmed that there is no single labour market, but instead at least three major segments defined by the quality of work and the distribution of material (wages) and symbolic (status) resources. Secondly, the analysis revealed substantial similarities between the

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countries, even in terms of proportions given the proper proportions. The results support the argument that Argentina and Chile share a fairly similar configuration in terms of two main aspects: the quality-precariousness ratio, and the service-industry/segregation dimension. These two factors explain around 80% of the variance in the most important variables describing the labour market (employees only). The cluster analysis of workers shows similar proportions. In particular, three segments have been identified: a “secondary segment”, representing underprivileged work; a “lower primary segment”, characterised by an intermediate quality of work; and an “upper primary segment”, connected to the most privileged work. The distribution of these groups is slightly different by countries. While Argentina and Chile present the same proportions for the “lower primary segment”, they differ in the other two segments, the “upper primary segment” in Argentina being 11 percentage points large than that of Chilean. Despite the limitations of this study, in particular the absence of self-employment in the analysis, the results reveal some robust similarities between the two countries. They also tend to confirm the second hypothesis, which supposes similar mechanisms of social stratification, associated with employment positions. The generation of inequalities in the labour market therefore seems to be influenced by institutions and the social model, even in different socio-­ economic contexts. One might ask whether these primary results for labour market segmentation in Argentina and Chile can also be observed in other Latin American countries. Future work will be required in order to answer this question, but our hypothesis is that they do, as we already found when comparing the Argentinean and Chilean cases with Spain and Italy (López-Roldán et al. 2020). It seems that part of the explanatory mechanisms of inequalities in labour segmentation are necessarily specific to the socio-economic context in which they occur, and others obey common global logics, and together they are generators of similar results in terms of the employment segmentation that can be observed in both Latin American and European countries. Further analysis is needed to better understand and more accurately validate employment segmentation. We would also like to extend our model and analysis by including all workers (e.g., self-employed and informal workers) and integrating productive and reproductive labour, as well as including other Latin American countries and introducing a long-term perspective and trajectory analysis. However, better data will be needed in order to do this. Acknowledgements  This chapter was produced in the context of the INCASI Network, a European project that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie GA, No. 691004, and coordinated by Dr. Pedro López-Roldán. This chapter only reflects the author’s views, and the Agency is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.

Brazil

Chile

Colombia

Costa Rica 55.2

6

7

8

9

68.6

55.2

60.7

59.1

18 Jamaica

19 Mexico

20 Nicaragua 63.7

13.8

60.7

47.8

58.7

39.4

50.5

15 Guyana

62.6

62.5

14 Guatemala 60.6

16 Haiti

50.9

60.0

66.4

58.3

12 Ecuador

13 El Salvador

17 Honduras

56.3

11 Dominican 60.3 Republic

75.8

49.1

71.5

67.8

37.6

90.7

63.6

57.9

55.9

65.7

66.2

83.4

85.6

74.7

Status in employment

52.4

10 Cuba

Bolivia

5

59.3

60.9

Barbados

Belize

65.7

54.8

3

Bahamas

4

Argentina

2

Country

1

Employment_ to_populaiton ratio

31.0

13.0

16.6

31.9

49.8

18.5

29.3

18.5

27.5

9.5

18.3

12.5

16.4

9.2

9.4

28.1

17.6

2.8

2.6

0.1

52.3

61.1

67.8

47.6

39.9

55.9

50.0

59.7

54.0

71.1

64.9

69.1

64.3

68.1

70.2

50.2

67.8

78.0

81.3

77.5

15.2

19.8

21.8

12.1

6.5

17.9

9.5

10.7

13.3

16.4

21.5

23.3

18.8

26.2

23.8

17.2

25.7

30.9

30.1

24.7

9.6

17.5

5.4

7.3

4.3

5.8

15.4

12.5

16.0

20.1

28.1

18.3

22.0

18.8

20.0

22.6

36

46

43

39

43

42

38

41

41

42

44

40

38

43

43

38

74.9

56.1

77.1

35.9

72.6

68.2

52.4

50.9

35.5

58.3

22.2

36.0

74.7

43.8

4.5

3.3

9.5

4.1

13.5

12.2

2.7

4.4

3.9

5.8

2.3

8.1

9.1

7.2

12.5

3.3

9.4

9.6

11.9

9.5

20.2

30.6

12.7

14.9

17.1

25.6

17.2

21.7

24.3

10.2

12.7

1.4

18.4

27.7

35.2

1.4

27.3

28.4

17.7

24.3

19.0

22.9

15.9

24.2

11.6

27.3

19.3

25.9

4.7

0.8

10.9

7.0

10.3

8.7

5.4

8.2

8.0

8.7

7.3

5.3

3.6

3.0

11.9

1176

681

1439

677

826

653

609

683

2071

1294

896

1036

1004

997

1201

6.8

13.6

1.1

EmployMan- AdvanInforTimement Employ- agers ced Hours mal UnemLabour Youth related Month- Labagricul- ment profes- educa- of employ- ployunderuti- NEET underem- ly our ture services sionals tion work ment ment rate lization rate ployment earnin-gs costs

12,109

40,163

17,762

10,770

4213

21,259

18,951

17,419

22,306

35,298

36,390

36,699

27,492

50,669

32,578

15,585

18,643

35,691

53,657

46,753

Labour productivity

5.3

1.3

0.3

12.8

19.8

1.8

3.5

0.7

3.9

0.9

0.0

0.3

1.9

0.3

0.8

5.3

3.4

0.1

0.0

0.1

Extremely poor

Appendix. KILM Variables that Characterise 28 Latin-­American and Caribbean Countries

51.7

68.0

82.9

56.8

29.0

79.8

68.2

77.1

80.7

84.7

93.6

95.3

81.5

95.6

89.6

81.5

73.4

94.7

95.8

96.4

Higher economic class

1.2

1.3

1.1

1.3

1.5

1.8

1.5

1.4

1.1

1.3

1.3

1.3

1.0

1.2

1.3

1.2

1.4

1.1

0.9

1.4

5.3

12.5

2.6

19.0

11.0

81.4

19.4

9.5

19.6

18.9

39.1

9.1

27.7

5.0

81.4

10.6

15.7

17.9

70.5

9.1

Collective Lab-our Trade bargaindepen- union ing dency density coverage ratio rate rate

72.0

63.5

59.2

27 Uruguay

28 Venezuela 57.0

7.2

8.7

3.2

7.0

1.4

27.5

20.0

14.3

71.7

71.6

69.5

68.3

81.6

56.9

59.9

67.1

26.7

22.4

30.6

32.4

33.0

25.4

18.0

24.9

29.4

15.1

22.0

30.4

14.9

16.6

38

43

39

41

38

26.7

59.8

50.6

40.4

8.4

8.0

2.8

7.6

11.4

28

4.7

3.9

20.4

14.8

13.3

Source: Key Indicators of the Labour Market (KILM), International Labour Office (2016)

76.6

86.0

83.0

47.7

36.5

24 Puerto Rico

45.1

58.9

75.0

23 Peru

56.2

65.2

25 Suriname

67.3

22 Paraguay

26 Trinidad and Tobago

63.8

21 Panama

19.6

18.0

52.1

17.7

18.1

17.2

9.4

5.0

5.5

5.1

833

1219

1673

839

1298

27,550

45,117

63,561

39,627

99,961

22,868

18,803

49,792

10.1

0.0

0.0

6.3

0.0

3.6

0.4

0.4

66.7

98.3

95.1

77.2

99.6

76.1

86.8

92.5

1.4 I

1.1

1.1

1.8

2.3

0.8

1.1

1.2

0.2

30.1

19.8

5.7

6.7

11.9

2.5

4.8

0.7

1.0

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Chapter 14

The Glyphosate Consensus: Rural Poverty Management and Agribusiness in South America During the Pink Tide (1998–2016) Fábio Luis Barbosa dos Santos and Joana Salém Vasconcelos

Introduction Despite being popularly elected in response to neoliberalism, the governments of the Pink Tide in South America (1998–2016) adhered to the agrarian-export pattern whose origins date back to the colonial past. By Pink Tide, we mean the political context that simultaneously joined progressive leaders in Latin America governments, such as Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolívia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, the Kirchner couple in Argentina, Worker’s Party (PT) in Brazil, Frente Amplia in Uruguay, and Fernando Lugo in Paraguay. Contrary to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) paradigm in the twentieth century that programmatically associated import substitution industrialization (ISI) with distributive land reform, these governments invest their export revenue in income distribution through conditional transfers of cash for rural populations, without changing the structure of agricultural properties, nor substantially affecting rural inequalities (Kay, 2015). This socialliberal policy came together with agribusiness alliances and the adoption of largescale agrotechnology packs in a process we conceptualized as the “glyphosate consensus,” which was inspired by the framework of the commodities consensus by Svampa (2013). With a partial exception of Venezuela, the “glyphosate consensus” was a common feature in the region’s Pink Tide cycle, which resulted in the abandonment of agrarian reform projects. During the first decades of the twenty-first century, six corporations of the pesticide market expanded their business in South America: Syngenta, Dow Chemical,

F. L. B. dos Santos (*) Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp), São Paulo, Brazil J. S. Vasconcelos Faculdade Cásper Líbero, São Paulo, Brazil © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Vommaro, P. Baisotti (eds.), Persistence and Emergencies of Inequalities in Latin America, Latin American Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90495-1_14

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DuPont, Monsanto, Bayer, and Basf. In 2015, these corporations totaled US $ 345 billion in assets, representing a 66% growth since 2005, according to their corporative reports (BASF n.d.; BAYER n.d.; Dow Chemical n.d.; Dupont n.d.; Monsanto 2016; Syngenta n.d.). During the Pink Tide, glyphosate, the most widely used herbicide in the global agribusiness, was intensively distributed in South America, despite the questioning of several international health organizations that denounced its dangerous toxicity (European Parliament 2016; ABRASCO 2019). In Latin America, the use of glyphosate was intensified by the development of Roundup Ready soybean (RR), Monsanto’s transgenic best seller seed. This chapter analyzes the agrarian policy of Pink Tide governments in a comparative perspective, emphasizing the “glyphosate consensus” as a conceptual frame. The expression is a metonymy alluding to the choice of these governments in favor of agribusiness, jeopardizing peasant and indigenous forms of agrarian production. In the following section, we outline a panorama of the expanded use of pesticides and agribusiness territorial expansion during the Pink Tide governments. Next, we discuss aspects of the relationship between South America progressive governments and peasant or indigenous movements, the social programs of cash transfer in the countryside, the alliances with agribusiness and “land regularizing” procedures imprecisely named “land reform.” Understanding that each country had its own specificity and complexity, our intention is to present the general landmarks of agrarian policy in the progressive governments, allowing to analyze their common aspects. We do not address the political details of Brazilian and Venezuelan agrarian cases for two key reasons. First, because this work was originally published in Brazil, where literature on Brazilian agrarian situation is already abundant. Second, because agrarian production policy in Bolivarian Venezuela was not a priority and although rural conflicts explain a lot about food scarcity crisis, the country figures as an exception outside the “glyphosate consensus.” We conclude by analyzing how agrarian policies were used as a legitimation mechanism for the Pink Tide ideology, suggesting it is a symptom and a consequence of the unfeasibility of the developmentalist paradigm in twenty-first century Latin America.

 gribusiness Expansion and Pesticides Spread During A the Pink Tide In South America, between 2000 and 2016, urban populations increased by 27%, while rural populations decreased by 4%. In 15 years, the South American rural population has been reduced to 16% of the total inhabitants of the region (FAOStat n.d.-a, n.d.-b). Among the seven countries that make up the Pink Tide governments, the largest rural exodus occurred in Uruguay (reduction by 37% of rural inhabitants), followed by Brazil (12%), and Argentina (9%). In some countries, rural exodus led to waves of regional immigration.

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The perpetuation of unequal land ownership regimes in the countryside during the Pink Tide indicated the lack of commitment to structural change. It was complemented by a marketing approach for small producers to connect them into transnational input chains as a contraflow of food sovereignty policies. These political choices on agriculture had important implications for the territory and rural populations that deepened land concentration and exodus processes. The reduction of the industrial sector and the expansion of the primary external sector, deepening structural dependency, was one indicator of economic reprimarization continued by Pink Tide governments (Argentina, INDEC n.d.; Bolívia, IBCE 2016; Bolívia, INE n.d.; Brazil, IBGE 2017; Brazil, MDIC n.d.; CEPALStat). Between 2000 and 2016, the proportion of primary exports over total exports in Brazil rose from 42% to 63%; followed by Bolivia (from 72% to 92%) and Uruguay (from 58% to 77%). Argentina’s primary exports at the same period jumped from 67% to 79%; in Paraguay from 80% to 88%; in Venezuela, from 90% to 98%; and in Ecuador from 89% to 94%. Figure 14.1 shows this aspect of the commodity consensus, namely, the accelerated expansion of the primary export sector promoted by the progressive cycle. In the same period, agriculture and forestry led the primary exports of Uruguay (76%), Argentina (61%), and Paraguay (58%), while Bolivia (5%) and Venezuela followed their trajectory as hydrocarbons and ore exporters, without relevant agricultural exports. However, during Evo Morales government, Bolivia almost doubled agricultural production surface, making its debut in the agri-export competition (Bolivia, INE). Ecuador and Brazil, which have mixed external sectors, i.e., with an equivalent importance for agriculture and hydrocarbons/ores, also experienced agri-­ export growth. In Ecuador, agricultural exports reached 28% in 2016; in Brazil, it increased from 30% to 39% between 2005 and 2015. Under the Worker’s Party

100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

Argentina

Bolívia

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Equador Paraguai Uruguai Venezuela 2000

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Fig. 14.1  Primary exports, 2000/2016 (%). Source: Elaborated by the authors with CEPALStat data

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government, the Brazilian agribusiness trade balance increased almost three times, from 30 to 85 billion dollars between 2003 and 2016 (Brazil, AgroStat). Although the distinctive position that agricultural exports occupy in each country could imply differences in agrarian policies, six of the seven countries in the Pink Tide phenomenon showed similar growth in the use of pesticides and consumption of fertilizers. Except for Venezuela, whose oil exports reached 98% of the total external sector in 2016, the comparative evidence shows that the transnational agribusiness model was intensified by all governments, which adopted large-scale technological packages from the “green revolution,” taking advantage of the commodities price boom. That is how a glyphosate consensus materialized the commodities consensus. South America expanded the use of pesticides by 111% between 2000 and 2015 that grew from 350 thousand tons per year to 740 thousand (FAOStat n.d.-a, n.d.-b). Excluding Venezuela, the countries of the Pink Tide expanded the use of pesticides above the South American average in the same period. The record holder was Paraguay, which jumped from 1.1 kilos of pesticide per hectare (kg/ha) to 3.7, with an overall increase of 224%. Bolivia and Ecuador expanded pesticide use by 183% and 126% respectively in the period, with the Ecuador reaching a record 13.6 kg/ hectare. Brazil was the progressive government that achieved the second highest concentration of pesticides, with 6.3 kg/ha in 2015, a growth of 146% compared to 2000. The expansion of the use of pesticides by surface in those countries is illustrated in the Fig. 14.2. The consumption of fertilizers also expanded in that period. In 2008, Argentina reached its peak of fertilizers (1.8 million tons), expanding 213% in 5 years. Between the first election of Evo Morales and 2014, Bolivia threw 241% more tons of fertilizers in its soil. In 2015, Brazil used 200% more fertilizers than in 2003.

14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 Argentina Bolívia

Brasil

Equador Paraguai Uruguai Venezuela 2000

2015

Fig. 14.2  Pesticides use, 2000–2015 (kg/ha). Source: Elaborated by the authors with FAOStat data

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Paraguay, during Fernando Lugo’s short term, expanded agricultural chemical fertilization by 122%. Uruguay in 2014 consumed 322% more fertilizers than in 2005. Despite the agricultural sector’s fragility, Venezuela increased fertilizer use by 253% between 1999 and 2014. Furthermore, Rafael Correa’s Ecuador used 133% more chemical fertilizers in 2015 than in 2007 (CEPALStat n.d.). The growing weight of soybeans in total exports mainly addressed to China is a relevant indicator that the glyphosate consensus was part of the so-called “Beijing consensus” (Svampa and Slipak 2015). This cultivation modality implies a technological package linked to the no-till technique, in which the application of chemical products replaces the processes of plowing and cleaning the soil. The effectiveness of chemical treatments requires its use in increasing quantity. No-till farming reduces employed labor at an estimation of two people per thousand hectares per year. It is a productive model that is only feasible for large-scale cultivation. Some authors compare this intensification of agriculture to “an extractive agriculture, a mining on agricultural soil,” a reality in which “the soy package implies absolute decampesination1, it is agriculture without farmers” (Rulli 2007: 18–20). Transnational companies such as Cargill, ADM, and Bunge make profit also collecting and exporting the soy, which leads to the conclusion that “in practice, producers are only a cog” between the provision of inputs and the distribution of production, commanded by these companies (Rojas 2009: 73). Between 2000 and 2016, South America expanded soy production by 34,424,140 hectares, an area twice the size of Uruguay and almost the size of Paraguay, resulting in a productive growth of 112 million tons (FAOStat n.d.-a, n.d.-b; CEPALStat n.d.). The expansion of soy was concentrated in the region baptized by the transnational Syngenta as the “United Soy Republic” (Rulli 2007), a kind of “monocultural country” that transcends the borders between Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay, and Bolivia. In 2016, the area of soy in these five countries was equivalent to almost 60 million hectares, registering an expansion of 9.5% per year since 2001. By the end of the Pink Tide cycle, soy occupied 48% of the cultivated area of Brazil; 50% of the cultivated area in Argentina; 66% of Paraguay’s cultivated area; and reached 72% of Uruguay’s cultivated area (Piñeiro and Cardeillac 2018: 269; FAOStat n.d.a, n.d.-b). In 2000, the five countries of the so-called United Soy Republic produced 35% of the world’s soybeans, a share that, in 2016, jumped to 50%, corresponding to 48% of the soybean area planted in the world (FAOStat n.d.-a, n.d.; CEPALStat n.d.; Miranda 2018; Soares 2019). There is a direct correlation between the expansion of soybean surface area, the adoption of the transgenic soybean technological package (from RR variety to Intacta RR2 Pro, patented by Monsanto) and the expanded use of glyphosate pesticides, present not only in Roundup, but in hundreds of other herbicides available on the market. In Brazil, for example, there are 32 companies authorized to commercialize more than 100 products composed of glyphosate (ABRASCO 2019). 1  With “decampesination” the author mean the reduction of peasant population and the rural exodus of land workers caused by different factors, manly the continuous land concentration, the expansion of landlordism and of pesticides contamination of the soil. In Spanish, “decampesinación”.

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In 2016, the European Parliament commissioned a study on the effects of glyphosate on human health and the environment and developed a protocol to ban the pesticide in Europe by 2022 (European Parliament 2016). Conversely, the progressive governments of South America promoted the territorial expansion of glyphosate use. Between 1997 and 2017, Bolivia increased the import of pesticides from eight million kilos to 34 million, an increase of 320% (Bolivia, INE). The availability of foreign exchange during Evo Morales government (i.e., its greater import capacity), also deepened the country’s dependence on transnational agricultural input chains. According to Bolivia’s Servicio Nacional de Sanidad Agropecuaria e Inocuidad Alimentaria (Senasag), around ten million liters of pesticides are smuggled into the country each year (Sagárnaga 2018). In 2014 alone, Paraguay spent more than US $ 341 million on imported agricultural chemical inputs from five large companies: Agrotec SA, Syngenta Paraguay, Agrofértil SA (Monsanto representative), Bayer SA, and Noble Paraguai SA (Soares 2019: 225). In 2008, Argentina commercialized a total of 225 million liters of pesticides, of which 137 million were glyphosate, representing a 50% increase in the 5 years of Nestor Kirschner’s government (Pórfido 2014: 22, 24). In Ecuador, in 2012, four million liters of glyphosate were consumed annually, which also became the most widely used herbicide in the country (Peñaherrera Colina 2013). In Brazil, the transgenic RR soy, which most stimulated glyphosate imports, was approved by CTNBio (Biotechnology National Commission) in 2009. Between 2000 and 2012, the use of glyphosate increased 124%, while productivity grew only 9.5% (ABRASCO 2019). As in many countries, in Brazil it was argued that transgenic soybeans would free producers from the use of pesticides, but it is notorious that this was a suspicious marketing strategy. Not only has glyphosate expanded, but some “pests” have developed resistance to it, leading monocultures to overlap poisons, such as 2,4-D, a component of Agent Orange. The oligopolistic character of this industry is also proven. In 2018, according to ABRASCO (2019), 39 of the 82 transgenic soy, corn, and cotton seeds were owned by Bayer-Monsanto, 33 of which are genetically modified to tolerate herbicides. It is estimated that 25% of the planet’s glyphosate is traded in Brazil, a country that had consumed one million tons of glyphosate between 2012 and 2017 (ABRASCO 2019). The expanded use of agri-toxic substances such as glyphosate or similar, as the paraquat from Syngenta, was an important pilar of the progressive bet for agricultural industrialization, which were supposed to open paths for economic development. According to ECLAC, agricultural industrialization was the key to achieving the so-called hora de la igualdad (equality momentum) and reduce social disparities (CEPAL 2010). However, the glyphosate choice by the different South American progressives implied political contradictions in the relation with peasants’ movements that almost always strongly participated in the social struggle that had elected these governments at the beginning of the century.

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Agrarian Policy and Rural Conflicts During the Pink Tide The expansion of agribusiness and the “glyphosate consensus” during the Pink Tide was concomitant with innovative articulations of peasant’s movements regionally and globally. The main one, Vía Campesina, struggled for food sovereignty and agrarian reform as a political priority. The diversity of peasant movements in South America and the ambivalences of progressive governments generated internal divisions and different types of arrangements between Pink Tide parties, rural workers, and landowners. Some peasant and indigenous organizations did not support the agrarian policies of the governments they had elected and preserved their political independence from the State, struggling and criticizing the alliance with agribusiness. Other movements saw progressive governments as an opportunity to contest public funding in favor of their agendas. At the same time, the relationship between Pink Tide governments and the ruling classes ranged from acute conflicts to stable alliances. In the following, we will briefly analyze how each progressive government dealt with the land distribution issue and relation with movements in the countryside.

Argentina Among the peasant organizations that supported the election of Nestor Kirchner in 2003, were rural movements that emerged during struggles against neoliberalism in the 1990s. For example, the Movimiento Campesino de Santiago del Estero (MOCASE) and the Consejo Asesor Indígena de Patagonia (CAI), both from Vía Campesina, together with the Unión de Pequeños Productores del Chaco (UNPEPROCH), the Movimiento Agrario de Misiones (MAM), the Movimiento Campesino de Misiones (MOCAMI), the Movimiento Campesino de Formosa (MOCAFOR), the Unión de Trabajadores Rurales Sin Tierra de Mendoza (UST), the Movimiento Campesino de Córdoba (MCC), and the Red Puna (indigenous peoples from Jujuy). According to Lapegna (2018: 168), “although the peasants are not a homogeneous group and their organizations participate in the ‘national-­ popular’ project in different ways, most peasant movements supported the Kirchners.” In the neo-developmentalist model promoted by Kirchenerism, rural social programs of the neoliberal period were financially expanded, creating new possibilities for interaction between the State and peasant movements through the delivery of public resources managed by those organizations as rural leaders started to occupy positions in state agencies. This opportunity, according to Lapegna (2018), offered peasant movements a chance to escape from their defensive position that had prevailed since the 1950s, to a propositional logic and the direct formulation of agrarian public policies. Emblematic of the new dynamic was the Social Agrarian

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Program (PSA), created in 1993, which offered microcredit to about 160 thousand small farmers annually (Lapegna 2018: 166). In 2005, peasant organizations supportive of Néstor Kirchner were grouped in the Movimiento Nacional Campesino-Indígena (MNCI), with a leading role for MOCASE, and the participation of more than 20 thousand families organized in a network. MNCI joined Vía Campesina and received an offer from the government to manage the Social Agrarian Program (PSA), changing the focus from individual or familial credit to a “socio-territorial approach” that financed peasant organizations (Lapegna 2018: 170). This possibility revealed contradictions. On the one hand, it allowed peasant movements to access strategic information on Argentinian agriculture and to make decisions about credit and input priorities, shifting the neoliberal individual producer’s logic to territorial logic and collective producers. On the other hand, the concept of PSA represented a straitjacket that appeased social tensions without touching the agrarian structure and land concentration. MNCI’s managing of PSA did not last long, as State employees at the Agriculture Bureau offered resistance, aligned with the original individualistic conception of the program (Lapegna 2018: 171). Inside the same logic, Kirchner’s government had created public forums for small farmers as formal spaces for dialogue between peasants and State employees, but without any deliberative power for rural families. After almost a decade of Kirchnerism in 2011, 2% of agricultural properties continued to control 50% of the best land, while 57% of small producers held only 3% of the land (Lapegna 2018: 178). There was no relevant redistributive policy in the period. The most direct dispute with the rural landowning class was not about territory, dominated by agribusiness, but in the sphere of export surplus. Néstor increased the soy export tax from 23.5% to 35% during his term. Subsequently, Cristina clashed with Sociedad Rural Argentina (SRA) in 2008, when she tried to create a mechanism to increase the same tax proportional to the export price, capturing the sector’s mark-up. In reaction, rural associations put their tractors on the streets, picketed the roads and paralyzed part of production. The pressure had an effect, and Vice President Julio Cobos cast his vote in the Senate against the government he represented, burying the law. It was an inflection point that gave cohesion to the propertied classes against neoperonismo, while landlord politicians expressed the idea that “what is good for agribusiness is good for the country” (Lapegna 2018: 172). Trying to recover the lost ground, Cristina approached the provincial governors, passing on slices of the budget of the Rural Development and Family Agriculture Bureau (Secretaría de Desarrollo Rural y Agricultura Familiar—SDRAF), previously managed by the MNCI within the social programs. Meanwhile, the provincial governments, with oligarchic traditions, have intensified the repression against peasant movements, including those that supported Kirchenerism, resulting in several militants being murdered between 2009 and 2012. In addition, Cristina became a spokesperson for the interests of transnational agricultural input producers, publicly aligning with Monsanto in the Council of Americas, to approve 18 new pesticides in record time between 2008 and 2013. Also, she submitted to Congress a law

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that limited the use of native and natural seeds by farmers, forcing small and medium producers to buy transgenic seeds. In 2013, the government deactivated an investigation against Cargill concerning tax evasion, a company responsible for the export of 20% of Argentina’s soy. Government subsidies for large scale livestock have grown and the Strategic Agri-­ Food and Agroindustrial Plan (Plan Estratégico Agroalimentar y Agroindustrial) did not even mention peasants and indigenous people, pointing exclusively to the agro-­ export strategy. In 2015, Argentina accounted for 18% of Monsanto’s worldwide sales, totaling $ 298 million (Monsanto 2016: 53). This policy led to the expulsion of peasant populations from their lands and, for those who stayed, water contamination, air fumigations, and soil contamination, jeopardizing subsistence agriculture (Lapegna 2018, 179). Thus, it is possible to affirm that Kirchnerism deepened the neoliberal agrarian model that increased the country’s dependence on transnational agribusiness, while delivering resources from the Agrarian Social Program to peasant movements, alleviating rural poverty.

Bolívia The election of Evo Morales in 2005 had strong peasant support and indigenous symbolism. Between 2006 and 2009, the Pacto por la Unidad (Pact for Unity) brought together the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), Morales’ party, with peasant and indigenous movements. Together they had succeeded in organizing the popular resistance against the revolt of the medialuna landlords. The uprising of the agricultural elites at the beginning of Morales’ government peaked when the president was prohibited from entering Bolivian Departamentos (States) controlled by local governments that were allied with the agrarian oligarchs. Santa Cruz, the main city in agribusiness territory, with exports of coffee, sugar, cotton, wood, and, more recently, soybeans, was also the epicenter of the propertied classes movement, which was expressed in right-wing organizations such as the Comité Cívico de Santa Cruz and the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista—both active in the 2019 coup. For agriculture, Evo Morales presented a platform that included three sectors for a “plural economy”: agro-export; family farming; and peasant-indigenous communities (Webber 2018: 196). In 2006, the government approved a law to regulate the agrarian structure (n. 3545), which announced the distribution of land for family farming and the formal titling of community territories. At the 2007 Constituent Assembly, five peasant and indigenous organizations were crucial supporters of the government, under the Pacto por la Unidad: the CIDOB (Confederación de los Pueblos Indígenas de Bolívia); the CONAMAQ (Consejo Nacional de Ayllus y Markas de Qullasuyu); the CSUTCB (Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolívia); the CNMCIOB-BS (Confederación Nacional de Mujeres Campesinas Indígenas Originarias de Bolívia “Bartolina Sisa”); and CSCIB (Confederación Sindical de Comunidades Interculturales de Bolívia).

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In this context, proposals that were consolidated in the new Constitution, such as autonomous community territories (which already existed) and plurinationality, were interpreted as a result of indigenous-peasant resurgence. The preamble to the Constitution reversed the winners’ narrative: “We populate this sacred Mother Earth [Madre Tierra] with different faces and we have understood since then the prevailing plurality of all things and our diversity as beings and cultures” (Government of Bolivia 2009). In the article 315, the Constitution of the Bolivian Plurinational State established that agricultural companies created after its approval could not possess more than 5000 hectares per partner  – however, it did not determine a limit of partners per company. Article 398, on the other hand, limited owners to a single property title and prohibited latifundium, defining it with four conceptions: (a) “unproductive property”; (b) “land that does not fulfill its economic and social function”; (c) the property caught in “servitude, semi-slavery or slavery”; and (d) that exceeds the maximum size established, which remained undefined (Government of Bolivia 2009). Despite this, during the Morales administration, “the inequality of the rural class structure in Bolivia remained practically intact” (Webber 2018: 201). The rural transformation of the Bolivian proceso de cambio was based on land regulation and not on structural change. Between 2007 and 2011, 11.7 million hectares were “sanitized and titled,” corresponding to 11% of the government’s goal. The main novelty was the increase in the titling of Tierras Comunitarias de Orígen (TCO), corresponding to 64% of the regularized territory. The problem was that the communities already occupied those territories. That is, they received new documents, but without redistribution. As happened in Brazil under the Lula government (Oliveira 2007), the National Institute of Agrarian Reform in Bolivia had recorded without any distinction between the data on “regularized” and effectively redistributed land, generating illusory statistics for a less transformative process. Indeed, between 2007 and 2011 only 26% of the new land titles corresponded to new redistributions and, among these, 79% were low fertility state lands. In the final account, only 7% of the “regulated” land (770 thousand hectares) came from unproductive latifundios prohibited by the Constitution (Webber 2018: 203). At the same time, between 2007 and 2011, agro-industrial crops grew from 70% to 80% of the total production value, mainly due to soybeans, which expanded by 40%, and sugar cane, which grew 36%. Evo Morales’ Bolivia has become an agricultural frontier for soy transnationals. In 2013, the grain already occupied 35% of the cultivated land in the country, with five exporting companies that controlled 90% of the market, including Cargill Bolivia (Webber 2018: 211). Probably that is the reason why Morales’ relationship with agribusiness has stabilized since 2010, when the president began to meet with the Confederación de Empresarios Privados de Bolívia, the Asociación de Productores de Oleaginosas y Trigo (ANAPO) and the Cámara Agropecuária del Oriente (CAO). By 2011, the government’s guideline turned to intensify primary exports, including agribusiness, which became evident in the conflict over the Territorio Indigena y Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure (TIPNIS). It was the inflection point that confirmed Morales’ extractive economy direction. In consequence, his peasant and indigenous base fractured: CIDOB and CONAMAQ were divided, and their headquarters occupied by

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government sectors. The government created an alternative power station (Consejo Indígena del Sur, Conisur) to carry out countermarches against critics’ protests. Dissent came to be defamed and criminalized, while organizations that supported the government received resources. Delegitimization campaigns accused independent movements of being financed by foreign NGOs. In 2013, the headquarters of CONAMAQ was invaded by members of MAS and its leaders removed (Santos 2019). In the second stage of the government, now allied explicitly to agribusiness, the so-called “agrarian reform” continued as “property title normalization,” without changing structures and with fewer deliveries to communities (Almaráz 2015). Between 2010 and 2014, 16 million hectares were sanitized, 44% for TCO (mostly in already occupied territories), 27% for peasant and intercultural communities (mostly in the less fertile highlands, since agribusiness predominates in the lowlands), and 14% for medium and small private property (concentrated in Chapare, Evo’s political cradle). It is necessary to pay attention, however, to the surface ratio per beneficiary: While TCO obtained 48 hectares per beneficiary and peasant properties 16 hectares per beneficiary, medium-sized properties received 996 and agribusiness, which also won new titles, received 3763 hectares per beneficiary (Webber 2018: 208). The quality of the land was also uneven: Medium and large remained with the most fertile lands in the country. In Santa Cruz, 46% of the 3.6 million hectares of new titles went to agribusiness, while only 3.8% corresponded to TCO, 8.8% to peasant communities, 16.9% to small properties and 15% to medium-sized ones. After Morales’ approach to agribusiness, in 2010, between 2 and three million hectares per year were re-titled for large companies (Webber 2018: 210). Meanwhile, food imports grew from $ 227 million in 2005 to $ 723 million in 2014. In the opposite direction to food sovereignty, Bolivia started importing vegetables, fruits and even potatoes from Peru, an Andean heritage. In summary, on the one hand, peasant and indigenous sectors had guaranteed the right to communitarian property due to the new titles, but on the other hand, the structure and concentration of agrarian properties did not change. Agribusiness has been a strategic ally of Evo Morales’ administration from 2010 until its fall in 2019.

Uruguay The Uruguayan countryside has undergone a profound transformation in the twenty-­ first century. The spread of multinational crops was accompanied by an increase in land concentration, land prices and pressure on natural resources, marginalizing small producers. Francisco Mujica, when Minister of Agriculture of Tabaré Vázquez, claimed an “intelligent agribusiness.” At the end of that government, the 2011 Uruguayan Agricultural Census indicated that the country’s agrarian structure was still as concentrated as before: 55% of the properties (with less than 100 hectares) controlled only 4.6% of the land, while 9.2% of the properties (greater than 1000 hectares) held 61% of the land (Uruguay 2011). Ten years earlier, in 2000, owners with less than 100 hectares owned 5% of the land and landlords with more than

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1000 hectares, held 59% (Uruguay 2000). Between 2000 and 2011, more than 12,000 productive units disappeared, mostly family production, with an area of less than 100 hectares (Castro and Santos 2018: 128). Meanwhile, transgenic soybeans, released in 1996, expanded at an extraordinary rate, from 10,000 hectares in 2000, to 859,000 hectares in the 2009 harvest. In 2018, 80% of the cultivated land was destined for soybeans (Aharonian et  al. 2019). Wheat, barley, and rice, a sector usually dominated by Brazilians, also grew. Altogether, the country’s agricultural area has tripled in 10 years. In 2017, 61% of the eight million tradable hectares were in the hands of foreign corporations, which also command the strategic exports of meat. Adding agricultural and agro-industrial activities, in 2013 the sector generated almost 25% of GDP and accounted for 69% of the total exported (Mañan 2018: 82). However, the star of the Uruguayan agrarian economy is cellulose (CIU 2016). Like soybeans, its production in the twentieth century was insignificant, but today, there are more than a million hectares of trees, almost half of which are controlled by transnational corporations. Between 2005 and 2020, soybeans and cellulose displaced two million hectares of extensive livestock. In 2018, for the first time, cellulose exports surpassed meat exports, both dominated by foreign companies (Artacker 2018). As in other countries, the surplus generated made it possible to increase public spending by 52%, producing a decline in poverty from 29% to 6.8% (Piñeiro and Cardeillac 2018: 264). Nevertheless, unlike other countries in the region, the expansion of agribusiness and forest extraction anchored in foreign capital has generated few social conflicts, in a country where only 6% of the population lives in the countryside and the peasant movement has not found the dynamism of neighboring countries’ struggles for land. Only one organization from Uruguay is linked to Vía Campesina, the Red de Grupos de Mujeres Rurales. Among small producers, 61% are dedicated to beef cattle; 8% grow vegetables, milk and raise sheep on a small scale. More than half of these own less than 50 hectares. Historically, family farmers have organized themselves in the secular Comisión Nacional de Fomento Rural (CNFR), with gremial tradition and far from the spectrum of Vía Campesina (Piñeiro and Cardeillac 2018: 267). In 2011, there were only 69,000 rural wage earners across the country, corresponding to 65% of the rural labor force. This sector was directly benefited by the Frente Amplia governments, since the national minimum wage was doubled in 2005 and, for the first time, labor rights were extended to the countryside: 8-h a day journey, paid weekly rest, social security, and protection in case of illness. A Rural Employment Office was created within the Ministry of Labor, responsible for executing these changes, which aimed to eliminate the day-to-day journey and the high-handedness of foremen from the estancias. Vázquez’s first government benefited 13,000 family farming producers between 2005 and 2010, with credits, technical assistance, and training. A microcredit policy reached 10,000 peasants, with up to 30,000 pesos per year. In addition, between 2005 and 2015, the National Colonization Institute distributed 90,000 hectares to 5100 settlers, totaling about 20,000 people. However, this distribution did not start from an expropriation

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process, instead corresponding to marginal or public lands (Piñeiro and Cardeillac 2018: 273). In short, “the agrarian policy of the Frente Amplio has not advanced towards a firmer regulation of agribusiness and financial capital and could not prevent the reduction of agrarian family production, even though it has enhanced the protection and empowerment (...) of rural wage earners” (Piñeiro & Cardeillac, 2018: 280).

Paraguay Unlike Uruguay, Paraguay has a history of dynamic peasant struggles, land occupations, and indigenous movements, in addition to a rural population that in 2016 comprised 38% of the country’s total. Yet it did not prevent the country from having one of the largest land concentrations in Latin America. In 2008, 83% of the properties (with less than 20 hectares) occupied 4.3% of the agricultural area, while 1.6% of the latifundio (with more than 1000 hectares), had 79% of the land (FAOStat n.d.-a, n.d.-b). In the 1990s, Paraguayan peasants and indigenous people organized the Mesa Coordinadora Nacional de Organizaciones Campesinas (MCNOC), with 22 regional movements and five national associations: the Federación Nacional Campesina (FNC); the Organización de Lucha por la Tierra (OLT); the Movimiento Campesino Paraguayo (MCP); the Organización Nacional Campesina (ONAC); and the Unión Nacional de Campesinos (UNC) (Ezquerro-Cañete and Fogel 2018: 99). However, the MCNOC split in 1998 and the movement was fragmented. In 2008, some peasant segments supported the candidacy of Fernando Lugo, but others of greater weight, such as the FNC, called for a blank vote. They were disbelievers of the Alianza Patriotica para el Cambio, in which the “Bishop of the Poor,” as Lugo was known, joined liberal parties in the name of ending six decades of Colorado Party rule. In 2009, peasant support for Lugo was organized as Espacio Popular Unitario, an articulation of struggle for agrarian reform (Ezquerro-Cañete and Fogel 2018). Nevertheless, the governing alliance was a minority in the Congress and only five deputies were from the left group that, in 2010, gave rise to the Frente Guasú. Despite the promise that it would carry out agrarian reform, Lugo’s government intensified repression in the countryside: Between 2008 and 2010, there were 12,650 peasants displaced from occupations, 1148 peasants arrested, and 334 criminally convicted. In this conflicting context, in 2010 the Liga Nacional de Carperos (LNC) emerged and conducted a campaign of occupations on the country’s eastern border, as Itapuá and Alto Paraná, areas known for the tierras mal habidas—illegally delivered by the dictatorship Stroessner to landowners, who often resold them to Brazilian landlords. The LNC claimed that the border lands could not belong to foreigners, supported by a law in force since 2005 (Ezquerro-Cañete and Fogel 2018: 103). Aiming to advance his agrarian policy, Lugo created the Coordinadora Ejecutiva por la Reforma Agraria (CEPRA) and announced that the Instituto Nacional de Desarrollo Rural y de la Tierra (INDERT), created in 2004, would act to regularize

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tierras mal habidas that were the material base for political patronage and money laundering through land rent. Still, funds for this policy were blocked by Congress, which sabotaged the government’s budget and eliminated a series of central taxes, dilapidating public revenues. For this reason, according to Ezquerro-Cañete and Fogel (2018), Lugo was not even able to be a neodevelopmentalist and accompany the Pink Tide governments, not only because of the unfavorable constellation of forces in Congress, but also because the opposition prevented a minimum budget to expand social programs for the peasantry. When Lugo tried to approve a 6% tax on grain exports, he was defeated by Congress. In this context, unlike other progressive leaders, the president reduced public investments in family farming. Meanwhile, soybeans, which accounted for 50% of Paraguay’s total exports between 2000 and 2008, expanded according to a “accumulation by fumigation” logic (Ezquerro-Cañete and Fogel 2018). Despite that, the landowners gathered in the Asociación Rural Paraguaya and the Asociación de Productores de Soja (joined by 50,000 brasiguaios, the Brazilian landowners benefited by Stroessner dictatorship and their inheritors) adopted an aggressive stance, involving “direct action,” tratorazos (tractor parades) and threats. Lugo was accused of having ties with an obscure guerrilla army named Ejercito del Pueblo Paraguayo (EPP), which factually appears to be a paramilitary group fueled by the landlordism itself (Santos 2019). The power of the Brazilian lobby, which even mobilized Brazilian diplomacy during PT governments, also played a role in the impeachment that defeated Lugo in 2012. Indeed, the impeachment happened in the wake of two rural conflicts. The first, in Ñacunday, involved the occupation of a 157-thousand-hectare property of Grupo Favero, owned by the Brazilian Tranquilo Favero, known as the King of Soy. In 2009, INDERT found that 55,000 hectares of that property were illegally obtained in 1999. The carperos from LNC’s occupied the Favero’s farm. With the land conflict, INDERT announced that it would make technical measurements to determine the correct recovery and legalization of the property titles. The proprietors, then, tried to prevent land measurement and INDERT officials asked for protection by the army. However, the political action of soybean farmers, reinforced by Brazilian diplomatic pressure, led Lugo government to back down. During the following year, in 2012, there was a military operation that triggered the coup against the Bishop of the Poor. On June 15, 324 policemen evicted about 60 peasants who occupied a farm liable for legal expropriation but claimed by a Colorado senator in Curuguaty. The operation resulted in a massacre, in which six policemen and eleven peasants were killed. A few days later, on June 21, Lugo suffered an impeachment in which he had 24 h to defend himself against an accusation without evidence, sustained by an inaccurate juridical category called “notorious knowledge.” The Vice President Federico Franco, from the Liberal Party, supported the coup and ruled for the following 14 months. Lugo’s experience demonstrates that the dominance of the rural oligarchy, reinforced during the Stroessner dictatorship, was updated in the context of the expansion of soy agribusiness led by the brasiguaios, blocking any attempt to democratize access to land, however modest it may be.

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Ecuador In his presidential campaign in 2006, Rafael Correa and his political articulation Alianza Pais promised an “agrarian revolution,” consolidating the support of peasant and indigenous movements from Mesa Agraria. In 2009, Correa drew up a policy named Plan Tierras, in which the government identified about half a million landless peasant families and an even greater number of families with precarious access to land. In a situation in which the agrarian concentration measured by the GINI index was close to 0.8, the Plan del Buen Vivir proposed to reduce it by 2013 to 0.61, which involved the transfer of 2.5 million hectares to rural workers through three paths: the distribution of 69,000 hectares of public land; the creation of a national land fund (as foreseen in article 282 of the Constitution) formed by purchased and expropriated land; and the purchase of unproductive land for not fulfilling its social function. Plan Tierras was accompanied by other programs that aimed to regularize undocumented properties, including the communal lands of indigenous and peasant organizations (Ospina Peralta et al. 2013). However, in 2013, 5% of landowners still concentrated 52% of agricultural land, while 60% of smallholders accounted for 6.4% of land. Although the government increased public investment in the field, the policies implemented did not correspond exactly to the guidelines of food sovereignty and Buen Vivir, which were rhetorically embraced by correísmo. It is illustrative of this trend that more than 50% of public investment between 2008 and 2013 was concentrated in transport and roads, benefiting the exports sector. Meanwhile, investment in irrigation and water management, vital for the peasant economy, fell from 7.5% to less than 2.5% (Muñoz Jaramillo 2014: 61). Consistent with its neodevelopmentalist approach, government practice aimed to improve rural productivity through conventional agricultural technologies, fostering export-oriented agro-industry (Clark 2018). Thus, it invested in the efficiency of small and medium-sized producers conceived as a missing link in agro-industrial value chains run by transnational capitals, to export traditional products (such as cocoa and bananas) or recent products (such as African palm). All those exports imply the use of glyphosate. In this process, peasants were strongly chained in a new dependency on transnational companies that provide them the inputs (such as transgenic seeds and pesticides), access to markets, subcontracts, and other dependent smaller businesses (Houtart 2014). Therefore, the Revolución Ciudadana convoked by Alianza Pais abandoned the original land distribution program, while Correa argued that “small rural property brings productive efficiency and poverty reduction backward” and that “to divide a large property into many small ones is to divide poverty” (Correa apud Cuvi 2014: 13). At the same time, the expansion of agribusiness has intensified rural proletarianization, especially in the highlands, due to the export of vegetables, such as broccoli, and flowers, portrayed by the government as models of a supposed “change in the productive matrix” (Martínez 2017). In many cases, peasant bonds with the land

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have changed, now seen as a rearguard second resource for emergency survival, as livelihoods no longer come primarily from the land on which they live. Although the food sovereignty agenda was shaped within the 2008 Constitution, as a result of the Mesa Agraria political performance and the pressure from Confederación Nacional de Organizaciones Campesinas, Indígenas y Negras (FENOCIN, Vía Campesina), the government’s pact with agribusiness and the bankruptcy of its land distribution plan generated contradictions and tensions with peasants and indigenous movements. The Confederación Nacional de Indígenas de Ecuador (CONAIE), which remained independent and had not even supported Correa in the 2006 elections (presenting its own party, Pachakutik), intensified its opposition activities. Since 2009, the conflicts between government and indigenous people have been constant (Clark 2018; Santos 2019). The government promoted the integration of small family farming into the large-­ scale commercial chains, making them “less and less peasants, and more and more small capitalist producers,” which also impacted social struggles. On the coast, where the subjection to commodities markets is more accentuated, struggles were oriented to make the capitalist integration of the small producer viable, while in the mountains, many rural workers claimed land and support for subsistence production in agroecological molds, which complemented the income of a proletarianized peasantry. This situation brought about new challenges for peasant organizations that had swung between opposition and institutionalization. In 2009, the government launched the Conferencia Plurinacional e Intercultural de Soberanía Alimentaria (Copisa), an initiative that integrated social organizations to “generate a broad debate process to build proposals for laws, policies and programs based on food sovereignty.” In practice, however, it was a self-legitimizing tool for Correa’s government, which did not develop a truly participatory democratic process (Henderson 2017). The impermeability of the Revolución Ciudadana to autonomous popular participation was evidenced in the debate around the Yasuní ITT initiative, which exposed the contradictions between extractivist priorities and the Constitutional precept of Sumak Kawsay. This initiative intended to keep untapped a potential of 850 million barrels of oil, which occupies about 200 thousand hectares of tropical forest in the Yasuní National Park, in exchange for an estimated contribution of 350 million dollars a year, over 10 years, to be carried out by the international community recognizing the environmental service cost. This money would be managed by a commission supervised by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), to be invested in social programs, renewable energy, or reforestation. The Yasuní movement has been treated in a contradictory manner by Correa. The government signed a protocol with UNDP in 2010, but supporters of the proposal already feared that it was a scene game (Acosta 2010). When this scenario came to fruition in 2013, the Yasunidos movement proposed a national referendum to decide the issue. The president replied: “if you want a referendum, don’t be a bum, collect signatures if you have so much support” (El Universo 2013). Months later, the “bums” delivered a number of signatures higher than necessary, but the referendum was never held, pretending problems with the signatures. When this happened, it

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was already clear that Alianza Pais would resolve the contradiction between extractivism and Buen Vivir by supporting the first and facing the second.

Final Considerations The “glyphosate consensus” was a common landmark in the agrarian policies of progressive governments, which saw agribusiness as a strategic ally in generating surpluses to finance their social agenda, with emphasis on income transfer programs for poor peasant families. Some sectors of the Latin American peasant movements have joined with these governments, despite their contradictions. In many cases, they found ways to access public funds and orient them to their collective demands. On the other hand, peasant movements faced governments that reinforced the oligarchic-­rural matrix of South American States, blocking structural change and land redistribution. Although packed in a developmentalist-inspired rhetoric, the alliance between Latin American progressivism and agribusiness took place in different terms from the past. The national-developmentalist paradigm that was strengthened with ECLAC postulations after the Second World War understood primary exportation as a source of foreign exchange to finance the industrialization processes nationally based. At that time, industrialization was seen as the necessary path to overcome underdevelopment in Latin America. In this context, agrarian reform was perceived as an unavoidable dimension of national development and nation formation itself. It was a condition to integrate national workers within a modern sociability, pointing to the increase in urban and rural wages and the consolidation of robust internal markets, regionally articulated. Industrialization and agrarian reform would lay the foundations for what Celso Furtado described as a national (or regional) economic system, indicating the hope of reconciling development and capitalism in the periphery, overcoming underdevelopment in all its dimensions. However, in the face of the structural crisis of capitalism from the 1970s onward, the idea of development lost its historical ground. To paraphrase the Brazilian thinker Roberto Schwarz, developmentalism in the twenty-first century has become an “idea out of place” [referring to his essay As ideias fora do lugar, on Brazilian liberalism during the slavery system]. In the last historic quarter, primary export is no longer seen as a necessary and temporary evil aimed at national industrialization. Extractivism has become an end in itself. Agrarian reform has disappeared from the horizon and, with it, the prospect of social integration mediated by wage labor. In the alliance between progressivism and agribusiness, agrarian reform has become a rhetorical device to label the process of land regularization and sanitation. No Pink Tide government have modified the land concentration and rural class inequalities. Nevertheless, the impulse induced by the influx of money through social programs based on income transfers to the countryside brought about a competitive logic, dissolving community solidarity bounds in rural territories. The agrarian processes triggered by the Pink Tide, despite its anti-neoliberal rhetoric, resulted in the

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reinforcement of “neoliberal reason” (Dardot and Laval 2010) in which relations between individuals are reduced to mechanisms of monetary reward and punishment. The glyphosate consensus was articulated around an “inclusive neoliberalism,” responsible for deepening the commodification of life in urban and rural environment. With that, the Pink Tide contributed to the acceleration of a reality in which social relations are increasingly mediated by money, the consumption of industrialized foods grows, while community ties are weakened, and the reproduction of life is contaminated by toxic substances. In short, even as it prospered, progressive development proved to be regressive. In the twenty-first century, Latin American progressive governments abandoned the pretensions of sovereignty and labor integration that once marked national developmentalist projects. What remained is plundering. In this context, the social issue was reduced to inclusion through consumption of imported goods, while agrarian reform was transformed into a poverty management agenda. In the countryside, the balance was a continent more tied to transnational transgenic seeds and pesticides, deepening territorial desocialization and environmental degradation. Perhaps this is, after all, the face of progress, identified with the blind and predatory logic of agrarian capital in contemporary Latin America. Acknowledgments  Our acknowledgement for Katherine Cosby and Andrew Smolski for generously reviewing the translation from Portuguese to English. Any imprecisions are exclusive responsibility of the authors. The first version of this work was published in Portuguese in Revista de História Comparada from Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), n. 14, p. 260-300. The English version was cut and adapted to the norms.

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Index

A Academic interest, 10 Academic result, 82 Afford a private tutor, 84 Agrarian reform, 253, 257, 259, 263 Agrarian revolution, 261 Agribusiness, 23, 257 agrarian reform, 257 and forest extraction, 258 glyphosate, 248, 253 intelligent agribusiness, 257 and “land regularizing” procedures, 248 and Latin American progressivism, 263 and pesticides, 248 (see also Pink Tide governments) rural proletarianization, 261 transnational agribusiness, 250, 255 Agricultural industrialization, 252 Analytical perspective, 20 Androcentric structures, 97 Argentina borders and social distancing, 154 care economy, 158 civil society, 157 class-based expectations, 158 communal well-being, 150 complexity, 155 COVID-19, 161 cultural traditions, 153 decision-making, 159 economic policy, 155 economy, 158 education, 152 educational continuity, 157

empowerment, 151 equal rights, 162 ethnographic approach, 150 family conditions, 158 gender, 154 government and international agencies, 150 inequality, 155, 156, 161, 163 labor force, 159 life courses, 158 low-income youth, 159 multidimensional approach, 149, 151, 158 neoliberal/liberal position, 153 networks of inequality, 149 participation and political commitments, 162 political decision, 162 political parties, 162 political perspective, 162 positive and negative effects, 159 poverty, 151, 153 power dynamics, 153 private property, 154 public policy, 152, 160, 162 security policy, 154 sexuality, 154 social and political contexts, 156 social interactions, 153, 157 social movements, 162 social regulation and control, 158 social relationship, 155 social rights, 161 social security, 159 social structure, 157, 159 state-specific events, 156

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Vommaro, P. Baisotti (eds.), Persistence and Emergencies of Inequalities in Latin America, Latin American Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90495-1

267

268 Argentina  (Cont) structural organization, 157 sustainable ecological models, 161 unequal social orders, 151 youth unemployment, 153 Argentina’s capital, 83 Argentine educational system cartography, 77 economic growth cycle, 78 educational offering, 81 establishment, 77 history, 77 infrastructure/study materials, 77 ISCED2 and ISCED3, 79 Ley de Educación, 79 Ley General de Educación established, 79 policies of conditioning payment, 78 regulatory structure, 78 secondary education (see Secondary education) social imaginary persists, 81 social inclusion programs, 78 in student profile, 79 systematization, 81 teacher training, 81 trajectories, 80 unfavorable inclusion, 77 urbanization and industrialization, 78 Argentine society, 81 Arts, 85 Asignación Universal por Hijo (AUH), 78 Authoritarian, 96 Authoritarian governments, 101 Authoritarianism, 101, 103, 108 Authority, 99 B Bachilleratos, 85, 86 Batllista welfare tradition, 19 “Beijing consensus”, 251 Biopolitically disposable, 96, 103 Biopolitics, 108 Black feminism, 170 Bolivarian Revolution, 15, 16, 22, 23 Bolivian case, 17 Boliviarianism, 22 Bolsa Família program, 19 Bono Juancito Pinto in Bolivia, 78 C Capital accumulation, 5

Index Capitalism, 3, 15 Capital punishment, 103 Care academia, 112 agenda, 119, 120 childcare, 114 coronavirus pandemic, 111 crisis of care, 111 cultural guidelines, 115 demand, 113 economy, 113, 114 ethics of care, 115 gender studies, 111 health and well-being, 114 pandemic, 117–119 politics, 112 preschool-aged children, 114 psychological care, 112 public policies, 111, 114, 116, 117 region, 113 research work, 113 sexual division, 113, 116 social care, 115 social organization, 115, 116 social protection, 111 social sciences, 111–113 social welfare, 115 socioeconomic level, 116 subjective, emotional and ethical aspects, 115 supply, 113 time-use surveys, 114 types, 112 Cellulose, 258 Center for World University Rankings (CWUR), 59 Central America, 95, 96, 98–103 Central American, and the Dominican Republic (CAFTA-DR), 101 CEPAL-IIPE UNESCO Buenos Aires, 83 Chronic childhood malnutrition, 100 Citizen Revolution, 17, 26 Civil society, 21 Civil war, 106 Climate emergencies, 101 Coercive message, 103 Coercive powers, 107 Cold War, 99 Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires, 81 Collateral damage, 105 Colonial domination, 96, 101 Colonial power, 107 Commercial sexual exploitation, 106

Index Communication, 85 Community, 104 Community Kitchens program, 135 Comparative study, 5 Competency-based assessment, 67 Constitutional Organic Law of Education, 55 Consumption of fertilizers, 250 Costa Rica, 99, 100 Counterinsurgency strategies, 99 Countries/regions, 106 COVID-19, 5, 9, 76, 85, 107 budget, 140, 141 coronavirus crisis, 137 degree of incidence, 131 distribution of budget, 136 domestic and care responsibilities, 123 economic well-being, 124 federal and state governments, 130 federal and state social programs, 130 federal and the state governments, 124 gender equality, 126, 127, 135 gender inequalities, 123 gender mainstreaming, 125, 126 gender-sensitive policies, 125, 126 health and economic crises, 137 impact, 123 incidence, 142 incidence in women’s life, 134 incidence in women’s lives, 140 interventions, 130, 131, 137 Mexican case economic and physical autonomy, 128 health, 128 labor, 128 poverty, 128 social rights, 127 violence, 128–130 policy instruments, 133, 134, 139, 142 public intervention, 130 public policy, 130 social policy, 135, 136 social protection, 123–127, 134, 137, 142 social rights, 131–133, 138, 139, 142 social security, 136, 142 type of employment, 142 women’s social protection, 135 Crimes, 106 Criminal activities, 106 D de facto powers, 97, 102, 104 De-humanization, 104

269 Democratization process, 100 Desectorization, 17 Dispossession, 100 Disputes, 106 Distributive justice, 186, 187, 194 Distributive processes, 89 Domestic/family violence, 96 Dynamic equalization, 20 E Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), 168 Economic crisis, 42 Economic deprivation, 95 Economic differences, 3 Economic growth cycle, 78 Economic policies, 2 Economic social class system, 97 Ecuador’s Examen Nacional para la Selección Universitaria (ENES), 82 Educational continuity, 85 Educational coverage, 89 Educational establishments, 87 Educational experiences, 87 Educational institution, 82, 86, 87 Educational offering, 76, 78, 81 Educational policies, 76, 78, 87 Educational quality, 76 Educational system history of, 77 inequalities, 76 in region shows, 86 Education systems, 44 Egalitarian, 27 Egalitarianism, 4 Emergency Family Income (IFE), 157 Emergency situations and disasters, 107 Empathy, 108 Employment segmentation model, 236 Empty cities, 107 Encyclopedic-based humanist curriculum, 81 Environments, 95 Equalization accumulation, 26 agglutination, 21 in Argentina and Uruguay, 18 bankarization, 24 in Bolivia, 16 Brazilian and Argentinean economies, 16 decommodification, 20 dynamics, 17, 21, 22 empowerment, 16

Index

270 Equalization  (Cont) financialization, 25 globalization, 22, 24 invisibilization, 22 labor force, 18 in Latin America, 16 MAS government, 17 neo-developmentalist architecture, 23 protagonism, 16 PT government, 19, 26 revolutionary moment, 23 stigmatization, 22 union movement, 18 in Venezuela, 19 Essential services, 107 European Convergence in Higher Education, 66 European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS), 63 European Higher Education Area (EHEA) framework, 63 European Research Area (ERA), 63 Exclusion, 96 Exploitation, 108 Extractivism, 263 F Failed institutions, 106 Family-oriented discourses, 107 Family planning services, 132–133 Family relationship, 98 Federal Public Administration, 135 Femicide, 96–98, 103 Feminine, 97 Financial resources, 55 Financialization, 24 FLACSO system, 77 Flourishing, 104 Forced pregnancy, 99 Fragmentation, 76 Free Trade Agreement, 101, 104 G Gang rape, 99 GDP growth, 1 GDP values, 16 Gender equality, 126, 127 inequalities, 104, 118 social relations, 97 Gendered necropolitics, 103–108

Gendered traditionalisms, 105 Geographic, social, ethnic and cultural diversity, 98 Glyphosate, 252 agri-toxic substances, 252 consensus”, 247, 248, 250, 251, 253, 263, 264 in global agribusiness, 248 on human health, 252 pesticides, 251, 252 transgenic RR soy, 252 Google Classroom, 88 Guatemala, 95, 100, 104 H Herbicide, 248, 251, 252 Heterogeneity, 88 Higher education, 76, 82, 84 Homework, 88 Homicide rates, 101, 104 Human trafficking, 106 Hyper-masculinization, 104 I Import substitution industrialization (ISI), 247 Impunity, 96, 101 Inclusive neoliberalism, 264 Income distribution, 95 Income inequality, 95 Industrialization, 263 Inequalities, 4, 6, 7, 9, 15, 86–89, 103, 108, 256, 263 multiple expressions, 96 and violence, 98–103 Inequity, 6 Informal sector, 128 Informal work, 100 Informe Secondary Education Evolution Report, 81 Institute for Training for Work of Mexico City, 133 Institutes of Educational Sciences (ICE), 66 Institution functions, 89 Intelligent agribusiness, 257 Internalization, 88 International Labor Organization (2020), 213 International political and economic alliances, 98 Interpersonal violence, 96 Intersectionality, 170, 171 Intimate/family relationships, 106

Index Intimate partners, 97 Iron deficiency, 100 K Kennedy University (Argentina), 62 Key Indicators of the Labour Market (KILM), 227, 243 L Labor relations, 18 Labour market segmentation, 238 Languages, 85 Latin America, 1, 2 Covid-19 pandemic, 33 economic growth, 33 educational inequalities, 43–45 familiarized care work, 42, 43 health care child mortality, 35 communities, 34 contraceptive methods, 36 Covid-19 pandemic, 34 Covid-related deaths, 35 essential workers, 35 family planning resources, 36 housing conditions, 35 inequality and exclusion, 35 low population density, 36 middle-aged people, 35 OECD countries, 34 social investments, 34 social-spatial segregation, 36 structural discrimination, 34 urban development, 35 labor degradation, 37–39 poverty, 37–39 progressive cycle, 33 social exclusion, 33 social gains, 34 social support policies, 39–41 Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) demand for equality, 187–189 distributive issue, 190 distributive justice, 186, 187 economic growth, 189 educational inequality, 190 feeling of injustice, 197–199 history, 191, 192 income distribution, 185, 189 inequality, 186 inequity, 187–189

271 legitimation mechanisms, 186 liberal/classical approaches, 189 moral economies, 199–201 national level, 192, 194–197 normalization and resistance processes, 186 opposing trends, 187 political attitudes, 186, 187 political theory, 185 public policy, 187 region, 185 social fragmentation, 187 social reality, 185 social sciences, 187 socioeconomic matters, 190 socioeconomic transformations, 191 sociological and economic discussions, 189 sociological issue, 187 transformations, 189 Latin American, 4 Learning community, 66 Legal systems, 102 Ley de Educación, 79 Ley General de Educación, 79 Local elites, 98 M Market forces, 102 Market ideologies, 101, 105 Marketization, 104 Market-oriented policies, 100 Masculine State, 97 Masculinist and authoritarian profile, 98 Mediterranean Foundation in Argentina, 62 Mestizaje projects, 28 Ministry of Education and Health, 53 Multidimensional, 4, 9 Murder, 95 Murder-suicides events, 98 Music orientation, 85 Mutilation, 99 N National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation (ANECA), 63 National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, 67 National Education Plan (PNE), 180 National industrialization, 263 Naturalization, 7

Index

272 Natural resources, 101 Necropolitics, 103–108 Neo-conservatism, 103 Neo-extractivism, 22, 23 Neoliberal capitalism, 102 Neoliberal globalization, 102 Neoliberalism, 2, 102, 103, 105 Neoliberal modernization Argentina, 52–55 Brazil, 52–55 Chile, 52–55 educational policy developments, 52–55 higher education institutions, 68, 69 higher education systems, 51, 52 international research centers, 51 Latin American education systems, 51 Neoliberal University Modernization in Europe, 62–64 prestige and rankings, 59–62 private institutions, 68 public university, 68 training strategies, 65–67 types of university, 56–58 university teacher training, 64, 65 Neoliberal policies, 101 Neoliberal reforms, 100, 104 North American entrepreneurs, 98 P Pandemic, 107 Peace agreements, 99 Persistent Inequality (book), 7 Personal qualities, 88 Physical violence, 107 Pink Tide governments, 247 agrarian policy and rural conflicts Argentina, 253–255 Bolívia, 255–257 Ecuador, 261–263 Paraguay, 259 political priority, 253 Uruguay, 257 agribusiness expansion and pesticides spread, 248 glyphosate, 248 “glyphosate consensus”, 247 pesticide use, 250 primary exports, 249 Policies of conditioning payment, 78 Policymakers, 99 Political and social coercion, 107 Political and social violence, 106

Political attitudes, 186, 187, 200 Political conflicts, 99 Political Constitution of the Republic, 55 Political economy, 105 Politics of death, 103 Politics of gender, 103 Possessions, 105 Poverty, 1 Poverty conditions, 100 Poverty rates, 100 Power, categories of, 96 Precariousness, 149, 157, 158, 160 Pregnancy Allowance for Social Protection (AUE), 156 Primary education, 77 development, 78 Private matter, 97 Public and private spheres, 97 Public health, 107 Public insecurity, 97 Public policies, 77, 126 Public services, 88 Q Quality assessment programs, 67 R Racial Discrimination, 177 Racial inequalities Afro-descendant population, 168, 171–174 characteristics, 169 COVID-19 pandemic, 174 culture of privilege, 169 economic and social crisis, 169 economic and social development, 168 economic growth, 168 equality trilogy, 168, 169 ethnic-racial gaps, 174 ethnic-racial inequalities, 170 field of education affirmative action policies, 176–182 tertiary education, 177, 178 universal policies, 176, 177 intersectionality approach, 170, 171 Latin America, 182 national statistical systems, 182 political context, 173 poverty, 173 public agenda, 167 quality of services, 175 recognition, 171, 172

Index rights and development, 169 rights-based approach, 175 significant process, 174 social and labor market, 173 social and power relations, 170 social inequality, 167, 170 social policies, 175, 176 socioeconomic conditions, 174 socioeconomic stratum, 170 structuring axes, 170 visibility, 171, 172 Racism, 96 Regional Agenda for Inclusive Social Development, 175 Regional Coordinating Bodies of Education, 55 Regional Report on Human Development, 151 Re-masculinization, 104 Remote education, 87 Republican civilization, 21 Resource distribution, 96, 100 Resuming in-person schooling, 88 Resyndicalization, 18 Revolutionary movements, 99 Rural inequalities, 247 Rural poverty, 255, 258, 261 S Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua, 99 SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, 76 Scarring effect, 76 School experience, 76, 82–86 School selection, 83, 84 Secondary education, 76 academic result, 82 admission, 83, 84 appreciation of educational offering, 84 attendance rate, 79 bachilleratos, 85 characteristics, 83 characterize, 81 city and inequality, 83 development and diversity, 86 in directions, 78 distribution of social positions, 82 diversification, 83 educational continuity, 85 ENES, 82 enrollment in state and private establishments, 83 establishments, 82, 84 expansion, 82, 83

273 fragmentation, 83, 87 graduation rate, 81 higher education, 82, 84 information and internalization of limits, 86 knowledge and skills, 82 in Latin America, 79 levels of education and multiple debates, 78 location, 85 lower and upper levels, 78 massification process, 82 music orientation, 85 school selection, 83, 84 segmentation and school experience, 82–86 segregation processes, 83 student’s residence, siblings or friends, 85 technical secondary schools, 85 trajectory, 78 type of institution, 82 type of orientation, 85 Secondary Education Evolution Report, 80 Secretariat for the Promotion of Racial Equality Policies (SEPPIR), 178 Segregation processes, 83 Self-blame, 88 Senso stricto, 99 Separate spheres, 104 Sexist social norms, 96 Sexual abuse, 97 Sexual acts, 96 Sexual division of labor, 104 Sexual slavery, 99 Sexual violence, 98 Slain women, 97 Social acceptance, 106 Social and economic injustices, 97 Social categories, 86 Social citizenship, 15, 19 Social development, 99 Social disorganization, 95 Social exclusion, 106 Social fabric, 108 Social groups, 87 Social imaginary persists, 81 Social inclusion programs, 78 Social inequalities, 2, 4, 9 academia, 208 adult-centric dynamics, 219 adult-centric social dynamics, 219 agricultural sector, 228 analysis model, 235–237 Argentina, 218

274 Social inequalities  (Cont) challenge, 207 comparative analysis, 237–239 comparative institutionalist theory, 232 conceptual and political limitations, 211 conditional transfer programs, 209 COVID-19 pandemic, 206 demand and supply factors, 226 dimensions, 207 diversity, 207, 221, 229 economic cycles, 231 economic efficiency, 226 economic growth model, 233 educational, 217, 218 education system, 211 employment segmentation typology, 239 employment segments, 240 equality-oriented policies, 220 exclusive inclusion, 208 feminist socioeconomics, 232 formal and informal sectors, 234 generational experiences, 211–213 global economy, 231 gross domestic product, 233 groups of countries, 229 higher education, 229 inclusive exclusion, 208 income distribution, 210 informal employment, 229 information/explained variance, 228 in-person contact, 220 intersectional approach, 206 labour market, 205, 225, 226, 240 labour market segmentation, 230, 232 labour productivity, 233 labour segmentation, 241 Latin America, 218 local/national configurations, 231 logics, 206 media, 208 methodology, 235–237 national and international organizations, 206 national contexts, 230 paradoxes/opposing tendencies, 209 politics, 208 poverty, 208 pre- and post-distributive policies, 234 principal component factor analysis, 228 public agenda, 208 public policy, 205, 220 sector, 233 segment, 239, 241

Index segmentation literature, 232 segmentation theory, 231, 232 social and political dynamics, 205 social characteristics, 231 social dynamics, 206 social expenditure, 233 social indicators, 210 social issue, 208 social justice, 226 social models, 240 social policies, 233 social research, 225 social space, 228 socio-economic contexts, 241 socio-economic distances, 226 socio-economic inequalities, 225 socio-economic processes, 226 socio-political improvement actions, 230 stigmatization, 219 structural heterogeneity, 233 times of pandemic, 214–216 transnational comparative analysis, 230 types, 209 uncoordinated informal economy, 234 unemployment/poverty, 205 youth experiences, 205 youth labor, 216, 217 Socialism, 25 Social organization, 96 Social policy, 139, 175 Social, political, and cultural hierarchies, 102 Social protection, 125–127, 129 Social regime, 101 Social relations, 108 Social security, 129 Social system, 96 Social tolerance, 106 Societal level, 96 Socio-cultural effect, 105 Socioeconomic composition, 3 Socio-educational policies, 88 Socio-political agendas, 106 Sociopolitical and economic assessment, 213 Solidarity, 104, 108 South America corporations, pesticide market, 247 glyphosate choice, 252 glyphosate use, 252 pesticides use, 250 Pink Tide, 247 soy production, 251 urban and rural populations, 248 Spanish University Strategy 2015, 64

Index State’s commissions or omissions, 106 Structural heterogeneity, 225, 226, 230, 231, 233, 235, 240 Structural inequality, 5, 96 Student profile, 79 Subnational governments, 124, 129, 137, 138 Systematic violations, 99 Systemic gender-based crimes, 96 T Tax exemptions, 98 Teacher training, 76, 78, 81 Technical secondary schools, 85 Threats, 96 Torture, 99 Toxic masculinity, 105 Traditional families, 84 Traditional gender roles, 104 Traditional morality, 104 Traditional roles, 104 Transdisciplinary approach, 7 Transgenic soybeans, 251, 252, 258 Transnational companies, 251 Trophies, 105 U UNICEF/FLACSO Report, 81 UNICEF-LACRO study, 83 United Fruit Company, 98 United Soy Republic, 251

275 Universal Child Allowance (AUH), 156 Universalization, 20 University Reform Law (LRU), 62 V Venezuelan society, 17 Vestibular, 82 Victim-perpetrator relationship, 97 Violence constitute socially, 96 and inequality, 98–103 vs. women, 96–98 Violent acts, 102 Visibilization, 21 W Ward’s method, 237 “Wars on drugs”, 104 Wealth distribution, 100 Webometrics, 62 Welfare policies, 101 Western Hemisphere, 99 WhatsApp, 88 World Values Survey (WVS), 188, 197 World Word II, 99 Y Yasuní movement, 262