Abstract
The article aims to compare the formation of an “artistic precariat” in both Brazil and Portugal, by analyzing the patterns of proletarianization of cultural production in both countries and its relation with different trajectories of collective action by new movements lead by precarious workers. Thus, we highlight the dilemma faced by precarious workers movement to transnationalize their forms of collective action. In the Brazilian case, we have particularly analyzed the actions by the movement “Arte contra a Barbárie” demanding public policies in support of culture, which staying aloof from syndicalism attained a new legislation for fostering theater in the city of São Paulo. In Portugal, we have researched the collective action that led to the creation of union-movement called “Cena” that fought against the loss of labor rights, in a context marked by the adoption of austerity measures taken by the Portuguese government in agreement with the European Union. The limits to the transnationalization of the claims of these precarious workers’ groups in both countries will be problematized in the light of the idea, which is very present in the new “neopolanyian” studies of labor, that the process of mobilization of precarious workers in the global South would point to the advent of an "embryonic" countermovement that would tend to burgeon as neoliberal commodification expands the threats to the working class on a world scale.
Keywords:
Precariat; Labor movement; Labor union action; Commodification of work