Capitalismo de plataforma, (micro)finanças e a relação dialética entre controle e resistência no trabalho dos microempreendedores da Sulanca

• Ano de defesa: 2020
• Autor(a) principal: Siqueira, Érica Souza
• Orientador(a): Diniz, Eduardo Henrique, Pozzebon, Marlei
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Palavras-chave em Português: Fintechs sociais; Plataformas digitais; Trabalho precário; LPT; Microcrédito
• Palavras-chave em Inglês: Social fintech; Digital platfform; Labor precarity; Microcredit
• Link de acesso: https://hdl.handle.net/10438/28920

In this thesis I tried to bring digital financial platforms, in the figure of Social Fintechs, closer to the set of platforms that seek to centralize control over precarious work while keeping it decentralized, individualized and fragmented. In this way, I develop a theoretical model that considers that, when taking microcredit at Social Fintechs, the precarious worker (in the figure of the microentrepreneur) enters into a credit-labor relationship, from which the financial capital will extract surplus value. Once this relationship has been established, a set of control mechanisms is undertaken by Social Fintechs, through its digital platforms (online and offline components), so that this worker keeps producing, paying installments and renewing the loan. To build this model I conducted two studies with different strategies. The first one, an instrumental case study, with one Social Fintech to understand what are the mechanisms that aim to centralize control over labor and keep it decentralized, individualized, fragmented. The second one, a critical and focused ethnography, with the microentrepreneurs of Sulanca, who are workers in the second largest garment industry in Brazil, located in the countryside of Pernambuco state. The aim of the second study was to understand how microentrepreneurs organize and resist the centralization of control over their labor. For the interpretation of collected data, in both studies, I used the critical hermeneutic method. The results point to control mechanisms (entrepreneurship, surveillance and centralization) that are grouped in the process that I called Labor Platformization. On the other hand, I show that even in the face of decentralized and individualized work, there is a collective organization, based on solidarity, which reduces the feeling of precarity and presents several mechanisms of resistance to its platformization. These resistance mechanisms (class identification, cooperation, invisibility, visibility and adaptation) make up what I called the Collectively Coordinated Process of Decentralization of Labor. The dialectical relationship between control and resistance, or between labor platformization and collectively coordinated process of decentralization of work is permeated by contradictions. This research contributes to literature on financialization, while showing how the financial capitalist puts his capital in circulation and seeks to actively control the production of value. It also contributes to the research program related to the “Labor Process Theory”, since the control and resistance model developed here primarily seeks to analyze a new form of labor subsumption, other than waged workers on the factory floor, at the same time it seeks to demonstrate how workers in the face of control over their labor develop mechanisms of resistance, objective and subjective.