Toda vereda de roça vai descambar na cidade": o trabalho dos galegos/crediaristas

Abstract

The work psychology has traditionally given emphasis to studies and interventions concerning legally and institutionally recognized crafts and organizations. However, in Brazil, there is a variety of workers operating in dissident activities, pursuing their own economic insertions. In most cases, situated in the informal spectrum, these insertions are unassisted and made invisible and precarious. The Work Social Psychology has committed to take a discerning look at these activities, placing them on a wider discussion in the world of work, and along with these workers, has sought to reflect on contributory strategies to improve and transform these people work and life conditions. The current research, based on this, had as an interest to study about the work practices of a category of informal laborers, popularly known as galegos or crediaristas, emphasizing their systematic processes that are created from the labor actions and experiences from these workers. The population group of this research is composed of galegos from the town of Pio IX, located in Piauí’s countryside, who migrate to various Brazilian cities to work and guarantee means of survival to themselves and their families. Our investigative proposal is set on a theoretical-methodological basis which is supported on the intersection of knowledge from the fields of Work Social Psychology and ethnographic research. In the light of the current debates in the field of the Work Social Psychology, we emphasize as discussion subjects in this research, the ruralities, the laboral migration processes and the insertion and permanence in the informality scope, as they fundamentally permeate this practice and the involved people’s lives. And by the thought of deepening the comprehension of the activity practiced by this group of workers – and how it refracts in their way of living – we chose to conduct a study with ethnographic inspiration, using the participant observation as a favored research strategy. Subsidized by the interface between Work Social Psychology and ethnographic research, this research resulted in an effort to systematize the everyday laboral life of these workers and the identification of their main strategies used by them to “create” work, set on a discussion concerning the Brazilian working scenario and movements in the working world.