A nova fase da precarização do trabalho : o streamer como uma nova ocupação na era da informação

Abstract

The research developed here aims to understand the current changes in the world of work in what we call the “post-Fordist/neoliberal” paradigm. We know that the transformations since the 1970s have generated new trends in capitalism, among them we have the gradual disappearance of the Fordist worker, who, despite being in a rigid, inflexible model and based on the logic of factory despotism, maintained a position of stability, progress salary and a sense of career. The destruction of the Fordist-Keynesian pact deconstructed the bases for reconciling the old struggle between capital and labor and started the process of what was known as "productive restructuring", a process that, in practice, led to a dramatic decrease in companies, an increase in unemployment structural and a precariousness of work never seen before. The worker must now be flexible, always engaged and adapted to the company's needs, even if this meant, in practice, lower wages, longer working hours and employment instability. The new technologies that originated in the computer revolution allowed more efficient forms of decentralization and flexibilization of work, creating an individualistic worker, fragmented and diluted in its own precariousness, under the neoliberal discourse that the failure of the individual would be no one's fault, the not being his own, leading to the constitution of the precariat. Concomitant to these technological and labor transformations, new forms of work appear in the digital world, among them we have the figure of the streamer, a recent occupation rooted in the entertainment area that not only adopts, but emphasizes the discourse of engagement, of "entrepreneurship" and of “doing what you love” and selling yourself as an alternative to the already torn positions of formal work. Our problem here becomes explicit: is the streamer really an alternative as a work modality to precarious traditional jobs or is it itself a constituent part of the logic of deepening this precariousness, that is, the precariat? Our research has an exploratory character, of a qualitative nature, aiming at the application of semi-structured interviews. Our theoretical-methodological framework is historical-geographic materialism and the analysis methodology is the theory of everyday representations. We concluded in our research that the streamer, far from representing any escape from precariousness, is born under the logic of precariousness, having in itself the elements that constitute the precarious mind in the subjective scope; in the objective, it prescribes the main characteristics (lack of guarantees, lack of stability, absence of a career project) that precarious workers present.