Precarity and the State in Latin America

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

The panel examines the relationship between precarity and the state in Latin America. The focus is on the role of the state in contributing to precarity and structural vulnerabilities in different areas (e.g., migration, labor, unemployment, access to services, criminalization, privatization and security) in different countries. The panel also examines what the state becomes in relation to precarious subjects. In other words, in producing precarious subjects (often in the name of security, crime suppression, fiscal responsibility, “community”), what relationship does the state assume in relation to precarious subjects and how do subjects respond? What qualities and capacities does the state take on or discard?

Sub Track

• Violence and (In)security

Individual Presentations

• Precarious Obligations and the re-making of water landscapes in Northeast Brazil - Andrea Ballestero

• Requesting, Considering, and Deciding: Deferred Action and the Discretionary State - Susan Bibler C Coutin, University of California/Irvine

• The Transformative Effects of Multi-layered Precarity: Experiences of Liminally Legal Central American Immigrant Workers - Cecilia Menjivar, University of Kansas

• Proof of Poverty: Monitoring and Moral Precarity in “Post-Neoliberal” Peru - Kristin J Skrabut, Harvard University

Discussant

• Daniel M Goldstein, Rutgers University