Collective Identity, the State and Politics: Understanding Working-Class Organisations in Today’s Argentina

Abstract

An analysis of the current state and political horizons of working-class organisationsin Argentina can be developed along two intersecting lines. In the first, we have tradeunions representing workers in the formal sector, which accounts for about half ofthe country’s working population. In the second, we have social movements, based inboth the urban and rural space, representing poor and informal workers. These twolines often run parallel to one another but also intersect and merge at different pointsfollowing the cycles of capital accumulation and crisis typical of a peripheral counttry.