Neoliberalism and its eff ects on labour: El Tren Blanco and the Argentinian cartoneros

Abstract

Th is article analyses the fi lm documentary El Tren Blanco that protagonises
and dignifi es the cartoneros − unemployed Argentine workers who, in order to
survive, resort to the informal work of collecting recyclable material from refuse in the streets of the larger cities. It also places into context the visible emergence of the cartoneros as new social actors in 2002, under the aegis of the country’s neoliberal reforms of the 1990s which culminated in the 2001 crisis. Finally, the paper discusses the aporias of informal work, which both inserts and segregates, as well as its self-reproduction.