Logistical Chokepoints, Precarious Work and Social Reproduction: Labour Conflicts and the Metabolic Rift in Ports and Airports in Brazil and Portugal

Sitting at pivotal points of globalized economies, workers in logistical chokepoints such as ports and airports should have a lot of negotiating power. Examining the spatial-historical narrative of logistics in Portugal and Brazil, this book asks why working conditions in ports and airports are still predominantly precarious. Using her own field research and qualitative studies, Anne Engelhardt analyses the work and lives of workers along materialist theoretical approaches to social reproduction, the metabolic rift, the state, and the body.

Anne Engelhardt is a research assistant in the Department of Social Sciences, Institute of Sociology, University of Göttingen