Paper short abstract:

By outlining generational and spatial (dis)connexions between a former industrial working class and low-qualified retail workers in the urban area of the Great Valparaíso (Chile), this paper explores processes of local class and gender formations in contemporary de-industrialized landscapes.

Paper long abstract:

Unlike Central America where the advent of the new international division of labour became a source of cheap labour for the global north, in Chile the industry lost the relevance that once had. The Chilean process of de-industrialization was promoted right after the coup d’ Etat in 1973 when, despite technological dependence, there was a relatively consolidated industrial landscape fostered by 30 years of ECLAC - lead ‘developmental state’. As the ‘laboratory of neoliberalism’ in the Latin American region, the industry almost disappeared in favour of extractive and service sectors. Such economic shift transformed urban spaces and workers’ subjectivities: in the vacant lands of industries are now settled shopping centres and low-income Chileans started to identify themselves as part of the middle-class.

Through life stories and ethnographic vignettes, this presentation outlines generational and spatial (dis)connexions between a former industrial working class and contemporary low-qualified retail workers in the urban area of the Great Valparaíso. It argues that the new ‘service’ sectors often conceived as evidence of Chilean contemporary ‘middle-classness’ indeed compose the contemporary working classes and is generationally connected to its previous expressions in both, formal and informal sectors.