Advanced Diploma in Popular and Feminist Economies

• CLASS 1: Opening class. Work and lives without wages, beyond informality.
  
  Teachers: Cristina Cielo FLACSO-Ecuador; Alioscia Castronovo, University of Padova.
  
  In this class, we present introductory reflections on the characterization of popular economies within Latin American debates, offering a critique of the categories of informality and marginality used to conceptualize the productive and reproductive activities of large majorities of urban and rural populations in the region. We propose analyzing popular economies as a composition of subjectivities, networks, and practices that challenge the limits and boundaries of the urban, recomposing and reinventing from below the bonds of solidarity, community structures, and collective dynamics in the face of dispossession, precarization, and the progressive establishment of the neoliberal logic of individual competition as a form of social relation. Secondly, we analyze the condition of the unpaid worker and the dynamics of the multiplication of labor, exploring different perspectives on the conceptualization of the processes of labor reconfiguration in contemporary capitalism. To develop a broader notion of work and the forms of production and reproduction in "lives without wages." Focusing the analysis on the relationship between the new international division of labor, processes of accumulation, multiplication, and heterogenization of labor, as proposed by Mezzadra and Neilson. The objective of this class is to propose a broadening of the category of work and exploitation in and from popular economies to contribute to developing an anthropology of work in the current stage of crisis hegemonized by global financial capitalism. It proposes to focus on the processes of dispossession, urban and rural disputes over land, access to housing, and the advance of the agribusiness and drug trafficking frontier, as part of a renewed deployment of multiple forms of violence and dynamics of exploitation in these territories.

• CLASS 2: War on Popular Economies
  
  Teacher: Verónica Gago, IDAES-UNSAM, UBA.
  
  In this second class, we propose opening new avenues for interpreting and mapping the dynamics of popular economies within the context of an advanced, generalized regime of global war (Hardt, Mezzadra, 2024). Specifically, in this 2025 edition, we aim to analyze how articulated forms of violence are unfolding and expanding, targeting and targeting popular and feminist economies. By “war on popular economies” (Gago, 2025), we refer, on the one hand, to systematic policies that seek to destroy a network of practices and subjectivities perceived as obstacles in this moment of capital accumulation, where war itself plays a fundamental role. But, on the other hand, we examine a molecular dimension of this war, disseminated in non-institutional ways. We maintain that informal economies persist as a microcosm of realities that resist the pure logic of human capital, and at the same time, it is there that the harshest effects of the crisis are felt, revealing themselves as essential terrains for understanding contemporary forms of labor. Therefore, it is necessary to characterize the forms this struggle is taking, who its actors are, what geopolitical dynamics permeate it, what dynamics it responds to, and how self-defense practices are organized.
  
  
  
• CLASS 3: Primitive accumulation, extractivism and popular economies
  
  Teachers: Verónica Gago IDAES-UNSAM, UBA and Santiago Azzati, UBA.
  
  This class will introduce the concept of expanded extractivism and the relationship between extraction and exploitation in popular economies from a Marxist theoretical perspective, deepening the debate surrounding the processes of primitive accumulation in Marx and other authors within contemporary critical discourse. It will then propose interpretations of these processes based on concrete experiences and practices that confront the multiple forms of value extraction within the dynamics of social production and reproduction in the networks of popular and indigenous economies in Latin America.

• CLASS 1: Exploitation and extraction: popular economy and feminist economics
  
  Teachers: Verónica Gago IDAES-UNSAM, UBA and Maisa Bascuas, UBA.
  
  The class aims to introduce and discuss central issues in feminist economic critiques and the links between accumulation, exploitation, and the valorization of labor, particularly with a focus on different forms of exploitation. It also proposes an analysis of the political, reproductive, and political mobilization networks of informal economies, taking into account experiences of unionization, strikes, and criminalization. Various discussions from feminist economics have demonstrated that reproductive labor is not confined to the domestic sphere but extends to the reproduction of life in neighborhoods and communities. Many informal economies are woven and built in networks; therefore, it is vital to understand their community dimension, both historically and in their current context.
  
  
  
• CLASS 2: Perspectives from the global south: experiences of popular economies in Africa
  
  Teacher: Cristina Cielo, FLACSO-Ecuador. Visiting Professor: Chrystel Oloukoï, Seattle University.
  
  En esta clase proponemos presentar y discutir, en primer lugar, el trabajo colectivo de investigación transnacional del Urban Popular Economy Collective; en torno a las economí́as populares como territorios de operaciones. Pensamos las economí́as populares como plataformas de creación de valor alternativas que combinan prácticas económicas, formas de vida, tácticas de bienestar, estrategias de conexión, extensión y expansión para producir territorios que pueden ser habitados por las mayorí́as urbanas. La producción del valor excede lo meramente económico y crea actividades, incluye formas de cuidado mutuo, de compartir recursos y capitalizar las conexiones para operar juntes en la ciudad, a partir de la intersección entre personas, lugares y materiales para reproducir la vida. En esta oportunidad, a partir de la invitación a la Prof. Chrystel Oloukoï nos aproximaremos a una investigación sobre “economías de la noche” y propondremos un diálogo entre perspectivas latinoamericanas y los debates de las economí́as populares urbanas en África para nutrir una perspectiva que integre los debates del Sur Global.
  
  
  
• CLASS 3: Intersectionality and Expanded Reproduction
  
  Teachers: Cristina Vera, FLACSO-Ecuador and Magalí Marega, FLACSO-Ecuador
  
  This class aims to delve into the conceptual complexities of grassroots economies from the feminist perspectives of intersectionality and expanded reproduction. This perspective allows us to understand life-sustaining practices as a product of the dynamic intersection of sex/gender, class, and race within historically constructed contexts of domination. The recognition of bodily and material connections with the environment, as proposed by the perspective of expanded reproduction, broadens the intersectional approach by considering human and non-human materialities, the trajectories and interconnections for sustenance, and the modes of cooperation, negotiation, and dispute for re-existence. In this class, we present a particular approach to the intersection of feminist economics, reproductive and care studies, Black and community feminisms, and feminist political ecology.

• CLASS 1: Self-organization of work, care in territories and political subjectivation: perspectives from Colombia
  
  Teachers: Alioscia Castronovo, Università di Padova, Yenny Ramirez, UNAL.
  
  In this class, we propose to address the dynamics of self-organization in popular economies, based on ongoing ethnographic research with women's organizations linked to community care and self-managed work processes in Colombia. First, we will explore how popular sectors seek to earn a living and attempt to build "lives worth living" (Narotzky & Besnier, 2020), reflecting on the multiple ways of understanding and contesting socially produced value. Second, we propose to consider these socio-economic networks from the perspective of interdependence, blurring the boundaries and hierarchies between the productive and reproductive. Third, we will reflect on the emerging processes of political subjectivation and the production of the commons in different territories. We will place particular emphasis on the political and economic disputes of the current situation, considering it from the social uprising to the current progressive government, investigating the relationships of popular economies with social, trade union, indigenous, feminist and anti-racist struggles.
  
  
  
• CLASS 2: Crisis, revolts and popular economies in Peru
  
  Teachers: Anahí Durand, San Marcos University Peru and Víctor Miguel Castillo, UBA.
  
  In this class, we aim to delve deeper into the Peruvian experience through two approaches that allow us to explore the dynamics of social conflict from a critical perspective on the logic of informality. On the one hand, we will address the emblematic struggle related to the eviction of the La Parada street market in Lima. On the other, we will be joined by sociologist Anahí Durand—a professor at the National University of San Marcos, a member of the Working Group, and former Minister of Women in Peru—who will help us focus the debate on the popular uprisings of recent years and the authoritarian drift of the Peruvian state amidst a profound crisis of representative democracy. Based on the processes of the informal economy, we will reflect on the possibility of social transformation and a politics of emancipation linked to the search for new constituent processes that will end the cycle of political instability with a new social pact. Within this framework, a characterization of the authoritarian neoliberalism of contemporary Peru will also be developed, which is expressed in repressive and violent dynamics by the political and economic establishment.
  
  
  
• CLASS 3: New geographies of value production: popular economies, between the right to the city and platforms in Brazil
  
  Teacher: Marcia Moreno Benítez, ITESO. Visiting Professor: Felipe Magalhães, Federal University of Minas Gerais.
  
  In this class, we will analyze how financialization, informal economies, and digital platforms are reshaping urban space, which has become the subject of fourteen disputes between forces seeking to build the commons and hegemonic groups linked to neoliberalism. Using Brazil as a case study, we will explore the tensions between financial capital and the resistance strategies of subaltern networks in contemporary cities, as well as in the territories of so-called extensive urbanization. We will also address how markets are produced socially, politically, and geographically by hegemonic agents, and the role of digital platforms in the production of subjectivities within the informal economy and in the configuration of new urban geographies. This discussion will allow for a critical dialogue with informal economies in Brazil, fostering reflection on the challenges, opportunities, and forms of the commons that emerge in these disputes between logics of accumulation and resistance.

• CLASS 1: Migrant Mobilities, Retreats/Setbacks and Resistance
  
  Teacher: Alfonso Hinojosa, UMSA Bolivia; Guest Professor: Delia Colque Quillca, UMSA, Bolivia.
  
  Over the last decade, Latin America has undergone a series of profound transformations linked to population mobility. These transformations include new regional and extra-regional migration flows (most notably Venezuelan migration, with millions of people moving to neighboring and more distant countries due to the economic and political crisis), border closures resulting from Covid-19, more restrictive migration policies, the emergence of new migratory transit spaces, and the familiarization of migrants and the formation of caravans within these population flows. In these new contexts, national spaces and their borders, the cities and territories they connect, and the diverse self-organizing practices employed by people on the move lead us to consider an autonomist perspective on migration. In this context of setbacks and erosion of rights and policies, we see increased border controls, the construction of walls or trenches, expedited deportations, restrictions on access to work, health, and education, high risks at border crossings, the criminalization of migrants, the exacerbation of nationalism and, consequently, the radicalization of xenophobia, etc. In this sense, the class seeks to reflect on these new, highly restrictive contexts, rescuing and valuing the voices of the migrants themselves and their struggles and resistance. Through case studies and concrete experiences, we discuss the emergence of new migrant political subjectivities from and within popular and feminist economies in Latin America, in connection with similar global processes.
  
  
  
• CLASS 2: Popular economies in/from Bolivia: international mobilities, strategies and popular infrastructures
  
  Teachers: Nico Tassi, CIDES-UMSA - Tania Jimenez, CIDES-UMSA.
  
  What happens when working-class communities not only access global goods but also structure their own supply chains, linking themselves to Asia or other countries in the region? In this class, we will explore how merchants, drivers, mechanics, trade unions, migrants, and working-class families articulate transnational economic circuits. We will investigate the networks that allow working-class communities to participate in the global sphere through their daily practices, focusing on the infrastructures, temporalities, and geographies that crystallize in the process. In this class, we aim to explore how these circuits articulate scales, translate technical languages, reorganize family labor, and produce economic geographies that contest territorialities, senses of legality, and future horizons. These are economic networks that, while marked by tensions and limitations, compel us to rethink contemporary forms of work, trade, and development from their margins and (inter)connections.
  
  
  
• CLASS 3: Borders, popular economies and illegal economies
  
  Teachers: Ana María Morales, IDAES-UNSAM and Juan Camilo Quesada, IDAES-UNSAM.
  
  The illegal is constituted as an apparently isolated space, as a social whole that must be colonized and that lies beyond the borders of the State; however, it coexists within and with the State. Within the State's jurisdiction, it produces its own space outside of its regulations, configuring itself as a subject of discipline. This is how the “geographies of the imagination” operate, semantically detaching isolated geographical spaces from national life, establishing borders according to the presence of the State itself, assigning its roles to third-party actors, and rendering invisible the influence of the periphery, of the apparent outside, on the accumulation of the center. This was the model that sustained State intervention in rural areas with illicit crops until 2022 in Colombia: to criminalize everything that happens where “there is no State,” and which situates the production of value within the Popular Economy of these areas within a border movement, seemingly alien to the imagined world of national life. Clearly, illegal economies operate in diverse territories: rural, urban, upper-class, and also in low-income communities. However, the way they operate in each territory is not the same. This course seeks to analyze the impact of the criminalization and outlawing of certain economies and the coexistence of low-income and illegal economies. Illegal economies are not limited to drug trafficking, but also include smuggling, human trafficking, extortion, and others.

• CLASS 1: Finance and popular economies: a feminist reading of debt
  
  Teacher: Lucía Cavallero, UBA.
  
  This class presents and discusses the research published in the book "The Home as Laboratory," which summarizes and condenses the questions that arose during the pandemic. It also continues the research on the impacts of public and private debt on the daily lives of women, lesbians, transvestites, and trans people, conducted within the framework of the Feminist Research and Intervention Group (GIIF). The meeting will delve into a series of discussions related to the following questions: How did the politicization of domestic space—a historical rallying cry and achievement of feminism—impact the public policies implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic? How did this influence the perception of domestic life as a space of obligatory and unpaid labor?
  
  
  
• CLASS 2: Popular Economy and Disengagement
  
  Teachers: Alexandre Roig, IDAES-UNSAM and Santiago Azzati, UBA.
  
  The devaluation of labor and production is a consequence of financial capitalism, which initially governed through debt and now also seeks to do so from the "Cloud." The informal economy and platform work express some of the forms of labor with a hidden employer. But what subjective effects does this relationship produce? In this class, we will explore the idea of ​​a dislocated subjectivity to answer this question.
  
  
  
• CLASS 3: Disputes over institutional frameworks and public policies from the perspective of popular economies. Closing meeting.
  
  Teachers: Martha Lucia Bernal UNAL, IDAES-UNSAM, Colombia/Argentina; Angélica Sierra Gaona EIDAES /UNAL Colombia/Argentina; Hernán Vargas CLACSO Venezuela.
  
  This course aims to identify and analyze the emerging disputes and conflicts surrounding new institutional frameworks and how these translate into public policies for informal economies. Experiences in the region that have sought to guarantee institutional frameworks geared towards new forms of work highlight the disputes surrounding their meanings, measurements, and practices, as seen in the cases of the National Registry of Workers in the Informal Economy (ReNaTEP) in Argentina and the Statistical Information System for the Informal Economy (SIEP) in Colombia. Furthermore, the actions the State has promoted to transfer capital, knowledge, and rights to these sectors have not been without obstacles, tensions, and limitations. Within this context, and in light of lessons learned in the region, primarily from the experiences in Colombia, Argentina, and Venezuela, we propose key areas for discussion regarding the construction of institutional frameworks and public policies for informal economies. We will ask ourselves: What have been these difficulties and limitations? What disputes and interests are at stake? Is it possible to build institutional frameworks for informal economies within the existing state structures and frameworks? What impact does the rightward shift of some governments in the region have on policies for popular sectors and economies? Answering these questions can provide us with elements to consider and propose alternatives that contribute to the recognition, strengthening, and autonomy of popular economies in the region.

You must be registered in the CLACSO Single Registration System (SUIC) and enter your username and password. If you are not registered, click here. hereTo access the registration form, you must click the "Register" button on the webpage of the Diploma you are interested in.

Upon completion of the registration process, you will receive a confirmation in your email.

Classes will begin in April and will conclude in July 2026.

All registered participants will receive, on the first day of activities, the necessary instructions to access the classes, bibliography, and discussion forums through the CLACSO Virtual Training Space.

Accessing and navigating the Virtual Learning Environment is very simple and user-friendly. In any case, a technical and academic support team will always be available. For inquiries, you can write to [email protected]

 You must write an email with the request to [email protected] We will send you the requested certificate as soon as possible.

Exceptional criteria: In exceptional cases and within the first 20 days of starting the Higher Diploma, the student may write to [email protected] Requesting withdrawal and stating the reasons. After the case is evaluated, a response will be sent to the request. If approved, the student may resume the Higher Diploma program if a new cohort is offered the following year. After that period of time has elapsed since the start of the course, no requests will be accepted.

Money paid will only be refunded in cases where the organizing institutions decide to cancel the activity. 

Yes, the advanced diploma is certified by CLACSO. The diploma will be sent digitally and is completely free of charge.

Payment can be made in one installment, by credit card or bank transfer. We also offer the option of paying in 3 installments.

Yes. There will be discounts for students belonging to CLACSO Member Centers and CLACSO Associated Centers, for CLACSO Associate Researchers, and for all those who pay within the discount period.

You can check if you belong to a member center here: 

https://www.clacso.org/institucional/centros-asociados/

The Advanced Diploma program integrates a dynamic of asynchronous and synchronous classes. Classes are primarily asynchronous. The schedule for synchronous sessions will be communicated by the Diploma coordinator at the beginning of the program, and participation in these sessions is not a prerequisite for passing the program.