Rural areas continue to be a landscape of persistent poverty in the 21st century, imprinting marked social inequalities on the rural landscape of our continent. The in-depth study of the multiple causes and processes that generate this situation is central to the concerns and contemporary agenda of the social sciences and international organizations (FAO, 2018; ECLAC, 2016; Kay, 2007; Rubio, 2018).

At the beginning of the new century, these inequalities took on new forms due to the accelerated development of capitalism in agriculture and the consequent restructuring of agricultural production on a global scale. This is expressed, among other phenomena, in changes in the world of work, forms of employment, and the articulation of labor markets, which reinforce and consolidate the dynamics of inequalities present in rural societies (C. de Grammont and Lara Flores, 2010).

The application of neoliberal principles to rural development has led to an increasing concentration of land and other natural resources in the hands of corporate capital and a decline in the quality of employment and living conditions for farm laborers (Kay, 2016). Large-scale capital is encroaching on primary production, strengthening agricultural value chains, and reshaping the accumulation and valorization chains of capital for large agribusinesses (Bendini, 2014; Friedland, 2001). The neoliberal model of capital accumulation is shifting its focus from nation-states to transnational spaces, resulting in the increasing integration of agricultural economies on a global scale (McMichael, 2004; Barbosa Cavalcanti, 2015). To achieve this, large agri-food exporting companies are developing intense processes of productive and commercial restructuring, and of transnationalization or international association (Benencia and Quaranta, 2002; Bendini and Steimbreger, 2005).

This new global agri-food regime is characterized by a profound transformation of trade, a new international division of labor, new institutional frameworks, and certain reconfigurations of power relations (Friedmann, 2000). In developing countries, there is a shift towards exports of primary products to achieve greater competitiveness in international markets, mainly through a conversion to “non-traditional products” (Friedland, 1994; Kay, 2016). This process is accompanied by trends towards the progressive integration of food production, distribution, and consumption into the industrial organization (Entrena Durán, 2015).

These changes alter the landscape of rural worlds in Latin America and modify the profile of rural and agricultural households, as well as workers, producing new phenomena of inequality and new and greater vulnerabilities.

One consequence of these transformations is the deepening of the heterogeneity of the Latin American agricultural production structure and labor market. Large sectors of small family farmers, peasants, and landless rural populations swell the ranks of the continent's rural poor and are increasingly dependent on wage labor (Reinecke and Faiguenbaum, 2016). This situation is exacerbated by the emergence of new forms of labor intermediation, which generally lead to greater worker mobility, often under illegal conditions, further intensifying the conditions of labor exploitation (Sánchez Saldaña, 2006; Quaranta and Fabio, 2011; Bendini, Trpin, and Steimbreger, 2012; Lara Flores and Sánchez Saldaña, 2015).

These moves accompany deeper changes in rural households, which modify their ways of life, employment and survival strategies, causing a social change of magnitude in rural areas, which are reflected, for example, in the processes of de-agrarianization, the increase in non-agricultural employment and the growing territorial mobility of the population in search of job opportunities (C. de Grammont, 2009 and 2017; Quaranta, 2016; Contreras Motola, 2017).

Studies conducted within the framework of previous CLACSO Working Groups show how the combination of wage labor with the remarkable advance of technology and innovations only produced a small percentage of skilled jobs but failed to improve working conditions or the remuneration of the majority of workers, among whom there are groups of extreme vulnerability based on their gender, ethnicity or race (C. de Grammont and Lara Flores, 2010; Lara Flores and Sánchez Saldaña, 2015).

This new phase of capitalist development in agriculture was based on the plundering of natural resources and the displacement of indigenous communities and peoples from their lands, and also on the exploitation of workers from all over the continent who, with their labor power, created the value and wealth accumulated by large transnational agricultural companies (Riella and Mascheroni, 2015).

This led to a “dramatic precarization” of rural labor (Kay, 2016) and resulted in workers, from all ethnic and racial backgrounds across the continent, many of them migrants, receiving virtually no benefits and continuing to live in highly vulnerable social conditions, while remaining politically and socially invisible to the rest of their fellow citizens (Riella and Mascheroni, 2015). The weak institutional framework in the region offers no social guarantees to workers and becomes a significant factor in the increasingly asymmetrical and indecent nature of labor relations (Lara Flores and Sánchez Saldaña, 2015; Marinakis, 2014).

These processes generate new social inequalities in rural areas, which overlap with and reinforce existing inequalities. In rural labor markets, there is increasing differentiation among workers and growing job insecurity. The vulnerability of their households increases, as they suffer the consequences of the interconnectedness and overlapping of inequalities from different sources. Rural poverty persists, affecting almost half of the region's population, and a quarter even live in extreme poverty (ECLAC, 2018).

In the rural world, to understand the existing inequalities, it is crucial to consider the condition of ethnicity, race, gender and/or generation, since the social origin of the population often acts as a mediator of the vectors of inequality present, such as access to land, work, infrastructure, connectivity or services (ECLAC, 2018; FAO, 2018).

The research carried out by GT made it possible to discuss how rural labor markets in our continent constitute a main driver of the reproduction of social vulnerabilities and a space of fragilities, injustice and discrimination, in which differences of class, gender, race and ethnicity deepen and multiply, affecting all our societies (Riella and Mascheroni, 2015).

This context presents urgent challenges for academic research and collective action, making it necessary to delve deeper into the complexity of contemporary rural society and recent social changes in these areas. The proposed working group, comprised of 58 researchers from 12 countries, aims to reflect, from a continental perspective, on three central themes:

-the forms that the transformation processes of rural employment markets take in Latin America, with emphasis on the heterogeneity of work and the precariousness of the working conditions of agricultural workers.

- the vulnerability profiles and the interconnectedness of social inequalities among rural workers and households, and how these overlap and reinforce class inequalities and access to resources.

- the responses that have been given from public policies and social organizations to these problems.

Rural studies in Latin America have a long history of concern and interest regarding agricultural labor and social inequalities in rural areas. A key academic forum for these debates is the Latin American Association of Rural Sociology (ALASRU), to which the vast majority of the Working Group members belong.

Early works on the subject focus their concern on the living and working conditions of populations subjugated by extensive production systems that tied the workforce to territories, such as hacienda and plantation systems, and further south on the continent with cattle ranches (Chonchol, 1994).

With the rise of nation-states and attempts at agrarian reform in several Latin American countries, these systems gave way to more modern capitalist enterprises integrated into different agri-food value chains (Bendini and Lara Flores, 2014). However, the living conditions of rural inhabitants and workers did not improve and, in many cases, even deteriorated; thus, high levels of poverty and precarious employment became the main characteristics of these social formations.

In the 1990s, the implementation of neoliberal principles in agriculture deepened these processes, highlighting that social inequalities and poverty in Latin America are linked to a lack of opportunities in rural areas, infrastructure and social service deficits, limited connectivity, and, in particular, the connection of the rural population to the labor market. The intense migration of rural populations to cities failed to alleviate these trends and generated new inequalities in rural society, partly due to the selective nature of these migration patterns. To understand these processes, a number of studies focus on the specific characteristics of work in rural areas, highlighting, among other phenomena, the predominance of temporary employment and day labor, the importance of labor intermediation, piece-rate or productivity-based remuneration systems associated with low income levels, the difficulties for union organization and collective action, the incorporation of women into wage labor, quality demands and their effects on employment, the multiple activities and occupations of rural families, and labor migration. (Bonanno and Barbosa Cavalcanti, 2011; Neiman, 2003 and 2016; Neiman and Quaranta, 2013; C. de Grammont and Martínez Valle, 2009; Sánchez Gómez and Lara Flores, 2015; Sánchez Saldaña, 2012)

With the beginning of the 21st century, interest in delving deeper into these topics has been renewed, based on a new phase of capitalist penetration in agriculture, which, within the framework of the generalized processes unleashed by globalization, causes substantial transformations in the organization of production, agricultural work, and the working life of the rural population in general (Kay, 2009; Akram-Lodhi and Kay, 2012).

A pioneering FAO study in 2012 placed the issue of the labor market and rural poverty at the center of academic discussion, giving new impetus to research on this topic (Soto Baquero and Klein, 2012). This study highlights that the characteristics of the labor market in rural areas largely explain the poverty conditions of the population living and working in these spaces.

These characteristics are associated with multiple weaknesses in the design and implementation of public policies related to the labor market, such as labor legislation, the minimum wage, social protection, working conditions, unionization, discrimination based on gender or ethnicity, labor migration, and child labor. Overcoming these labor disadvantages through policies designed and implemented to address their specific needs is a path with high potential for reducing the high levels of rural poverty (Klein, 2012). Thus, researchers and members of social movements paid particular attention both to public policies aimed at expanding social citizenship and labor rights for rural workers, and to the social movements and organizations of agricultural workers across the continent.

In parallel, within this context, academic production is emerging around the importance of non-agricultural work in rural areas as an emerging element of contemporary rurality. The growth in the proportion of non-agricultural employment and income among rural residents is a phenomenon that expresses global processes of social change, while also reflecting a broad heterogeneity resulting from existing differences in rurality (C. de Garammont, 2009 and 2017; Camarero, 2017).

This line of research seeks to understand the dynamics of rural work within the framework of the new forms that the social division of labor is taking as a result of the increasing integration of rural and urban areas. Under these social conditions, the labor market integration of the population and households increasingly combines agricultural and non-agricultural work, as well as forms of self-employment and wage labor. Depending on the prevailing territorial conditions, these integrations can reflect both employment opportunities to improve families' capital accumulation and diversification strategies aimed at ensuring family survival (Riella and Mascheroni, 2018).

These reflections, related to the studies of the “new rurality” in our continent, are linked to the debates on the processes of defamiliarization, de-peasantization and de-agrarianization present in the literature produced in Anglo-Saxon and European contexts referring to experiences both of capitalism in advanced capitalist countries and in countries of Africa, Asia and Oceania (Bryceson, Kay and Mooij, 2000; Camarero and Oliva, 2016).

The intertwining of agrarian transformations and rural change processes redefines emerging inequalities in rural areas and poses new challenges for academics, governments, and members of social movements. Our Working Group aims to continue and deepen its lines of research on the social and labor vulnerabilities of the rural world by addressing the inequalities that operate through prevailing labor market conditions, according to the prevailing characteristics of these territories, such as scenarios marked by re-primarization, de-familyization, or de-agrarianization.

The hypothesis guiding our research is that agricultural and rural work reproduces, reconfigures, and reinforces existing inequalities in the social order. Therefore, it is important to study and shed light on current labor market processes to understand contemporary rural life and the inequalities it generates. Understanding these phenomena and how they interconnect allows us to identify mechanisms for intervening in these territories with public policies and collective actions that promote more equitable and inclusive rural development.

The processes described unfold at different paces and with varying foundations in each country, generating specific consequences and reconfigurations beyond their common features, which are linked to globalization and the transnationalization of markets (Gras, 2013). Therefore, it is vital to study how global trends operate at the local level in each country and specific context to account for the diverse social, economic-productive, institutional, political, and conflictual matrices present in these territories.

To address these problems, as mentioned in the previous point, we propose working on three thematic axes. The first is linked to agricultural work and labor markets; the second to rural households, vulnerabilities, and inequality; and finally, the third to public policies and collective action.

In this way, the proposed Working Group seeks to contribute to the analysis of emerging rural inequalities, largely stemming from rural and agricultural labor markets, with an emphasis on a comparative perspective that addresses the specific territorial characteristics present throughout Latin America. The accumulated experience of collaborative work and research among the Working Group members guarantees a substantial contribution to finding more effective ways to combat rural poverty in the rural territories of our continent.