The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated inequalities inherent in hegemonic financialized capitalism worldwide, intensifying the contrast between the economic and financial concentration of capital and the erosion of working conditions for large segments of the workforce. In Latin America, this manifested as a greater impact on employment and income for the informal/precarious segment of the working class, for women, and for marginalized ethnic groups.

Our main purpose is to establish a CLACSO group of Latin American researchers from various universities across the continent to generate knowledge and foster ongoing reflection on social inequalities from an intersectional perspective, considering social class, gender, and ethnicity in shaping the social structure of each country in the region, in relation to the type of economic development and the direction of state intervention. By forming an organized and formalized network, we will focus on creating opportunities for continuous exchange of research and training among different countries and between generations of researchers, both established and emerging (master's and doctoral students).

This group, comprised of several research teams from the region, aims to address, in an interdisciplinary manner, one of the main problems on the regional public agenda: the measurement and analysis of inequalities, their cumulative and combined nature from a socio-historical perspective, critically reviewing public policies aimed at reducing inequalities in post-pandemic contexts. This process requires examining these problems not only from their own intrinsic relational characteristics, but also from exogenous factors, within the framework of the conditions of reproduction that individuals generate in their economic spheres: the conditions of peripheral insertion into the global economic exchange system, the effects of pandemics, climate change, armed conflicts, and environmental disasters. These are necessary for a broader understanding of these current problems in our societies.

Furthermore, this group will bring together a set of researchers with a history of collaboration, both in the field of scientific research and in reflection on public policies or social intervention, taking advantage of this initiative to add new members.

Among the group's goals, we highlight the following: 1. To delve deeper into the multidimensional challenges of analyzing social structure in Latin American societies based on the intersectionality of class, ethnicity, gender, and territorial segregation. 2. To recover the theoretical development on social classes to understand how social inequality affects them, what type of class structure exists in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, and their recent reconfigurations in relation to models of economic accumulation and the direction of state intervention. 3. To analyze, from a comparative perspective, the opportunities and constraints of each country for inclusive development and processes of equalization in the social structure. 4. To consider social classes from a Latin American perspective in their intersectionality with gender and ethnic origin, based on theories and methods that allow for a critical analysis of the social structures of the countries in the region. 5. To promote the development of mixed-methods strategies, with the objective of systematizing and harmonizing secondary quantitative data sources with the aim of comparing countries. and qualitative techniques that recover the socio-historical cultural particularities of our countries.

There is abundant information on the causes and characteristics of income and employment disparities in the region, but less information exists on the processes of social class structuring in relation to gender and ethnicity, which imply cumulative and combined inequality, producing and reproducing subalternities with deeper structural roots. We also know little about how inequality is experienced and perceived in different countries, and even less from a comparative perspective. Similarly, few studies show what it means to be part of the privileged middle class, the lower middle class, formal or precarious workers, or elites in our diverse realities, and what practices are associated with each class. Likewise, there is little research on how gender and ethnicity influence the processes of social stratification.

We are motivated to study the conceptual and empirical problems arising from inequality processes within the social structure and how inequality is experienced in different contexts, as input for rethinking public policies aimed at achieving equality in each country. We also examine how inequality processes affect citizens' legitimate aspirations regarding their rights, and the expansion of conditions for greater, more comprehensive democracy for social actors who tend to participate less in the social wealth generated, due to the very conditions of the concentration of surplus appropriation.

Why build a CLACSO group on inequalities?

Because Latin America is an unequal region where inequality does not decrease proportionally to growth, where a high concentration of wealth persists in the upper deciles, and income gaps have not narrowed. However, the processes of inequality occurring in the region are not homogeneous according to social class, gender, and ethnic origin.

Because it is necessary to investigate the effects on the class structure of economic development models of different directions.

Because studies of inequality generally focus only on income, leaving social classes and their defining conditions, opportunities, and life experiences unexamined.

Because sociological and social science reflection on inequality in the region must be measured and addressed after a pandemic in a comparative way: making visible both specificities and common patterns.

Promote an analysis of inequality, not only focused on social class; but interrelating the analysis with gender, ethnicity, territory, producing knowledge that overcomes unidirectional views of reality and integrates multiple processes of subalternization into the current debate.

Because comparative studies between countries in the region are necessary, in which aspects related to inequality of class, gender and ethnic origin are reflected upon.

Because models of economic accumulation and the orientation of state intervention, even with strong structural constraints, influence the profile of the social structure and the network of inequalities combined with social class, gender, and ethnicity. The first decade of the 21st century saw progressive/national-popular governments, within the framework of economic growth supported by a favorable external sector, grant greater centrality to the State in economic development and processes of inclusion and expansion of the middle and working classes, as well as subordinate social groups. In contrast, the governments of the late neoliberal consensus that followed recreated conditions of increasing marginalization, downward mobility of the middle classes, and a resurgence of hierarchies and oppression against women, gender non-conformists, Indigenous peoples, and Afro-descendants. In the post-pandemic era, changes in the region's political landscape, with the arrival of progressive-inspired fronts to power in several countries, present challenges for analyzing the repercussions on inequality/equality, the opportunities and limitations for inclusive development that considers the rights of historically marginalized groups and the protection of the environment.

The theoretical approach underpinning the CLACSO Group's project is the analysis of social classes in conjunction with gender and ethnicity. The project is based on the premise that social classes constitute a central explanatory factor for inequality in the material conditions of existence, people's lived experiences, and the dynamics of collective action in contemporary Latin American societies. What characterizes class analysis, and makes it a primary explanatory tool for studying social inequality, is its ability to identify the causal social mechanisms that generate and reproduce it, rooted in the relations of production and distribution of surplus.

From our perspective, social classes constitute the central axis of the organization and functioning of social relations in modern societies because capitalism highlights the social differentiation of people according to their position in the economic structure. Social classes represent population groups that differ from one another based on the control or exclusion of economic resources. They provide unequal opportunities for existence for their members and constitute a field of options and limitations for action.

Social classes constitute a structural platform upon which shared experiences, forms of sociability, lifestyles, and dynamics of collective action are built. Due to their centrality in the distribution of economic power, social classes are potential bases upon which political organizations and actions develop, influencing the direction of the entire social order. However, in contemporary Latin American societies, class inequalities combine, accumulate, and intertwine with other social factors such as gender and ethnicity to explain the place that people objectively occupy in the social structure. In this Group, we maintain that both patriarchy and the colonialism of power constitute substantial sources of social inequality in contemporary societies.

The strength of this Working Group is that it seeks to analyze the intersectionality of these inequality cleavages, not replacing one with another, which has led to the proliferation of postmodern approaches to inequality that denied the role of social classes as collective actors, dissolving the structuring of power into multiple factors of social stratification, which led to the fragmentation of the social structure and with it, the disarticulation of the bases for the formation of collective actors of social emancipation.

This perspective leads us to investigate inequalities in two ways: i. intersectional inequality, because class inequality is interwoven with other cleavages such as gender and ethnicity, generating greater inequality in both quantitative and qualitative terms, defining subalternity in several simultaneous dimensions, and having deeper-rooted mechanisms; and ii. cumulative inequality, because the advantages and disadvantages of social class origins accumulate over time and across generations. We are interested in understanding why social inequalities are persistent, what factors contribute to their reproduction over time, and what mechanisms explain their intergenerational reproduction. This implies paying attention to categories of inequality such as gender, race, and ethnicity, in addition to class, and considering their interaction with other relevant variables, especially territorial ones.

One of our goals is to examine social classes from a Latin American perspective, using theories and methods that allow for a critical analysis of the region's social structures. This analysis aims to foster comparison while remaining mindful of the specificities and histories of each country. This requires delving deeper into the challenges of class analysis in Latin American societies, particularly considering elements such as ethnicity, gender, local labor markets, and informality. We are primarily motivated to study the conceptual and empirical problems arising from class inequality, social mobility, class practices and perceptions, and interclass relations—how inequality is experienced in different contexts.

Within this framework, and from a threefold perspective: comparative, socio-historical, and critical, our team proposes:

1. To promote theoretical development on social classes in the regional context in order to understand how social inequality affects and what type of class structure exists in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. To this end, we propose to revisit the contributions of the Latin American theoretical tradition on the relationship between economic development models and their effects on class structure. Within this tradition, research on the class character of marginalization and informal employment in peripheral, underdeveloped, and dependent capitalist social formations plays a prominent role. Central to this research is analyzing the role of the State, employment policies, and social policies, which decisively contribute to structuring the material living conditions of the population, the level of inequality, and the patterns of its reproduction.

2. We propose to advance comparative studies on the articulation of social classes, gender, ethnicity and racialization processes in the formation of the social structure and in processes of social stratification from a socio-historical and comparative perspective that accounts for common patterns and national specificities.

3. On a more subjective level, we are interested in understanding the forms of social and critical legitimacy that accompany inequalities, as well as the processes of (de)legitimation that lie at their root.

Thus, the project we propose involves taking up the contributions of Latin American theory on truncated economic development, dependency, colonialism and patriarchy, but incorporating new perspectives to build a current agenda to investigate the network of factors of inequality in and from Latin America.

Gender is integrally linked to the class stratification system, with the sexual and social division of labor serving as the primary connecting factor. The hierarchical and inequitable distribution of both social reproduction and production tasks among individuals based on their gender underpins the socioeconomic organization and wage inequality between genders.

The intersectionality of class, gender, and ethnicity reveals the cleavages that are articulated around social inequalities. Ethnic inequality is rooted in internal colonialism within each country because, since the conquest of the Americas, racism has served the dominant and privileged middle classes to justify the overexploitation of certain populations and to divide the working class based on ethno-racial identities that define the boundaries of the division of labor: "white," "black," "indigenous," and "mestizo." This process, known as the "racialization of class relations," based on a Eurocentric worldview, tends to place individuals with physical characteristics and cultural forms associated with Indigenous, mestizo, and Afro-descendant peoples in precarious segments of the working class.

This group proposes a theoretical approach that analyzes the intersectionality of social class, gender, and ethnicity from a triple comparative, socio-historical, and critical perspective, in order to reflect on and build knowledge that serves as input for rethinking public policies aimed at reducing the impact of inequalities in our societies.