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Week 14: Migration, Urbanisation and Labour Movements

Lecture powerpoint

Seminar Questions

  • What successes and problems did rapid industrialisation bring to Brazil between the 1940s and the 1960s?
  • What is "populism"? Is it a useful term?
  • How successful were the demands of Brazilian organised labour in the middle years of the twentieth century?
  • How did those demands interact with the state?
  • To what extent was the Vargas state able to co-opt and incorporate Brazilian workers?
  • From the perspective of organised labour, did 1945-54 look different from 1930-45? How? Why?
  • How did internal migration shape urban life and working-class politics in the Brazilian southeast?

Seminar Reading

•Joel Wolfe, "The Faustian Bargain Not Made: Getulio Vargas and Brazil's Industrial Workers, 1930-1945." Luso-Brazilian Review, Vol 31:2 (Getulio Vargas & his Legacy), pp. 77-95 [this is easily available on JSTOR through the library webpage]

John D. French, The Brazilian workers' ABC: class conflict and alliances in modern São Paulo (1992), Ch 5, “Popular Getulismo and Working Class Organization,” 132-151 [on library scans page]

Paulo Fontes, Migration and the Making of Industrial Sao Paulo. Duke University Press, 2016. "Introduction." [E-book at Library]


Further reading:

•Joel Wolfe, Working women, working men: São Paulo and the rise of Brazil's industrial working class, 1900-1955 (1993), Chapter 3, “Class Struggle versus Conciliação: the Estado Novo, 1935-42,” pp 70-93. [on library scans page]

Joel Wolfe, Working women, working men: São Paulo and the rise of Brazil's industrial working class, 1900-1955 (1993), Introduction, pp1-5, & Chapter 4: "World War II and the Struggle for Citizenship, 1942-1945," pp 94-124