The Legality Nexus: the legal endogeneity of Brazilian labor rules

Autores: Josiane da Silva Oliveira Santiago, Edson Ronaldo Guarido Filho, Diego Maganhoto Coraiola

Informações

Sessão 13: 16h00-17h30 - Sala 107 - Bloco C - Térreo
Coordenadora: Janaina Penalva, Universidade de Brasília, Brasil.

Resumo

This paper unpacks the process of legal endogeneity in the Brazilian field of labor relations. We analyze how the engagement of public and private social actors in the social construction of law produces a temporary nexus among actors’ positions, practices, and interpretations that brings together co-created notions of authority, legitimacy, and responsibility. We define the law as a projection of networked relations among actors, actions, and understandings. Our focus was on the regulatory changes on the use of electronic devices for controlling working hours. These changes brought about new obligations to employers, employees, and labor inspectors as well as new organizational practices. We collected the data from three different sources: (1) interviews with 26 individuals from the legal and organizational fields to understand the legal ambiguity in the field, (2) legal documentary data from federal labor courts (136 court cases), to illustrate judicial deference to new procedures, and from Federal Ministry of Labor and Employment and other official agencies, to illustrate legal prescriptions, and (3) survey data, to capture perceptions from different labor unions, understood as legal interpreters and collective mobilizers. These findings add two major contributions. First, we introduce the concept of legality nexus as a temporary field articulation among actors’ positions, practices, and interpretations, looking at the social construction of legal content intrinsically attached to the construction and legitimation of actors, authorities, and formal acts. Second, we identify three mechanisms involved in the structuration of the legality nexus: (i) legal downgrade, (ii) legal empowerment, and (iii) enforcement outsourcing.

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