Resumo

CHASE, Jacquelyn Rhea. Migração e trabalho na fronteira agrícola. Cad. Pesqui. [online]. 1985, n.54, pp.62-72. ISSN 0100-1574.

This paper examines change and continuity in peasant women's work roles during the process of rural-urban migration in the Brazilian Amazon frontier. Data used in research are based on life histories and open-ended interviews with 30 migrant women of rural background, residing in an urban periphery in Southern Pará at the time of the field study. The changing patterns of women's economic participation are related to the growing pressures from land concentration and to the resulting redefinition of their families in the social division of labor. Women's migration is intimately linked to the family's needs and therefore is not a form whereby the female labor force responds to market demands. The definition of a more clear-cut sexual division of labor within households is associated with rural-urban migration. In the city, women tend to devote their time to exclusively reproductive activities, whereas men assume responsability for income production. However, within this overall trend, there are subtle variations, related to the household heads' place in the social division of labor and to the regularity of their income production. Wives of autonomus laborers tend to more actively seek ways to supplement the family wage whereas, on the other hand, women married to salaried workers dedicate all their time to unpaid domestic work. It can be assumed that worsening labor market conditions for men will increasingly force women into the labor market which, at this time, is not prepared for them.

Palavras-chave : Trabalho; Migração; Mulheres; Agricultura.

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