Entrepreneurial social representations of agricultural wage labor in the Lower Valley of the Chubut River

Abstract

This research studies the social representations about agricultural salaried workers in the cherries production of the new entrepreneurs of the rural-agrarian space of the Lower Valley of the Chubut River (VIRCH). This process accompanied some changes in the forms of recruitment of employed workers. In the late 1990s, in the Rawson and Gaiman departments in the Chubut province (Argentina), a series of public policies took place, which motivated the investment of a group of local entrepreneurs. These, lacking agricultural experience, promoted the development of export-oriented cherry production. Throughout the stages that production went through, they associated a business model that was attended by different public institutions. While entrepreneurs managed to effectively steer every moment of the production process, there were recurring problems in different contexts, especially related to recruiting enough labor to carry out seasonal work at harvest. From a technical perspective, both in-depth interviews, conducted between 2009 and 2017, were used to entrepreneurs and technicians related to cherry production at VIRCH, as well as different journalistic sources and statistics prepared by public and private organizations.