Indigenous Wage Labor and the Complexity of Work Experience in Brazil

The Changa and Its Unfoldings

Abstract

This article analyzes the incorporation of Indigenous workers into wage labor, with the aim of contributing to the debate on the complexity of labor experience. It problematizes the meanings attributed to work in contexts characterized by the coexistence of exploitative relations and the incomplete incorporation of modern economic logics. Within this framework, the article examines the limits and possibilities of a sociology oriented toward the interpretation of work and precarity. The study focuses on the case of the Guarani and Kaiowá in Dourados (MS), with particular emphasis on changa, understood as paid work performed by Indigenous individuals for non-Indigenous employers.