Class, masculinity and languages during the seasonal migrant work of Santiago del Estero (Argentina)

Abstract

Rural seasonal migrants workers (TRME) commonly called “swallow”, traveling mainly to the humid pampas to the deflowered (detasselling) corn, but also in other types of work (blueberries, potatoes, onions, olives, clean the forest floor, extract roots, etc.) in other regions of Argentina. Corn, potatoes and “obraje” are considered the three most toughest jobs all of which will focus on the deflowering of corn. This paper attempts to reach by other means to certain social uses of the Quichua language. We describe the process lived from bodily sensations and emotional suffering and pain have proximity lived by the ethnographer (January-February 2013) emerged in a seasonal migrant rural labor (TRME). Reflexivity about those feelings -following the methodological perspective of Favret Saada- allowed access to a universe on this type of migrant labor and the process of male socialization. Within this universe appear migrant seasonal aspects, in sociolinguistic studies would be unrelated to the “use of languages”. This work combines aspects of Quichua language, masculinity, labor exploitation and discursive-affective practice I call as playfulness (sometimes as trickstery), but all are inherently configured from the class dimension, an aspect that will be developed in the description of the living process.