When the street belongs to the elderly: informal work, health and life conditions

Abstract

This article attempts to show the dimensions of social exclusion and its relationship with informal work and health, based on an ethnographic study developted in downtown São Paulo city with the “Plaque-Man” and “Sandwich-Man”. These men are very poor old workers who belong to the “low informality” which groups all kinds of little qualified job of the informal economy. Inside this context, the work market’s transformations ocurred during the past decates, showed up by a hard employment crisis, will produce dramatic impacts on people’s life quality and sociability. In this sense, the relationship between work and health suffers a distortion and the major problem is that once in the informal universe all worker’s labour rights and guarantees will be removed. Among the “Plaque-Man” and “Sandwich-Man”, in addition to poor life conditions, the kind of work performed on the streets will interfere in the way they care about their health leading them to refuse their own suffering and postpone the search for health assistence, ignoring the fact that the illness is able to stop their work and this is a risk that could make the worker pass to a wretched condition.

Key words – Informal work. Health. Life conditions.