Individual microentrepreneurs and social deprotection: tensions between neoliberal rationality and strategies for “make a living on culture” from freelance cultural producers in the city of Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

The individual microentrepreneur (MEI) has been increasingly used in the labour world. Although it was created to provide a certain formalization for informal workers, several companies use it as a substitute for the formal contract, increasing the social lack of worker’s protection. In the cultural labour world, the adoption of the self-employment model, which comprises the MEI, is already the main form of occupation. It is proposed to investigate in this paper if the adoption of the MEI model also includes subjective and social transformations, in addition to the material ones. In the case of cultural producers, it also seeks to understand which strategies workers perform when they become MEI in order to guarantee work and income. It was conducted 05 semi-structured interviews with cultural producers in the city of Rio de Janeiro (2018-2020), in order to understand how the transformation in the labour world reflects on these people’s lives.