Banca de DEFESA: Cícero Muniz Brito

Uma banca de DEFESA de DOUTORADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : Cícero Muniz Brito
DATE: 12/12/2025
TIME: 09:00
LOCAL: https://encurtador.com.br/fPCa
TITLE:

Precarious worker or entrepreneur?: a case study of Individual Microentrepreneurs (MEI) in Brasília, Federal District

KEY WORDS:

Labour; Entrepreneurship; Individual Microentrepreneurship (MEI); Precarious work; Socio-professional trajectories

PAGES: 297
BIG AREA: Ciências Humanas
AREA: Sociologia
SUMMARY:

Individual microentrepreneurs (MEIs) are workers who have been formally registered under a microentrepreneurship policy that has been in place in Brazil since 2009. This policy emerged as a response to the economic crisis and the need to formally register unemployed and informal workers in Brazil at the time. With around 14 million new entrants in just over fifteen years, this type of entrepreneurship is moving towards consolidation in the national economic scenario. The workers who formalize their status through it have diverse profiles, but are distinguished by certain commonalities, such as their origin (former employees with formal contracts or former informal workers, for example), the economic activities/occupations they perform (mostly related to their experiences and activities as salaried workers), and their motivations for formalization, which range from the search for income to support themselves, to the desire to be their “own boss” and, finally, the access to labor and social security benefits and rights. Nevertheless, little has been said about the ways and conditions in which these “entrepreneurs” develop their ventures and the circumstances that led them to this framework. In addition, the problems and consequences involving those who have converted to this modality are also highlighted, such as the lack of regular income, excessive and intense work, insecurity, and the difficulty in developing the enterprise and migrating to actual business levels. In this sense, our focus is on the forms of precarious work among individual microentrepreneurs, and our goal is to understand the morphology of this type of microentrepreneurship and its relationship with job insecurity in the context of Brasília, Federal District. To achieve these objectives, we conducted a case study involving approximately sixty microentrepreneurs from different income groups in the Federal District, who participated in five focus groups and thirty-eight semi-structured interviews. For data analysis and interpretation, we used Qualitative Data Analysis (QDA) assisted by MAXQDA software, from which we developed a set of 14 codes that guided the interpretation categories. As a result, we point out that the individual microentrepreneurship policy represents a change in the nature of state policies aimed at the labor market and employment to a character of activation policies, which brings ambiguity, ambivalence, and uncertainty to those included in this policy. Consequently, the socio-professional trajectories of these workers, who already face situations of vulnerability, tend to exacerbate these situations when they are integrated into the daily routine of the enterprise. In the meantime, we can observe the impact that the process of social precariousness of work has on MEI workers in two areas: the macrosocial, which involves the socioeconomic structure and the architecture of MEI policy, and the micro-social, which relates to economic activities/occupations/enterprises, working conditions and relations, and also the subjectivity of these workers. It can be concluded that due to both these macrosocial and microsocial constraints, which intersect with socio-professional trajectories, a kaleidoscope of forms of precariousness in MEI work is formed, both at the objective and subjective levels, which points to multiple and varied forms of precariousness in work due to individual microentrepreneurship.

 

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Externa à Instituição - ANA PAULA PEREIRA MARQUES - UMinho
Externo à Instituição - JACOB CARLOS LIMA - UFSCAR
Interna - 3291596 - JACQUELINE MORAES TEIXEIRA
Presidente - 3154798 - RICARDO COLTURATO FESTI
Interno - ***.565.760-** - SADI DAL ROSSO - UTA