TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGY OF UNEMPLOYMENT*

The following reflections have arisen from a desire to confront an interpretive challenge, that of understanding the links between the phenomena of employment and unemployment in the context of the intense flexibilization of work and the institutional and normative reconstruction of worker protection standards. The argument is developed in three directions. Firstly, I shall attempt to trace the movement to redefine the notion of "unemployed", pursuing, with the help of the recent sociological literature, the constitution (and social legitimization) of the new concept of the "long-term unemployed”. Secondly, I shall compare the theoretical developments aimed at understanding this phenomenon with the efforts of Brazilian labor sociology to interpret the problematics of unemployment, by analyzing the links between this phenomenon and the nature of social organization and the patterns of inequality prevailing in our country. Thirdly, I shall argue in favor of the heuristic value of resorting to contextualized comparisons – in the light of recent findings regarding the fluidity between occupational borders and the transit between situations of employment/unemployment/inactivity in th