Crisis and neoliberalization rounds: impacts on metropolitan areas and on the labor world in Brazil

Abstract The purpose of this essay is to analyze the crisis and recent neoliberalization rounds on the global and national scales, aiming to discuss possible impacts on the labor market, especially in urban--metropolitan areas in Brazil. Based on the nature of the Brazilian urbanization process, it seeks to identify the logic of those rounds and of current geopolitical and geo-economic transformations, trying to place Brazil within this context. It analyzes the urban network and the phenomenon of the metropolis, which is an urban and complex socio-economic and socio-spatial system, as an important locus to investigate changes in the labor world of Brazil. It concludes by arguing that, in the last 20 years, from 1995 to 2015, Brazil underwent three neoliberalization rounds that used very different devices, mechanisms and instruments of re-regulatory experiments. They have had different repercussions and require in-depth comparative studies.