Terceirizadas, Centered: A Critical Analysis of Outsourcing and Gender and Racial Hierarchies in Brazil

Abstract

This article presents a critical reading of the Brazilian Supreme Court decision in Arguição de Descumprimento de Preceito Fundamental (“ADPF”) 324—the case in which the prohibition of outsourcing was declared unconstitutional. In this decision, the majority opinion is underpinned by a neoliberal logic and relies on an argument that abuses that might occur in outsourcing are mere distortions. The minority opinion would allow the outsourcing of only “non-core” activities (which, in Brazil, correspond mostly to care-related work). Building on fem/race and class crit methods—that is, reflecting about the law by looking to the bottom, centering black female outsourced workers (“terceirizadas”)—the paper claims that both the majority and the dissenting opinions pose serious problems. Regarding the majority opinion, first, I use terceirizadas as a focal point to challenge the court’s neoliberal logic. Using terceirizadas as a point of departure shows that the neoliberal adoption of a universal individual is an abstraction that conceals how power relations operate on the ground and, in doing so, legitimates and perpetuates oppression. Second, the decision adopts a formal equality approach, which obscures how outsourcing is a fruit of, permeated by, and perpetuated by subordination. Regarding the dissenting position, the maintenance of the distinction between core and non-core activities derives from a non-intersectional look at the problem. It assumes a universal “worker,” missing the gender and racial aspects that create the possibility of different treatment in the first place. The paper then advances a possible path for the future, proposing a provisional antisubordination-based argument to argue for the unconstitutionality of outsourcing in Brazil.