Preliminary Programme

This paper summarises results of an ongoing research related to the project History of labour relations in Lusophone world. The project is coordenated from Portugal, involving European and Brazilian researchers. Here, we are concerned in discussing the recent changes in Brazilian labour market and Brazilian labour relations, between 2000 and 2010. Special attention will be given to the role of public policies in social security and labour relations, evaluating their capability of making diference on some characteristics of contemporary labour market in Brazil, like precariousness and informality.


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On March 28, 1977 Portugal presented its formal application to join the EEC. This application was filled by Mário Soares, socialist Prime Minister of the first Constitutional Government after the fall of the dictatorship and the revolutionary years of 1974 and 1975. The UK, where Labour were in power since 1974 – and would be until 1979, first with Harold Wilson (1974-76) and then James Callaghan (1976-1979) –'sponsored' the Portuguese request, also because they occupied the rotating presidency of the European Communities in the first half of 1977. Both the then European and Portuguese leaders considered that Portugal’s economy was not prepared to join the EEC. What were then the motives that led the EEC member states to encourage and then accept Portugal’s (and its Iberian neighbor’s, Spain) accession to the Community? What was the role of Callaghan’s government in this?
To understand this, we’ve thoroughly researched the National Archives of the UK, mostly the Prime-Minister’s Office (PREM) and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). We’ve also researched the Archives of Portugal’s and Spain’s Foreign Offices (MNE and MAEC) and the memories of the main protagonists.
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Present-day Mozambique covers circa 800.000 square kilometers and borders with Tanzania in the north, Malawi in the north-west, Zimbabwe in the west, Zambia and South Africa in the southeast and south. In 2009 Mozambique population was estimated in circa 21 million, and in 2005 its estimate active population was circa 9 million.
Little is however know about patterns and changes in the country’s population and active population and the types of labor relations during the nineteenth and twentieth-centuries.
This will be the main focus of this paper. Our study will be divided in three main sections. Part 1 looks at the types of primary sources available for the analysis of Mozambique active population and labor relations, highlighting their potential, problems as well as ways to maximize the use of these sources. In Part 2 we will present the preliminary results for the study of Mozambique total population for the cross-sections 1800, 1900, and 1950. Here we plan to address several important points, including total population figures, geographical distribution, ethnic compositions, sex ratios, marriage patterns and birth/death patterns. In the last section of the paper, we will focus on labor and labor relations. We will give a first insight into the active population of Mozambique for the cross-sections 1800, 1900, and 1950, its main economic centers and the activities performed by the various population groups. We will close the presentation by highlighting the main changes in Mozambican labor relations between the three cross-sections under study.
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This paper examines demography and labor relations in Portuguese India (Goa, Daman and Diu)from1850 through1950.
It follows the typology of the Global Collaboratory on the History of Labor Relations, using the 1850,1900 and1950 cross?sections.
The analysis forall cross?sections is based on a number of general hypotheses regarding population growth, the nature of female labor, and the organization of the village communities (comunidades de aldeia).
The main sources for this study are the population censuses of 1848, 1900 and1950, tax lists and literature on working conditions, labour relations andagriculturalorganization.
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The paper that we aim to present at the Conference is the result of our research within the Project of Labor Relations in Portugal and in the Lusophone World: 1800-2000: continuity and change, developed in Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas of Lisbon. This project aims to quantify, highlighting, in particular, the ways in which manpower and industrial relations have changed over time and adapted to social, economic and political shifts in Portugal and the Portuguese speaking world in the last two centuries. By building and providing access to a global database on the development of labor relations and manpower in Portugal and the Lusophone world this project will fill an important gap in modern social sciences literature. This project will also make an significant contribution to better our understanding of the workforce composition, the evolution of its training and qualification, its productivity and the factors explaining changes in productivity, as well as its ability to innovate, and adapt to new forms of production, and the economic and social situation of the home societies. Methodologically we will follow the theoretical and analytical framework of the global labor history, i.e. the history of labor from a global perspective. This approach does not limit the analysis of labor to the nation-state, proposing a transnational methodology to approach labor studies, and amplifying the traditional restrictive concept of 'working class' to a broader concept of work that includes not only the individual labor relationship but also the household (housework; reproductive work) and other forms of work normally absent from these studies such as informal work or a combination of wage work with subsistence work, among others. In this paper we will present a substantial part of our research within the project: The Labor Relations in Portugal between 1900 and 2011. (Show less)