Trajetórias, labor e cotidiano de trabalhadores (as) rurais migrantes no redesenho dos traçados da cidade

Abstract

The city of Orlândia, located in northeastern São Paulo, has experienced an expressive population growth since the 1970s, jumping from around 15 thousand to 40 thousand inhabitants in the first decades of the 21st century. Such growth is strongly bound to the migration of expropriated workers from the interior, initially coming from other regions of the state of São Paulo and later from other states, mainly the Brazilian northeast. From the 1980s onwards, during the expansion of sugarcane plantations and agribusiness, the arrival of workers from the northeast recruited by “gatos” (cats) to cut sugarcane intensified. Many of them, after years of temporary migration, decided to stay permanently in the city. This study investigates the concrete conditions of existence of the individuals coming from the northeast in the municipality of Orlândia, considering the intertwined dimensions of migration, labor and routine. Seeking to unveil the protagonism of those subjects in the urban, social, cultural and symbolic design of the city, the research is mainly supported by oral sources – 43 interviews carried out between 2017 and 2025 – with 22 women and 21 men of different ages, trajectories and ethnic-racial characteristics. By privileging memory as a source, forms of representations, resignification and the subjects’ belonging are analyzed alongside their social networks and family reproduction strategies. In a dialogue with a vast academic production about northeastern migration into the interior of São Paulo, the thesis proposes an advance in the discussion for treating the city as a space of life and conflict, complexifying the classical perspective that those spaces were only designed as “dormitory towns”. By shedding light on the existing bonds between the migratory experience and urban transformation, this study contributes to the repositioning of migrants as fundamental agents in the city’s social and spatial changes rather than marginal figures.