Following a period of economic growth and falling unemployment between 2005 and 2015, academic and political interest in labour issues in LA has shifted to working conditions, in particular, the high degree of informality that characterizes the region’s labour market. Indeed, there are still about 130 million workers with informal jobs in the region. Moreover, the recent arousal of the unemployment rate in LA that reached 8.1% in 2016 is an aggravating circumstance.
According to the Recommendation No.204, Chapter VIII of the International Labour Organization, it is essential to control the extension of informality in the economy and employment, therefore it is crucial to analyse and evaluate the politics and mechanisms that have been set up in order to facilitate the transition from informality to formality in the field of employment and economy.
Therefore, LATWORK will provide LA HEIs with New Research Centres, improve their research capacities, methodologies and tools to improve research results and enhance regional cooperation in this field.
LATWORK is a forward-looking cooperation project co-funded by the Erasmus+ program of the European Commission.
With high innovation potential for it shall :
1. Map the current situation in the production of research outputs on informal jobs and economy in Latin-American HEIs
2. Build research and innovation capacities at LA HEIs through EU HEI expertise in creating Research Centres specialized in the field of labour market issues
3. Develop a Research Network Centre to ensure inter-institutional cooperation and a regular analysis and production of outputs in the field of informality in labour market
4. Create a research output platform on informal jobs and economy to standardize and upgrade the applicability of the research results at regional level
5. Increase the level of commitment of HEIs, researchers, academics and other internal and external stakeholders to invest regularly and produce quality research outputs about labour market issues
6. Influence the decision-making context for the transition from informal to formal employment
