5 - “If It Rains or Hails, You Still Have to Show Up for Work”

Summary

This chapter describes the second way in which participants in the piquetero movement partake in working-class routines: development. For many activists who came of age since the 1990s, participation in a piquetero organization provides the chance to develop a lifestyle that they were raised to see as honorable, but that socioeconomic transformations have made increasingly unfeasible. In a context with limited opportunities for personal growth, the movement offers a working class ethos, plus the resources and training to exercise it. The chapter also shows how the expectations inculcated to young members reflect the ideal of a proletarian family with a gendered division of labor. Boys tend to enroll in infrastructure projects, while girls are far more likely to choose programs associated with household chores. In addition, even though all young members are compelled to have discipline at work and self-restraint at home, the actual meaning of these ideals is gender-specific. For men, being a responsible worker is associated with manual labor and public life, while for women expectations are framed in terms of modesty, domesticity, and motherhood.