Dismissals, Social and Identitity Breaks

Abstract

The thousands of collective dismissals which have opened the beginning of the century in Spain do not just mean nearly two hundred thousand jobs (lots of them with a very long validity) and the same amount of broken life projects, but also ways of social reproduction, broken identities, institutions and social guarantees that crumble. Amazingly, these social upheavals often become eclipsed by discourses that appeal to economic considerations, the requirements of modernization or the requests of the logic of globalization. At this article, the consequences of the break of the social link intertwined along the second half of the twentieth century are investigated. For that, we have been rebuilt some of the expressions from narratives told by those who have lost their jobs in plants or companies that have been or still remain leaders on their own product markets, as wellas from the process of shutdown or employment collective agreement.