The Battle Against the State: Workers on the Front Line

Abstract

La Libertad Avanza won the 2023 Argentine presidential elections with an anti-statist discourse similar to that deployed by other right-wing governments globally. The first measures translated this discourse into concrete institutional instruments to carry out a profound reform of the state structure and its powers, especially in those areas that constitute the ‘social arm’ of the state. In this context, we spoke with some public workers in different areas of the state (social development, health, labour, social security, gender, diversity), which are particularly threatened, some even already dismantled. We share some reflections aimed at understanding the specificity of recent reforms and, above all, what strategies of resistance and/or adaptation are being deployed by front-line workers and technical bureaucracies in the face of layoffs and the dismantling of agencies and policies.