This book, authored by Gerry Rodgers, Roberto Véras de Oliveira and Janine Rodgers, is destined to become a reference in both Brazilian and international debates on the country’s Northeast region. It covers a wide range of themes and issues related to the dilemmas of unequal social and economic development, seen through the lens of labour regimes and with focus on the Northeast, a persistently disadvantaged region in Brazil. As stated in the book’s abstract, it combines ‘a historical approach, which shows how economic, social and political institutions have been restructured over time, with an analysis of changes in the pattern of production, employment, unemployment and inequality up to the present day. It draws on detailed case studies to examine the connections between local and national production systems and critical labour market outcomes such as informality in employment, precarious work and disparities between genders, races and regions’.

The theoretical approach advanced in Chapter 1 combines the historical structuralism of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and Celso Furtado (cf. Desenvolvimento e Subdesenvolvimento, 1961) with the dynamic institutionalism of the French Regulation School (see, for example, Robert Boyer, ‘Do Labour Institutions Matter for Economic Development? A “Régulation” Approach for the OECD and Latin America with an Extension to Asia’, in Gerry Rodgers (ed.), Workers, Institutions and Economic Growth in Asia, 1994) to propose an original interpretation of what the authors term ‘growth regimes’ and ‘development regimes’ on the periphery of the global capitalist system (in the case of Brazil) and, in the case of the Northeast, on the periphery of Brazilian capitalism.

The endeavour is ambitious, comprehensive and, in my view, highly successful. The second chapter of the book deserves close attention, as it offers a concise and precise overview of the long-accumulated knowledge about the limits and opportunities for development in the Northeast, always from the perspective of labour regimes. It seeks to situate the Northeast within the broader course of Brazilian economic history, to delineate regional specificities, constructing an argument on three levels of analysis: Brazil as the backdrop, the Northeast itself as a region, and, within it, the states of Pernambuco and Paraíba.

Particularly striking is the persistent relevance of the problem of inequalities (social, economic, income-based, regional and others) that have been constructed and reconstructed throughout history, consolidating structures that produce what Charles Tilly termed ‘durable inequalities’ (Durable Inequality, 1998). These are anchored in long-term and far-reaching social processes, difficult to reverse even when the state establishes institutions specifically designed to combat them, as was the case with the Superintendency for the Development of the Northeast (SUDENE), conceived and led by Celso Furtado in the late 1950s. Here we find the duality and segmentation of labour markets, with a structural prevalence of informality and precarious conditions for obtaining work and income. Here also is the subordinate and dependent development of the Northeast vis-à-vis the country’s Southeast region, which SUDENE tried in vain to overcome and which deepened during the accelerated industrialisation under the military regime, heavily concentrated in the Southeast, particularly in São Paulo. Here, too, are the impacts of neoliberal globalisation on national and local economies, generating further income concentration and increased inter- and intra-regional inequalities. And here are the vicissitudes of union organisation in an environment historically characterised by great heterogeneity in productive structures and labour markets, a relatively small contingent of formal wage earners, significant heterogeneity and geographical dispersion of the workforce, the tenacious resistance of employers, the historical fragility of unionism, its absence in workplaces, and so on.

The third chapter is also of great interest. It brings together case studies of companies from different sectors in four Northeastern states, predominantly Pernambuco and Paraíba, but with some incursions into Bahia and Rio Grande do Norte. One persistent theme stands out: the social forms of reproduction and reconfiguration of informal and precarious labour. The various case studies provide evidence to support the hypothesis that labour relations in the Northeast are carried out on segmented and predominantly precarious bases, with, of course, exceptions (such as the automotive industry in Goiana, Pernambuco), which generally confirm this rule.

It is worth highlighting the work of the teams from the two research institutions responsible for conducting the case studies. Here, I would like to commend Véras de Oliveira’s coordination: through a series of workshops, he managed to establish a unified perspective and methodology, enabling studies in such disparate sectors as the automotive industry in Goiana, Pernambuco, shipbuilding in Suape, also in Pernambuco, the cluster of call centres in João Pessoa and Campina Grande, Paraíba, the sugarcane agribusiness in these two states, in all of them employing the same analytical matrix collectively constructed and adapted from the analytical dimensions proposed by the French Regulation School. The undertaking was clearly extremely successful, and the case studies, succinctly presented in the book based on the original research first presented in Véras de Oliveira and Rodgers (eds.), Desenvolvimento e regime de trabalho: A trajetória do Nordeste do Brasil (2021), are highly relevant.

I also highlight the effort made by the various studies to propose historically situated analyses, which allow for an appropriate perspective on recent developments (the ‘developmentalist’ years of the first decade and a half of the current century and their post-2015 crisis), given that the region has been and continues to be marked by conjunctures of somewhat sustained growth spurts and cyclical crises. As the Northeast was the region most positively affected by income redistribution policies and the redirection of productive investment (not only in manufacturing) during the governments led by the Partido dos Trabalhadores, the economic growth spurt and improvement in regional labour market conditions appear to be unprecedented in history.

Attention should also be drawn to the systematic treatment of the mechanisms by which workers in the various studied sectors obtain their livelihoods, their working conditions, and the forms of collective organisation and resistance in their relationship with patterns of sectoral and regional development. Readers will find particularly interesting the conclusions in Chapter 5, especially Section 3, which discusses issues and scenarios for a possible less unequal future. As can be seen, this book is a must-read.