The daily life of retirees who continue working informally in the footwear industry: perceptions about retirement and the current job

Abstract

The present research, carried out in an industrial footwear pole in São Paulo countryside focused on the prospects of pensioners who work , informally, with shoes' handmade sewing from home. The investigation was based on aspects of work and retirement process. The fieldwork research comprised two phases, an explanatory one and the focused one. In the first case, ten houses ,where ten participants were inserted, were observed with the purpose of understanding their general context .During the focused phase, individual semi-structured interviews with five pensioners were carried out. Data from the fieldwork diary and the literal transcriptions of the interviews were scrutinized through a traditional content analysis and, later on, another hermeneutic-dialetic analysis was applied. It was possible to observe that the pensioners, in this particular context, look at retirement not only as an unproductive time and social disengagement, but also as a way of increasing income, enlarging and deepening bonds and experiencing lighter work.