The Second Wave of Incorporation in Latin America: A Conceptualization of the Quest for Inclusion Applied to Argentina

Between 1996 and 2009, a process of struggle for and (after 2002) partial achievement of the second incorporation of the popular sectors took place in Argentina. This process involved a combination of routine and contentious political dynamics that reformulated state-society relations in the postcorporatist period. As a continuation of the first incorporation (1943–55), the second incorporation displayed some similar features; other attributes were specific to this second process, mainly that it was not corporatist but territorial and that the central agents of transformation were not trade unions but the disincorporated popular sectors, which were territorially organized into a “reincorporation movement.” This article conceptualizes these dynamics and analyzes the role played by the main political actor related to this historical process, thepiquetero(picketer) movement.