Globalização neoliberal, transformações contemporâneas do trabalho e processos de subjetivação

Abstract

This study analyzes contemporary transformations in work and their impacts on workers’ subjectivity through a narrative literature review. The objective was to understand how changes in forms of work organization, marked by productive flexibility, the intensification of technological mediation, and new management strategies grounded in neoliberal logic, reconfigure contemporary work experiences. The findings indicate that such transformations expand more diffuse and internalized mechanisms of control while intensifying workers’ individual responsibility for their professional trajectory and performance. Contemporary work is characterized by an ambivalence between possibilities for fulfillment and meaning-making and the increase in psychological distress, emotional exhaustion, and job insecurity, highlighting the structural dimension of these phenomena. Nevertheless, everyday spaces of creation, cooperation, and resistance were identified, expressing the persistence of forms of agency and subjectivation at work. It is concluded that contemporary work is organized within a permanent tension between control and autonomy, with important psychosocial implications for workers’ health.