Osnaide Izquierdo holds a PhD in Sociological Sciences from the University of Havana. He is currently Professor and Director of the Department of Sociology at this University. He has published several texts related to labor studies and economics. He has held academic exchanges and has been visiting professor at Universities and Research Centers in the Region and Europe such as University of the Republic of Uruguay; National University of San Martin and CEIL, Argentina; University of Stavanguer, Norway; University of Kassel, Germany; University of Malmö, Sweden; Public University of Navarra, Spain; and State University of Sao Paulo, campus of Franca, Brazil.

Selected publications

2022. Coproduction with José Luis Martín. La evolución del trabajo en Cuba. Una mirada con lentes sociológicas. Perspectivas sobre Trabajo y justicia social. Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. Cuba.

2021. Coproduction with María Lorena Capogrossi. Las múltiples dimensiones del trabajo precario e informal: algunas problematizaciones desde las ciencias sociales. Presentación del DOSSIER: Trabajos informales, precarios e inestables, para Vol 5, No 10. de la Revista Latinoamericana de Antropología del Trabajo RLAT.

2020. La formalización de la informalidad laboral. Los procesos de precarización de las relaciones laborales en Cuba a partir de las estrategias de subsistencia de los trabajadores (pág. 1573- 1603). En: Hernán M. Palermo; María Lorena Capogrossi. Tratado latinoamericano de Antropología del Trabajo [et al.] - 1a ed.- Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires: CLACSO; CEIL; CONICET.

2017. Coproduction with Hans-Jurguen Burchardt (Comp). Trabajo Decente y Sociedad. Cuba desde la óptica de los estudios sociolaborales. Edit. UH. La Habana.

Research project at CALAS

Title: New identities and economic practices in Cuba? Informality as a daily strategy to face the crisis.

Abstract: The current Cuban society, in the process of transformation of its socioeconomic model, faces a strong structural readjustment in which informality and the economic spaces and practices associated with it, has been developing as one of the main strategies to face the crisis. Although it is a central problem recognized by academics and government agencies, there is still no efficient theoretical and methodological apparatus to grasp this reality based on a preponderance of structuralist approaches to informality. Based on these epistemological shortcomings, the general objective of this project is to “Determine the relational and representational dynamics that support and derive from informal economic practices in the different Cuban economic spaces, as daily mechanisms of response to the crisis in the context of the readjustment initiated in 2011”. The proposal proposes to understand informality as a practice embedded in the practical and symbolic daily economic action of the Cuban reality and therefore aims at unveiling these codes within the economic agents and in their contractual and functional relationships as mediations between the agency and the structure. To this end, the category identity plays a strategic role in this proposal by positioning a totalitarian vision of economic practices, not only as strategies or actions, but as an expression of their daily content (their meanings and signifiers), and in their capacity to endow them with spatio-temporal meaning (territorial and occupational) in a concrete structure of relations. We consider that only from this perspective is it possible to construct an effective proposal for measuring and addressing informality, not only for the academy, but also for the structures in charge of its regulation. Both become direct beneficiaries of the results of this project with the capacity to influence the processes of socioeconomic transformation in terms of the viability of the development model the country is betting on, based on the structural and systemic nature of informality and its implications in the short, medium and long term in the course of the national development model.