The Ambivalence of Autonomy: Skills, Trust, Tactics, and Status on a Construction Site in Belize

Abstract

This article focuses on the autonomy of construction workers informally employed in Belize City, Belize, as emerging from the labor processes and material conditions that characterize construction work in this ethnographic setting. I argue that the notion of ambivalence can be fruitfully applied in order to understand how autonomy acts in contradictory ways in reproducing the relationships amongst workers, and between them and their contractors. In a context characterized by personal relationships, minimized managerial control, and flexible employment, the article employs an ethnography of the workplace which focuses on the role of trust, status and tactics used by builders to their own advantage, in order to show the relevance of their autonomy for how they meaningfully engage with their work, with each other and their employers. The article asks how workers differentially positioned within the skills-based hierarchy of the workplace act ambivalently, simultaneously reinforcing and negating their unequal place within it while striving to make their conditions less precarious.