Exploring Fragility: Industrial Delocalization, Occupational and Environmental Risks, and Non-Governmental Organizations

What is the role of non-governmental organizations – NGOs – in the process of industrial delocalization and socio-spatial redistribution of occupational and environmental risks? In an attempt to contribute to this debate, this study approaches the issue in a very specific socio-historical context, marked by recent accelerated industrialization in a small town in Northeast Brazil. Based on semi-structured interviews with leaders of four local NGOs, the way they perceive and value the risks introduced into the area and relations between industrialization and local development are analyzed. Findings show a strong adherence to the industrial plan by workers’ trade unions, whilst other NGOs are highly critical with regard thereto, but undertake no social or political activity regarding the issues they identify. This phenomenon is discussed in terms of the modus operandi of ideology and its strategies for symbolic construction, enabling a comprehensive reinterpretation of how capital also benefits, in its mobility, from local society’s fragility in organizing and protecting quality of life and public health.