ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about Brazil, one of the most prominent, and least studied, cases. It highlights the interaction between workers and agencies rather than the relationship of either with user firms. The chapter explains the understanding of the triangular relation connecting the user firm, employment agency and job seeker. The presence of intermediaries in the Brazilian labour market is not new. The federal government inaugurated the use of labour providers after the 1964 military coup as part of a policy of administrative decentralization. Space is especially important to the experience of job seeking: as we know, the intermediation market in So Paulo is a territorialized construction. This relationship between job seeker and agency needs to be interpreted through the interests and objectives mobilizing each of the actors. The labour recruitment industry, backed by new institutional regulations, has expanded its forms of operation in contemporary Brazil.
