Ángela Vergara has written a compelling, well-researched account of unemployment's human consequences and the Chilean state's efforts to relieve the suffering caused by cyclical economic crises. Drawing on records from Chile's Labor Department and the International Labor Organization (ILO), Vergara charts growing concern over unemployment in the early twentieth century, details government aid agencies' varied efforts to assist the poor and unemployed during the Great Depression, and shows how gains won in the late 1960s and early 1970s were undone by the Augusto Pinochet regime. A central question is how social workers, policymakers, and government officials defined unemployment. Vergara argues that although the Chilean state adopted international standards to fight unemployment, including the use of labor statistics and job placement programs, in practice “local economic, political, and social forces transformed and limited these reforms” (p. 6). Despite policies to mitigate the harm of mass layoffs, employment remained unstable and precarious...
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