The line’s main theme is the experience of workers in slavery and in freedom, problematizing the borders of the several forms of compulsion to work.  The researches analyze the relations between workers and other social subjects  (masters, bosses, authorities), their forms of organization and action (brotherhoods, associations, clubs, unions, parties), struggles and social movements (quilombos, uprisings, insurrections, stoppages), ways of life and daily life (housing, health, leisure, religion, instruction, food), values and conceptions (traditions, habits, beliefs, ideologies, utopias), clashes in legal arenas, cultural and intellectual production (press, theater, literature, memories).