Analyzing the novel Jorge, um brasileiro and considering the data produced in other researches, I consider here the relation between large development projects, labor and popular mobility. In the first place, I describe the activities of workers responsible for building roads; later I relate this topic to the issues of housing and of the relationship between workers and bosses. I argue that the experiences of these road building workers, conspicuously expressed through certain ideas related to the "road" and the "mud", offer a privileged perspective to think about some more general meanings related to labor among the popular classes considered in a broader sense. At the same time, these ideas articulate disparate themes and contexts, certain common meanings and practices relating labor, mobility, housing, person formation and conceptions about inequality.
development; housing; road building; work