The present article deals with negotiation strategies to obtain emancipation, autonomy and improvement of life conditions of Africans and their descendants throughout the 19th century in the South of Brazil. Through some life trajectories we will show the diversity of arrangements and work-possibilities before and after the end of the Atlantic slave trade (1850) up to the eve of slavery abolition in Brazil (1888), when slave-owners, freed slaves and slaves had to elaborate new strategies to dispute labor-market.