What Does It Mean to Have a Dirty and Informal Job? The Case of Waste Pickers in the Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil (original) (raw)
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Sustainability, 2023
The literature on dirty workers analysed material and symbolic aspects of work, highlighting how dirty workers deal with the stigma associated with their occupations. This approach put less attention on dirty workers who operate in the informal economy, which is a relevant category especially in some sectors, such as the urban-waste management and recycling. Drawing on a 2019–2022 qualitative study of waste pickers (WPs) in th Rio Grande do Sul state (Brazil), this article aims to understand whether and how the informal conditions interact with the symbolic and material aspects of the dirty job. First, it shows various attempts to redefine the meanings of waste pickers’ work, in a positive sense. The more articulated attempts mainly concern the more structured WPs' organisations and, in some cases, go far beyond the strategies described by the traditional literature on dirty workers. Second, it emphasizes the importance of the relations between WPs' organisations and public administrations in defining the effectiveness of the actions aimed at reducing the stigma associated with the WPs’ work. Together, these contributions highlight the utility of exploring the dynamics and the differences of informal dirty work in order to enrich the dirty-work approach.
Authors Sonia Maria Dias is a sector specialist at WIEGO. She is a sociologist by training and a garbologist with specialization in Solid Waste Management by the University of Kitakyushu, Japan. She has been active in the waste management field in Brazil since 1985 with a focus on promoting the integration of social inclusion aspects into the technical planning of waste collection and recycling. Her PhD thesis in Political Science is on the role of participation in solid waste management in Brazil. She is based in Belo Horizonte, Southeast Brazil. Melanie Samson is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography in the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand and the Africa Waste Sector Specialist for WIEGO. She has a PhD in Political Science from York University. Her research focuses on the relationship between waste and value and on how analysis of the work and lives of informal workers allows for the development of theorizations of the economy and polity more relevant to postcolonial contexts.
Worldwide Waste: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 2019
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