Vértices (May 2010)
Collectors of survival: the “living material” in the scene of garbage
Abstract
The purpose of the article is to discuss the identity of the garbage collector in the present time, and analyze what led this person to engage in such activity. Thus, we carried out an essentially qualitative methodology (based on field observations and interviews with 10 collectors) that could provide the knowledge concerning their life story and garbage collection. Results indicate that these workers are mostly men, with low level of education, age group between 40 and 81 years, with former devaluated and depreciated occupations and no informal economic activities. In this in case, one cannot ignore the inherent factors to the activity: low wages, precarious working conditions, and factors generated from it (health problems, competition, solidarity, prejudice, discrimination) that mark the itineraries that these actors of the garbage collection explore.
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