Exploring the challenges faced by the informal waste pickers in the Northern Cape region

Abstract

The dominant scholarship on and about informal waste pickers is that they continue to work under difficult challenges: harassed by the city council, and work under risky conditions. While this is known, there has been a neglect on the ways in which informal waste pickers deal with and respond to the social and economic challenges which they face in their everyday lives. This study acknowledges that informal waste pickers are not passive recipients of the challenges which they face, rather they have individual and collective agency to think and act beyond their current predicaments in Kimberley South Africa. The study therefore draws on Bourdieu (1990) theoretical lenses of habitus and field to examine how in a particular context, informal waste pickers use their social resources, as habituated practices in a particular field, that of the dumpsite, where different actors are at play for their mutual benefit thereof. Following this, the study employs qualitative research methodology, in particular ethnographic tools such as the life stories, observations and in-depth interviews to understand how informal waste pickers continue to deal with their challenges in solid waste management in Kimberley, South Africa.