Casablanca’s waste pickers: the “perverse inclusion’’ of margin workers
This article is based on conversations led with the waste pickers of Casablanca who cross the city to collect the recyclable waste or who work on the main garbage dump of the metropolis. Because of their activity bound to the garbage and because of the characteristics of their space of life, these waste pickers are clearly outside of the city and outside the society. However, their work is closely imbricated in the formal sector which works with this low-priced workforce in a kind of “perverse inclusion” : so, the social outcast is inside a system which rests on him (Sawaia, 1999). We analyze below the relations between the actors (waste pickers, private sector and public authorities) by showing how the professional practices blur the borders between the formal and the informal, between the visible and the invisible and, in fact, question the notion of margin. Finally, this porosity is translated by difficult attempts of exit of the margin by the waste pickers, via the resistance and the mobilization.