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Paper short abstract:

This paper presents some results of my ethnographic research at the Mbeubeuss dump, set up in the 1960s in the outskirts of Dakar (Senegal). By analyzing the social stratification of boudioumane (waste-pikers) community, I will focus on the link between spatial justice and informal waste management.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents some results from an ethnographic research project I am conducting at the Mbeubeuss dump, set up in the 1960s in the outskirts of Dakar (Senegal). Mbeubeuss, over the years, has given rise to socio-economic relations which are (directly and indirectly) caught up with the treatment of waste. Thus, it is contributing significantly to the urbanization of neighboring municipalities and the consolidation of migratory inflows from the country's rural areas.

Moreover, since the Sixties a community of boudioumane (waste-pickers) lives and works inside the landfill. In public representations at the local and international levels, the Mbeubeuss dump is depicted as a closed world that unfolds parallel to the social context in which it is located; the informality of working practices at the dump are seen as corresponding to inevitable social, economic and political marginality. By analyzing the social stratification of waste-pickers community living and working in the landfill, I will focus on the link between spatial justice and informal waste management, and social stigmatization in contemporary Dakar. Mbeubeuss represents both the cause of a long-lasting environmental crisis and the opportunity for many workers to build a life for themselves, concealing its role in generating forms of vulnerability and normalizing the production of social inequalities.

From an anthropological point of view, the indifference characterizing public policies - that de-politicize the environment and its management - and the "bottom-up" efforts to reshape economic and social processes show and materialize the link between waste, people, and places.