Presentation short abstract

Drawing on urban theory and more-than-human scholarship, this paper explores how working donkeys are enrolled in urban waste economies across the Global South. We interrogate what it means to be a ‘waste animal’ in uneven infrastructures where all labouring bodies are subject to stark inequalities.

Presentation long abstract

Situated within urban political ecology and more-than-human scholarship, this paper explores how working donkeys, through the processing of human refuse, are enrolled in urban waste economies across the Global South. Drawing on qualitative research in Lamu (Kenya), Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) as well as cities in South Asia, this paper explores how working donkeys are produced as ‘waste animals’ through their association with low paid ‘dirty work’, where both humans and animals suffer a myriad of oppressions, from discrimination to exploitation. From collecting and carting tonnes of solid waste, to picking through landfill (inadvertently ingesting plastic and other harmful material), donkeys are deeply embedded in the material and political ecologies of sanitation and waste management, yet their labour (and labouring bodies) is often invisible. Wounds and injuries due to hazardous working conditions, poorly fitting harnesses and overloading, alongside malnourishment and digestive issues, are common among donkeys working in the highly informal and precarious waste sector. Engaging calls to recentre nonhuman labour in urban economies and services, we interrogate what it means to be a ‘waste animal’ in uneven infrastructures, where all working class bodies (human and other-than-human) are subject to stark inequalities. Going beyond this, we foreground notions animal agency and subjectivity, highlighting the sentient lifeworlds of working donkeys and what it means to perform ‘waste work’ as an animal body – suggesting an ecological politics that calls into question the conditions of human-animal suffering and centres those most vulnerable to the slow violence of waste.