‘Our faces change, but it's always the same story’: Crises of social reproduction among informal recyclers in Buenos Aires, Argentina

Abstract

This paper investigates the gendered dynamics of informal recycling in Buenos Aires, Argentina at a moment of transition in the governance of this work. I argue that there is a strong gender binary apparent in this type of informal work, and that the public nature of informal recycling can exacerbate the gendered crisis of social reproduction experienced by many women recyclers through inviting interventions into their work. This research is based on an extensive survey of informal recyclers and a series of interviews conducted between 2007 and 2011. In Buenos Aires, women's informal recycling work has had a more collective, social, and domestic image as compared to masculine industrial versions of this work. On average, women had more geographically limited experiences of the city and earned less money than men. Women carrying out social reproduction in public spaces were positioned as both needing assistance and deserving of it. The entwining of work and social reproduction for many women informal workers requires that any interventions to improve their work take into account the particular challenges associated with publicly performing the double burden of labor that they bear.

Seguridad ocupacional en riesgo: análisis de las condiciones laborales de los recicladores en Sudamérica [Occupational safety at risk: an analysis of waste pickers' working conditions in South America]

“…La elevada proporción de encuestados que informaron sobre problemas de salud, como lesiones, dificultades respiratorias y fatiga, indica que los cartoneros están expuestos a riesgos laborales considerables. Asimismo, al comparar estos resultados con los de la población general, se observa que los cartoneros no evalúan su salud de manera tan positiva como otros residentes de Buenos Aires, señalando desigualdades en los resultados de salud (Parizeau, 2023).…”

Social reproduction: Households, public policies, and alternative organizing

“…By framing social reproduction as choreography, the research illuminates how these migrant workers, in adapting to new paid employment, both perpetuated and challenged gendered inequalities in their households and communities. Other work published since 2020 turned to the global South, highlighting the intersection of reproductive work and women's informal paid labor in urban settings (Parizeau, 2023). Recent research also explores the fragility of social reproduction strategies that migrant households employ across spaces and the precarity emerging from the challenges of social reproduction faced in rural communities (Green & Estes, 2022).…”