Living on the margins of the city: an ethnography of moving bodies and urban exclusion in waste picking

Hasani, Seyed Ghasem; Mohsenpour, Koohyar

doi:10.22034/uep.2026.575708.1842

Living on the margins of the city: an ethnography of moving bodies and urban exclusion in waste picking

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Seyed Ghasem Hasani ¹

Koohyar Mohsenpour ²

¹ Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Mazandaran, Babolsar, Iran

² Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Mazandaran, Babolsar, Iran

10.22034/uep.2026.575708.1842

Abstract

Urban waste picking is an important yet understudied phenomenon in contemporary cities, situated at the intersection of social inequality, waste management, and urban policy. It has largely been examined through economic, policy-oriented, or social-problem frameworks, with limited attention to its spatial and embodied dimensions, particularly in Iranian cities. This article offers an ethnographic analysis of waste picking as a mode of urban dwelling shaped by movement, embodiment, and everyday negotiations with urban order. The study is based on four months of qualitative fieldwork in Amol, Iran, using participant observation and in-depth engagement with purposively selected waste pickers across specific urban locations and temporal rhythms. Findings indicated that waste pickers actively participate in the social production of urban space through repetitive routes, strategic timing, and spatial tactics, transforming marginal sites into functional and meaningful nodes within the city’s lived geography. Their bodies emerge as key sites where environmental inequality and urban exclusion are materialized; continuous exposure to contamination and risk demonstrates how structural vulnerability accumulates at the level of lived experience. At the same time, their adaptive mobility and strategic invisibility function as a form of everyday resistance. By integrating urban anthropology, embodiment theory, and environmental justice, this study argues that understanding the contemporary city necessitates attention to marginalized lives and bodies that are engaged with the environment.

Keywords

Ethnography

Embodiment

Environmental justice

Social production of space

Urban anthropology

Waste picking

Subjects

Urban Studies

Ahmady K. (2023). Contexts and consequences of littering: A study on children’s littering in the geographical environment of Tehran and its suburbs. Geography and Regional Planning, 13(50): 69-88. https://doi.org/10.22034/jgeoq.2024.278617.2995 [In Persian]
Bourgois, P. I., & Schonberg, J. (2009). Righteous Dopefiend (Vol. 21). Univ of California Press.
Csordas, T. J. (Ed.). (1994). Embodiment and experience: The existential ground of culture and self (Vol. 2). Cambridge University Press.
De Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life. University of California Press.
Dias, S. M. (2016). Waste pickers and cities. Environment and Urbanization, 28(2), 375-390. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956247816657302
Edensor, T. (Ed.). (2012). Geographies of rhythm: Nature, place, mobilities, and bodies. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Eisari M., & Shojaeezand A. (2020). Urban politics and the informality of waste picking in Tehran. https://sanad.iau.ir/fa/Article/1015797 [In Persian]
Geçkili Karaman, P., & Şalgamcıoğlu, M. E. (2025). Hidden actors of urban sustainability: Waste pickers in Istanbul. Sustainability, 17(14), 6236. https://doi.org/10.3390/su17146236
Gidwani, V., & Reddy, R. N. (2011). The afterlives of “waste”: Notes from India for a minor history of capitalist surplus. Antipode, 43(5), 1625-1658. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2011.00902.x
Gutberlet, J. (2016). Ways out of the waste dilemma: Transforming communities in the global south. RCC Perspectives, (3), 55-68. DOI: doi.org/10.5282/rcc/7547
Gutberlet, J. (2023). Global plastic pollution and informal waste pickers. Cambridge Prisms: Plastics, 1, e9. https://doi.org/10.1017/plc.2023.10
Hall, S. (2012). City, street, and citizen: The measure of the ordinary. Routledge.
Hammersley, M., & Atkinson, P. (2019). Ethnography: Principles in practice. Routledge.
Harvey, D. (2017). The right to the city. In Citizenship rights (pp. 465-482). Routledge.
Ingold, T. (2011). Being alive: Essays on movement, knowledge, and description. Routledge.
Isari M., & Shojaeizand A. (2019). Contexts and processes of shaping the informal life of waste pickers: A case study of Afghan workers in Tehran. Journal of Social Problems of Iran, 10(1): 63-95. https://doi.org/10.22059/ijsp.2020.76168 [In Persian]
Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space. Blackwell.
Low, S. (2017). Spatializing culture: The ethnography of space and place. Routledge.
Millar, K. (2018). Reclaiming the discard: Life and labor on Rio’s garbage dump. Duke University Press.
Moghadam M H, Bagheri M. (2024). Studying the formation process of the phenomenon of littering in the city of Ahvaz. Social Problems of Iran. 15(3): 255-290. http://dx.doi.org/10.61186/jspi.15.3.255 [In Persian]
Murchison, J. M. (2010). Ethnography essentials: Designing, conducting, and presenting your research. John Wiley & Sons.
Naderi A., rask M., & mohamadi A. (2022). Qualitative study on garbage collection in Tehran city. Journal of Social Problems of Iran, 13(1): 167-197. doi: 10.22059/ijsp.2022.90401 [In Persian]
Ounagh N., Ghorbani A., & Sorzahi M. (2023). Analysis of social factors affecting the phenomenon of working children in Mehrestan City. Journal of Applied Sociology, 34(3): 65-88. https://doi.org/10.22108/jas.2023.136160.2353 [In Persian]
Parvin S., Moradi A., Donyaie O., & Davoodi M. (2018). Migration and waste picking: Analysis of emerging urban lifestyle. Iranian Population Studies, 4(1): 199-228. [In Persian]
Pink, S. (2015). Doing sensory ethnography (2nd Ed.). Sage.
Quesada, J., Hart, L. K., & Bourgois, P. (2011). Structural vulnerability and health: Latino migrant laborers in the United States. Medical anthropology, 30(4), 339-362. https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2011.576725
Rashidi J. (2023). Urban social policy and exclusion social; narration of excluding the body and poverty from urban spaces. Iranian Journal of Sociology, 23(4): 3-25. https://doi.org/10.22034/jsi.2023.563373.1622 [In Persian]
Roy, A. (2005). Urban informality: Toward an epistemology of planning. Journal of the American Planning Association, 71(2), 147–158. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944360508976689
Samson, M. (2015). Accumulation by dispossession and the informal economy: Struggles over knowledge, being, and waste at a Soweto garbage dump. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 33(5), 813–830. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775815600058
Sen, N. (2018). Urban marginalization in South Asia: Waste pickers in Calcutta. Routledge.
Shanmugasundaram, L. (2024). Waste picking in the age of COVID-19: An environmental justice perspective. Discover Environment, 2(1), 82. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44274-024-00095-5
Wacquant, L. (2008). Urban outcasts: A comparative sociology of advanced marginality. Polity Press.
Zarei A., Ruhani A., Afshani S., & Mousavi S. M. (2023). Living with problems: A critical ethnography of dumpster diving in the industrial city of Meybod. Strategic Research on Social Problems, 12(3): 1-20. https://doi.org/10.22108/srspi.2023.138836.1931 [In Persian]
Zokaei M. S., Karami M. T., & FarzadManesh S. (2020). Representation of women’s everyday family life on Instagram. New Media Studies, 6(23): 1-52. https://doi.org/10.22054/nms.2021.51251.944 [In Persian]