Learnings and inventive strategies in the daily life of waste pickers

Abstract

Introduction: the labor market brings profound transformations that impact workers’ daily lives and subjectivation processes, including informal ones such as waste pickers. Waste picking has a reiterated socio-environmental importance, producing multiple meanings while being linked to interdictions and risks. Objective: understand the work learning processes and inventiveness of waste pickers in the metropolitan region of Florianópolis. Methods: this qualitative, descriptive and exploratory study used semi-structured interviews and fieldwork observations to collect the information necessary to answer the defined objective. Discursive practices were analyzed via maps of association of ideas and joint discourse analysis by extracting the similarities between the pickers’ narratives. Results: a total of 14 waste pickers were interviewed. Learning took place in everyday relations, especially with more experienced pickers, with knowledge and skills being developed based on experience. As for the inventive axis, workers use rules, norms, and principles for their activities, which are shared and reiterated daily. Conclusion: results highlight the bonds established by waste pickers in everyday relations, both for learning and sharing inventive strategies.