This paper presents preliminary results from a recent ethnographic research project I am conducting at the Mbeubeuss dump.
Bokk-Diom is the name of the association of waste-pikers of this landfill, set up in the Sixties on the outskirts of Senegalese capital city. Bokk-Diom was created at the end of the Nineties and it is described by its members as a crucial social actor for the management of waste in Mbeubeuss and for creating and supporting cooperative relationship between the formal and informal workers engaged in the solid waste management.
I approach the contemporary waste management in Dakar as a social phenomenon with a substantial environmental impact that, however, has also given rise to socio-economic relations which are (directly and indirectly) caught up with the treatment of waste, thus contributing significantly to the urbanization of neighbouring municipalities and the consolidation of migratory inflows from the country’s rural areas.
By questioning the social stratification of Mbeubeuss, the aim of this analysis is to show the attempts to built spaces of social and economic independence, and the social upward mobility ‘creating’ a class (and a subsequent ‘class consciousness’) involving independent workers linked by competition and national and international institutional actors. In particular this paper takes into account the social actions carried out by the association Bokk-Diom, and it will consider origins, social backgrounds and trajectories, emancipation processes of some waste-pickers (boudioumane) and members of the association under the lens of formal and informal policies of waste management.