New paper: Taking care of others’ waste: Racialised and gendered bodily politics of household recycling infrastructural labour in Cartagena, Colombia

Domestic worker passing waste to a waste picker in Cartagena, Neville 2019.

I’m excited to share my latest article « Taking care of others' waste: Racialised and gendered bodily politics of household recycling infrastructural labour in Cartagena, Colombia », in a special issue on concealed infrastructures in Environment and Planning C. 

This paper explores the embodied infrastructural labour of household recycling performed by domestic workers and waste pickers in elite urban spaces in Cartagena, arguing it constitutes a concealed waste infrastructure woven to care work. It reflects on its entanglements with racialised and gendered hierarchisation of labour, and the historical articulations of coloniality, eugenics and disposability in Cartagena, in shaping new forms of household recycling infrastructural labour into the intimate spaces of the home.

My deepest thanks go to the domestic workers and waste pickers in Cartagena for their trust, generosity and patience in allowing me to accompany them and learn from their work.

The paper is accessible in Open access here :https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544251360541