Transnational networks and organizing in the informal sector: Waste pickers respond to challenges and opportunities of globalization

Informal sector work is intensely local in its economic organization.  Yet in recent decades, street vendors, domestic workers, home-based producers, and waste pickers have begun collectively organizing to make their voices heard to governments and employers not only on the local and national level, but transnationally as well. Such organizing models remain largely overlooked and almost completely untheorized. This paper analyzes the work of the Latin America Waste Picker’s Network (LAWPN), the world’s most active transnational waste picker’s network. Building on fieldwork in Colombia (site of the first World Conference of Waste Collectors in 2008) and interviews with movement leaders from four Latin American countries,  this paper assesses the extent to which transnational networks and organization building enhance the collective capabilities of this particular set of precarious workers.

LAWPN has four key functions. First, it facilitates exchanges of knowledge, technology, and strategies between member organizations through regional conventions, country-to-country delegations, telecommunications, and strategic reports. Second, it organizes transnational solidarity to aid in local battles. For example, when waste pickers in Montevideo needed support in a local campaign, member organizations across Latin America issued solidarity statements and pressured their national ambassadors in Uruguay to do the same. Third, LAWPN sends leaders from countries with strong waste picker movements to countries with weak movements in order to promote the development of new leadership and organizations. Fourth, LAWPN organizes global waste picker committees to make appeals for support to transnational governance organizations such as the Inter-American Development Bank, the UN Convention on Climate Change, and the International Labor organization.