Scavengers: Famine and stigma

The aim of this paper is to undertake an analysis of the socioeconomical profile of the  “catadores de lixo” (scavengers), who live and work in a stinking waste dump near the small town of Santo Amaro, Bahia, Brazil. Besides that, we want to discuss the strategies that they employ to survive and try to understand the process of meaning construction of their social identity by applying a survey and using semi-structured and open interviews.  

These scavengers, who belong to the lower social class and survive in a subsistence level, collect things that are supposed to be worthless and useless, are not only “poor” and excluded from the formal labour market but suffer a stigma of being like “animals”, because they eat food that is not “eatable”.