Scavenging for work: Informal labor across the north-south divide

Despite the growing scholarly attention paid to the proliferation of informal and precarious work throughout the global north and global south, there has been relatively little comparative research on this pressingtopic. This is unfortunate, since social scientific findings in one location can help us to ask a set of unexpected questions about other locations, thereby creating an opening for innovative kinds of inquiry. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork carried out amongst socially marginalized and economically precarious sidewalk scavengers in both Buenos Aires and San Francisco, this paper aims to extend our understanding of the organizing strategies of, and the state’s reactions to, informal workers. We focus upon two of the most strikingly visible - even iconic - symbols of informality and economic despair: cartoneros, or garbage recyclers, in Argentina and jornaleros, or day laborers, in the United States. First, we compare the ways in which these workers have been socially and politically constructed. Second, we discuss their different strategies of organizing. Finally, we contrast the ways in which these municipalities have endeavored to regulate and manage these populations, arguing that these comparative cases represent different models of neoliberal urban governance. We conclude with a framework for further comparative theorizing about informality across the north-south divide.