‘Our faces change, but it's always the same story’: Crises of social reproduction among informal recyclers in Buenos Aires, Argentina

Abstract

This paper investigates the gendered dynamics of informal recycling in Buenos Aires, Argentina at a moment of transition in the governance of this work. I argue that there is a strong gender binary apparent in this type of informal work, and that the public nature of informal recycling can exacerbate the gendered crisis of social reproduction experienced by many women recyclers through inviting interventions into their work. This research is based on an extensive survey of informal recyclers and a series of interviews conducted between 2007 and 2011. In Buenos Aires, women's informal recycling work has had a more collective, social, and domestic image as compared to masculine industrial versions of this work. On average, women had more geographically limited experiences of the city and earned less money than men. Women carrying out social reproduction in public spaces were positioned as both needing assistance and deserving of it. The entwining of work and social reproduction for many women informal workers requires that any interventions to improve their work take into account the particular challenges associated with publicly performing the double burden of labor that they bear.