The environmental impacts of asymmetric material flows. Waste circulation between institutions and garbage collectors

Despite a growing number of recent Discard Studies looking at waste circulation and its implications in urban contexts, they have not sufficiently addressed the links they have with State Governance and Informality. This article is aimed at providing a deeper gaze on waste flows between waste pickers and institutions in Casablanca (Morocco) by complicating the categories of subalternity and informality. The empirical part of the paper provides an analysis of the variety of strategies, which I explore ethnographically, through which waste pickers engage with perpetual tensions regarding their position in governance processes rather than the linearly subaltern, polluting and passive agents they are often presented as. Eventually, reflecting on the interdependence between urban governance and informal practices, I will propose a reinterpretation of the notions of justice and spatial mobility with respect to the circulation of waste.