“Rubbish Belongs to the Poor”

“Rubbish Belongs to the Poor: Hygienic Enclosure and the Waste Commons” is the title of Patrick’s monograph, to be published with Pluto Press.

The book draws on the research conducted for his doctoral thesis (University of Cambridge, 2017), supervised by Dr Sian Lazar and funded by an ESRC 1+3 studentship. For this research, Patrick lived and worked with Uruguay’s wastepickers, known as clasificadores, in and around Montevideo’s Felipe Cardoso landfill. Noticing that clasificadores depended on the landfill for their livelihood and sustenance, Patrick argues that waste can function as an urban commons, with access to it put at risk by processes of ‘hygienic enclosure’.