From the mediatization of social suffering to the public experience of injustice

online testimonies of waste pickers around the decommissioning of the Jóquei Landfill in the Federal District, Brazil

Abstract

Brazil's National Solid Waste Treatment Policy stipulates that organic and solid waste must be disposed of in an environmentally appropriate manner and orders the decommissioning of open dumps in the country. The disposal of waste in precariously controlled landfills, known as dumps, is a serious socio-environmental problem that affects 59% of Brazilian municipalities. However, despite being spaces with a double moral record: a source of health risks and social injustices, dumps are a place of “dirty work” for thousands of waste pickers and, in this sense, their decommissioning causes uncertainty for these workers' livelihoods. Our research deals with solid waste collectors in the Federal District, faced with the critical moment of the movements to ban waste picking at the Jóquei Landfill, the so-called “Lixão da Estrutural”, in Cidade Estrutural. The waste pickers are criticizing the conditions under which the landfill is being closed without any guarantee of compensation for the unhealthy selective collection service they provide to society. Based on the sociological analysis of the discourse of these workers' testimonies about their problematic situation, collective protests in the public space and videos recorded and published on the social network Facebook, we discuss the mediatization of their social suffering as a micro discursive practice of demand for social justice. It is an act of overcoming hermeneutic injustices that constitute a true infra politics of visibility for “vulnerable actors” as a significant part of the social mobilization strategy around solving the public problem of the socio-productive inclusion of this socio-professional category in the local circular economy of recycling.