Abstract

PEREIRA, Eliane Ramos et al. Social representations of pickers of a sanitary landfill: living with gabage. Psicol. teor. prat. [online]. 2012, vol.14, n.3, pp. 34-47. ISSN 1516-3687.

The garbage pickers are casual workers in growing, subsisting on scavenging in landfills or dumps, resulting in a peculiar way of life with social psychological and health consequences. The study aimed to describe the social representations of the pickers about the daily work with garbage and social life as scavengers. It's a qualitative study, based on the Theory of Socials Representations, using the Technique of Content Analysis. Were interviewed twelve collectors of a landfill in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro. The socials representations were configured into two symbolic matrices, showing a linkage of garbage in their own image, experiencing stigma, helplessness and feelings of shame in the face of society's prejudice and social exclusion also shows the duality inclusion/ exclusion, and dilemmas between necessity of livelihood and coping risk, no prospect of a better future. The collectors reflect the psychosocial impacts suffering for working in the garbage, requiring practices of inclusion by professional and government actions.

Keywords : collectors; garbage/psychosocial aspects; stigma; prejudice; social representations.

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