THE “EXPROPRIATION OF THE EXPROPRIATED”: collectors of recyclable materials under the aegis of ultraneoliberal neoconservatism
Recyclable material collectors; expropriation; ultraneoliberalism; neoconservatism
The present project aims to outline the research for the development of the doctoral dissertation, which seeks to analyze the implications of the changes in the National Solid Waste Policy, between 2016 and 2022, in the worsening of the processes of exploitation and expropriation of recyclable and reusable materials collectors who work within Brazil’s recycling production chain. The study seeks to understand the real and contradictory movement in its totality—before, during, and after the 2016 coup—considering the deepening of neoliberal, market-oriented policies to the detriment of the social and economic rights previously achieved by the workers engaged in the collection and recycling of solid waste in urban areas.The analysis of the object will be guided by dialectical historical materialism, grounded in quantitative-qualitative, bibliographic, and documentary research, directed by the research questions and corresponding objectives. The collected material will be examined through content analysis techniques. This process will result in the doctoral dissertation, which will seek to draw the attention of society and the State to the urgency of resuming and expanding the rights of these subjects through public policies that promote fair waste management and the real socioeconomic inclusion of this category. Furthermore, the investigation intends to articulate the production of knowledge based on a critical reflection on the reality inscribed in the sociability of capital, fostering educational processes and practices aimed at human emancipation—thus contributing to the construction of a new sociability in which social well-being prevails over individual interests.